When you pray / live the Christian life,

do you actually experience

something like this?

I am presently reading "Mystical Theology" and have come to realize that I am more of a mystic then I thought.  In answer to your question I would say yes.  Many a time I feel the Divine presence in a variety of experiences.

We, as Anglicans, do have the Eucharist on a weekly basis and I do have the feelings of the real presence.

Shalom

Mate

Ahhh...

His actions before that trip to Damacus wan't much of an exemplar of the Buddaht nature Though...

Isn't there a connective (Hopefully, eventually, connecting) thread among many many religions that shoot for the cosmic consciousness experience?

It's my hunch that this realization is given a small slice of people (as is, homosexuality--and football stars...)) designed for a different purpose by ..uh..Nature.

Isn't that was Emmanuel means?

Turning the other cheek, and loving our enemies...how much fruit do you see showing?

(And where do I get the 'judge' licence? :-)

If this happens my lifelong hope will be realized.

Sorry for the length of this but yours was a great post!

Yes...  maybe for an Anglican like yourself, kneeling at the altar rail to receive Communion is the epitome of all this?  Evelyn Underhill described it as kneeling "at the frontier of the unseen world." And yet the Living Christ could not be closer.  They don't make words for this....

(By the way, Mate... I have formally moved over to the Anglican Church and am now being trained at the following parish: http://www.cronyn.ca/ .

I should clarify that although I see Paul as more Buddhist than Jewish in his Christian mysticism, I'm not suggesting that Paul was actually influenced by Buddhism. Also, the trends in Paul's thought that look "Buddhist" to me would probably be described by more learned types as "Hellenistic" or "Neoplatonic" trends that were active in the ancient Mediterranean world.  But they also say that once we start actually journeying through the mists of Christian mysticism, our concern becomes simply being with and serving our Beloved, and these academic terms become just gibberish.  Important gibberish to think about, though, for some of us.

Also, I see Jesus as being a more thoroughly Jewish mystic and Jewish mysticism as not being "the same thing" as Christian mysticism, though certainly not antagonistic to one another in my view.  Many Jews and Christians would of course disagree with me on that, probably not too many Buddhists though.

yes...  before Damascus, in addition to his inner blindness, he had an inner hearing problem.  The Living Christ within him was perhaps saying "You will fish for men" but he heard it as "I must catch & kill the infidels!"

And there we have it, straight from the mouth of a Happy Genius, the spiritual infrastructure of the Golden Rule.  Are you hearing this my friend (David)?

Wouldn't that be just like the Mystery we call 'God,' to hide in the East a potent cure for the religious illnesses we've invented in the West and vice versa, as a way of bringing us all together... to discover _______?

 lol - heard it a long time ago rishi. The question, as has been asked repeatedly, is when will the institutional church hear it? More to the point, are they capable of acting on it? Indications are that they are not.

Which is okay. The institutions of Jesus' day weren't able to do it either.

I think Paul's Christian mysticism was Christian.

But I arrived at Christian mysticism via a roundabout route that led me through Zen Buddhism.

During two-and-a half years of seeking along the Zen path, I had several satories, peaking in a mind-expanding mystical peak experience. I then realized that all religions are, at their core, rooted in the expereince of the Divine, and returned to the religion of my culture. I only wish that the mystical path was as open and available in Christianity as it is in Buddhism, Hinduism or Sufism.

Paul has more often been linked to Gnosticism or the Mystery Religions of the time.

Barrie Wilson PhD writes in his paper, "Taking Paul at his Word",

"Paul’s Christ Movement differs considerably from the Jesus Movement and from the
Judaisms of the time. It owes its origin not to the historical Jesus who was a teacher and
messiah claimant but to Paul’s personal mystical experience of the Christ. Paul never
met the historical Jesus, and, according to his own account, rarely conferred with his successors.
 
In terms of practices, Paul’s Movement rarely referred to the teachings or observances of
the historical Jesus. In particular, it denied the necessity for keeping the law. In this
connection Paul was particularly vexed about the matter of adult male circumcision
which he took as symbolic of all that was wrong with the law. For him, converts can
hang on to their foreskins.
 
Paul also differed from the Jesus Movement in terms of beliefs. He conceived of the
Christ as a cosmic dying-rising savior, not as a political messiah come to reestablish the
Davidic throne. For Paul, the Christ “was in the form of God” who “emptied
himself…being born in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:6-7). He urges his followers to
come to “know” Christ and the power of his resurrection, as he has done, and to share
in “his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10-17).  While
‘Christ’ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew ‘Messiah,’ Paul transports the concept
from its Jewish political environment into the cosmic world of Roman mystery
religions. "
 

The entire paper, which contains much more, can be found here:

www.barriewilson.com/publications.html

I have had Transcendental experiences while meditating and also just calming time, which allows me to get along without forms of valium, both are accepted norms of Christian and Buddhist philosophy on meditation.

