No Robots

I am not a mystic, nor have I ever met anyone who claimed to be one. They are vastly more rare than philosophers, who are themselves hardly found on every street corner.

A great writer on the subject of mysticism is Rufus Jones. Many of his works are readily available. And of course, Constantin Brunner deals with the subject in a consummate manner. You will find some quotations from him here.

Identifying Christ as a Jewish mystic does not entail promoting Judaism and mysticism. It means correctly classifying Christ. The followers of Christ are receptive of his Judaism and his mysticism, but this is an inner receptivity that does not entail any normative expression.

I think you have hit it on the head.

What Christ is attacking is worldliness as a whole. We cannot live that way, at war with the very idea of worldliness. What we can do is use Christ's protest against worldliness to help free ourselves as much as practicable from worldliness. The ultimate idea is to transform the world so as to harmonize it with Christ's ideal vision.

Clivedurdle

Why is the Jesus of the gospels so confused?

Attacking the pharisees - the anti slavery lot, supporting the zealots - not one jot, scourging the temple, again supporting the pharisees - eating on the Sabbath, going around with tax gatherers, supporting the Essenes - blessed are the peacemakers, but clearly not being vegetarian - having a classic roast lamb passover meal?

If anything is a patched up made up story...

I did not realise that Herod's temple was the largest temple on the planet. That made sacrificing Judaism important. Can the destruction of the temple be seen as the beginning of the end of paganism? When sacrificing went from Judaism what chance did all the other pagan sacrificing religions, as Judaism was ubiquitous throughout the empires and they got on OK with reading books instead of cutting the throats of sheep, goats and bulls according to cult.

Does xianity make more sense as a sublimated human sacrificing pagan cult, more barbaric than Judaism? A possible reaction to the beginning of the end of public sacrificing?

Elijah

I agree completely. I imagine/hope they may be more plentiful in the East but it seems all quiet in the West as regards to mystics.
It’s when you make him exclusively mystic or Jewish that it appears that way. I’m not saying that Jesus wasn’t a Jew or a mystic but those should just be considered traits of his not who he was completely or what defines him.

I’ll try this analogy. Jesus being a mystic Messiah is like a king riding up on a horse to take the thrown. In this analogy mysticism is the horse; it’s what he uses to get to where he wants to go. The king aspect obviously represents Jesus being the Messiah which is more important than the Way/horse that got him here in this story. Him taking the thrown represents the mission of the Messiah to overtake the power of the earthly rulers; which is more important to the story then him being a messiah claimant or being a mystic/horse rider.

Now to someone who is a horse fanatic the story may look like it’s about if you ride a horse you can do whatever you think the point of the story is. This is what the Brunner stuff looks like to me. Missing the point of the mystic being up there to point out he’s a mystic.

Beyond that, as pointed out above, most people are completely unaware of mysticism around here and probably have a superstitious understanding of it. So the first thing you’re going to have to do is correct that understanding which would probably be a lifelong project. I personally think it’s better to work with concepts the people you are talking with are familiar with. In this case philosophy, reason and the evolution of ideas, not a mystical connection that reveals a constant idea.

Also just to promote the philosophical approach over the mystical approach for a moment as far as understanding goes. The superstitious folks need to reunderstand the universe rationally and that requires reason to break things down to their basic/spitual elements. Mysticism tends to head towards the unify everything angle but if what you’re trying to unify is coming from a superstitious perspective or irrational perspective then I can’t imagine anything but nonsense being produced even if she was actually spiritually intune.
Worldliness seems vague, what do you mean by that specifically?

Like I said I see the “son of man” going at the “ruler of man” with a specific plan of getting the people to serve a serving king instead of being ruled by the ruling kings. I’m not a fan of the teacher giving the lesson that if the students follow then the world will be at peace. Whether it’s a morality lesson or an understanding of god/universe I just don’t see that as being the central point of his sacrifice. He wasn’t just a a teacher killed for teaching some universal truth. He sacrificed his life because he had an idea that if the people served him then it would help take the power from the earthly authority. “A slave cannot serve two masters”, you either serve the son of man or the rulers of man.

No Robots

There is an apparent duality in the Jewish temperament: prophetic mysticism vs rigid scholasticism, spirit vs flesh, universalism vs exclusivism. This is in fact a general human duality: In every individual these principles seem to be in struggle against each other. Some individuals, like Christ, rise above these dualities. Yet to the rest of us these individuals seem impossibly riddled with inconsistency. This is because in the realm of absolute unity there are no absolute dualities. For example, in Christ we see what appears to be a duality between love and anger, but these are really one, as any decent parent can tell you.

There is a lot of material on this subject. See, for example, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Jon D. Levenson (New Haven, CT, Yale : 1995). The prophets continually opposed sacrifice, usually at the cost of their own lives. Christ went willingingly to his death, as did Socrates.

No Robots

Our prosperous material conditions are ripe for mysticism, but we have a horrible anti-spiritual mentality. It seems to me that the Indigo Movement provides a fascinating look at what is going on. Many children today start out with all the potential to fully develop their spiritual nature, but in many cases this is thwarted by adverse social conditions. I would go so far as to speculate that the increase in autism is to some extent the result of spiritually sensitive children withdrawing from contact with a hostile world.