For sure, and you can get unlimited 'repeats' on that Rx...

good post Rishi.  I have no trouble with the idea - it really speaks to me, and also the bit in the Wilson essay excerpt above from Oui : that Paul differed from the political 'put David back on the throne' Jesus movement...

point - for Paul, Jesus doesn't necessarily equal Christ - I would see it more as the Christ Spirit/God/Holy Spirit, so for me it isn't like "Jesus is my best friend and I love him and he is with me all the time" - it is more a recognition of Spirit through experience of Jesus/Christ...  (of course you all knew that :P)

also - cheesy but it works:  from the silly but interesting book "Eat, Pray, Love" - a quote "God is in me, as me"  - we are fully in the Spirit when we are fully ourselves... - lots to pick apart, but a neat little starting point.

Yes, I agree with everyone. Paul's Christ was not the Jewish Messiah but more like the "Christ" of the Greco-Roman world: Gnosis, a supreme and ecstatic insight, ultimate knowledge. Paul did, of course, assume that Jesus had attained the same insight, and that this insight had made him into Jesus the Christ. Christhood to Paul would be the same as Buddhahood is in Buddhism: attainable by everyone given the right practice.

Alas, the possiblity of everyone attaining Christhood is not (yet?) a basic tenet of Christianity. A path or practice of attaining Christhood has not (yet!) been overtly laid out and well practiced by mainstream Christianity.

Nothing is stopping us from practicing and proclaiming such a path! This, in fact, is something that many of us already do.

This is my version of the Second Coming: The arising of the Christ Consciousness in us!

I understand this intellectually and theologically, and it especially bugs me when "Christ" is taken to be Jesus' last name.  But in my devotional experience (which is at a deeper level than my theology), the living, breathing, sweating Jesus and The Christ, the Logos that was never born and never dies are inextricably One. And, actually, this unity is very important for me. Out of it I get a very tangible sense of the Divine Spirit.  And the spiritual and the bodily are not in any way at odds.

This devotional unity that I experience of Jesus and Christ reminds me of the following sonnet.  For me, the unity serves as a way of detoxifying the understanding of Spirit as something which "alters," or looks askance at, the body because of the body's great vulnerability:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

--  Shakespeare

Nice and interesting but as whitehead said it is better a propostion be interesting then true and he goes on to say truth adds to interest.

Pauline scholars would suggest that Paul was centered in his Judaism of his time and reworked it out of his encounters with the Jewish/Christians.  Connections with other ideas, like buddhism, and no matter how informative it is, raises the idea of why did these different religions emerge at the same time.  Not that they created one another.  We make connections that Paul would not have.

r u talkin quantum ?

 Pan, I think Buddhism significantly pre-dates Christ.  The Buddha was said to have been born in 536 BCE.

rishi, here is another quote from Barrie Wilson, from the paper titled "What's a Messiah to Do?"  

"Conclusion #2: Paul’s Savior figure derives from Graeco-Roman mystery religions. 

Paul places the Christ’s death-and-resurrection as central to the idea of the messiah, 

a notion foreign to all previous Jewish views of the messiah.  Prior to Paul there was 

no requirement that the messiah be resurrected. Nor was it expected that he would 

act as the “savior-vehicle” through whom all humanity will be saved. These represent 

new twists on the idea of a messiah.  

It would appear as if Paul builds his view of the Christ on models found outside 

Judaism, in the mystery religions of the time. The Christ is like Dionysus or Mithras or 

many other figures – heroes who die and rise again to save humanity and whose 

followers can achieve salvation through participation in the hero’s life and death. 

While Christos translates Mashiach, it transports the concept from a Jewish 

environment into a vastly different world. "

The entire article can be found here:

www.barriewilson.com/publications.html

The dying/rising/Saviour model does not appear to fit with Buddhist teachings.

of course Buddhism is older than Paul - my point at the same time prophet judaism, buddhism, greek philosophy all emerged - dthe axiel age - The rest of my point is Paul is part of Judaism - it is a interesting to posit the mystery religions - but again it is only interesting and on slim scholaristic grounds - there is a great book on Judaism and resurrection by a Harvard Jewish scholar.

Yes, I was pointing to the mystical core of Paul's teachings, in which a spiritually dead inner self becomes a new spiritual being via surrender to a deity that is encountered within consciousness.  This core is very Buddhist  (especially East Asian, Mahayana Buddhism).   Again, I'm not suggesting that there are any historical links between Paul's writings and Buddhism,  only that the content of Paul's mysticism corresponds more to Buddhist than Jewish views. To me this suggests that one of the current world religions, other than Judaism, might help deepen our appreciation of and engagement with Paul's view of the living Christ within.