Quite so. Brunner was, in my view, essentially a social scientist. His interest was in creating a typology of human thought. He construed a radical dichotomy between practical, scientific thought on the one hand, and spiritual/intellectual thought on the other. His book on Christ was intended as an exposition of the nature of spiritual/intellectual thought. He chose Christ as the ultimate exemplar of this type of thinking. However, he makes it abundantly clear that philosophy is equivalent to mysticism, and that Spinoza is equivalent to Christ. Brunner argues that spiritual/intellectual thought has three modes of expression: as mysticism, as philosophy and as art. Here is a representation of his typology:


You can see that there is a third mode, the Analogon. This is the superstitious imitation of spiritual/intellectual thought. Practical/scientific thought is vulnerable to superstitious distortion. That is why we need to keep before us the exemplars of pure spiritual/intellectual thought.

I quite agree. There are more people receptive to philosophy than there are people receptive to mysticism. However, people keep monkeying around with Christ, and that needs to be combatted.

I mean the nearly universal tendency to do what we intuitively understand as wrong in order to achieve some short-term, egoistic goal. It is the elevation of our desire for personal survival to the level of the absolute good, regardless of the well-being of everything else.

I like this a lot.

No? Even though countless students have reported improved lives for themselves and those around them?

I'm afraid that we may still be at odds on the subject of Christ's death as sacrifice. I think the point is that individual death is meaningless to one who serves the priniciple of Life. See Spinoza for a philosophical treatment consistent with Christ's approach.

The universal truth is always capable of inciting people to murderous frenzy.

I agree with this. But no one serves a dead man. It is the resurrected Christ that his followers serve, the active power of his enduring spirit.

Clivedurdle

Monophytism, Chalcedonism arianism etc!

What's an atheist doing using a creed?

No Robots

Er, if you are referring to my belief in the Resurrection of Christ, I hope you understand that I certainly do not mean anything bodily, but rather the power of his thought that continues to shape the world.

mountainman

No Robots do you know what the worldly word propaganda means?
Do you know what the worldly term Roman imperial propaganda implies?
Surely the gnostic apocrypha are more "mystical" than the canon?
Both the new testament canon, and the reactionary new testament
apocrypha are simply products of two separate political propagandas.
The former got published first. The latter got published second.
The tension between the two was defined during two centuries of the Arian controversy. Sopater was a Hellenistic mystic who controlled the winds. What happened to Sopater?

No Robots

The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blase young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slowmoving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.—Adolf Hitler / Mein Kampf.

Christian religion certainly became part of the propaganda arsenal of Rome.

Certainly. Gnosticism was an attempt to maintain Judaism at the core of Christianity in the face of Roman paganization.

Sopater of Apamea was a sophist. Mysticism is quite foreign to Greco-Roman thought.

Elijah

I think the children being stripped of their spiritual potential has to do with preparing them for the workplace. Schooling is just programming kids to do and think what you are told without question so when you’re old enough you can contribute to the building of the empire in some way. If you want to help produce more spiritual children then the work or die mentality is what has to go. IMO

“no more need for the old empire
when the indigo children come” Rev Maynard.
That’s my problem here. It’s someone using Christ for their own message they are trying to promote. It causes confusion about what Jesus was intending to do if everyone is trying to make him a spokesperson for their personal philosophy. (realizing I’m just as guilty/hypocrite.) I’m not arguing against Brunner’s particular beliefs or even using Jesus as an example, just that I think people confuse you promoting what Brunner believes with Jesus as the example with you using Brunner as an example of how you should interpret Jesus and his message.
Well I’d go with the strategy of when in a room of philosophers talk about mysticism but when in a room full of people with a superstitious understanding go with the philosophical approach. Especially online, I don’t know how well the mystical experience can be conveyed via the written word but reason holds up ok.
Have you ever seen an example of someone who personified this? I’m not sure I’m understanding that. It sounds like some type of unreachable ideal.
That’s great for them but what about everyone else? The idea that if we all just chilled out and meditated under a fig tree or learned some universal truth the world would be at peace is completely unrealistic to the reality of the situation. This world has men who build their immortality at the expense of other men’s lives. You can’t meditate that away. As Jesus said “if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
Ok I think you should really really reconsider your position on the sacrifice and why you may want to take Spinoza’s rejection of the sacrifice with a grain of salt. Sacrificing to gods is one of the most superstitious things you can do and pretty much is evidence of a superstitious/irrational understanding of god. Spinoza coming from a philosophical backing is going to see the sacrifice only as a superstitious type of sacrifice to a superstitious understanding of god. He doesn’t see it as part of a plan to establish a new meme. It’s understandable to reject the sacrifice as superstitious but I really don’t’ think that is the correct approach.

Some quotes from over in the other thread on the same sacrifice.[indent]Mark 8:35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.

Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

John 10:18 I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.[/quote]
I don’t know anything about a universal truth inciting people. I’m more of, if you try to help the people or don’t submit to the authority you have a tendency to die young.