(cont) [this is the rest of my 9.14 pm Tuesday post – over the word and post limits]
Goenka was a leader of the Hindu community in Burma before he learned Vipassana. Within a few years of his going to teach in India, the leaders of most religions in that country, including Christianity, and many Christian monks and nuns has sat courses with him. They understood that this was a practical, non-sectarian way to develop those qualities which are the essence of spiritual life, of sainthood; something which did not make them “Buddhists” but made them better Christians, Hindi, Jains etc.

I’ve said enough, perhaps one day you’ll hear it.

Following up on what FreeThinker said, there was a popular sociological experiment where one canditate was studied. A group of experimenters would be shown a series of objects, and asked a simple question - which was larger? for example.

The experimenters would select the incorrect answer, and after a remarkably short period, the Canditates need to conform would out-weight their objectivity and they would also provide the incorrect answer to these simple questions.

The same applies to the followers of the Judeo-Xian religions. These religions have limited logic, but a great deal of conformity appeal.

Earlier, a post was made discussing man's "god given supremacy" over animals. Perhaps the greatest failing of the Judeo-Xian mindset is this belief. Detaching humans from nature would have been inconcievable for the pre-xian western mind. Even the notion that language sets us apart is dubious. Listening to the magpies, one can clearly hear certain sounds that have meaning - food and danger are easily recognisable as different sounds.

"No creed must be accepted upon authority of a 'divine' nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted - no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!" TSB II.6

The self is a complex being. For we are alone before God, as St John of the Cross reminds us, and yet the meaning of this aloneness is inherently relational. Moreover, as in St John's expressive 'Canticle of Love' dialogue between the soul and God, the soul grows into awareness of its call to abandonment of self in order that one may live through Christ Jesus.

The Trinity is a good way of configuring this relational identity. We belong to God, who is a union of three distinct persons - Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, or Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
'No one comes to the Father except through me' and 'Do not cling to me, I have not yet gone to my Father' said Jesus.
After Jesus' ascenscion into Heaven, the whole world received God's gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Some may say that the answer does reside in the soil as the genial gardener, Peter Cundall would say. Gardeners are veritable so rather than obsessively looking inwards in search of the true self let's all become good gardeners for in relationship to the planet, humanity seems more like a parasite living on a host, rather than an organism in a symbiotic, and thus mutually beneficial, relationship. Rather than the good shepherd what about the good gardener.

For starters we would not have this myth of exceptionalism. This is the indeterministic hypothesis that even if humanity did evolve from less complex beings, things are different now because certain aspects of existence are no longer influenced by evolution. I'm sure the good gardiner would not ignore evolution as this process occurring at all times with respect to each electron, atom, cell, organ, organism, species, ecosystem, planet, and galaxy?

I'm sure our good gardiner would regard the idea of nothingness as just that, an idea. We would then see that no part of the universe could be devoid of matter with the best idea that nonexistence is impossible and indeed that we live in an infinite universe.

Our veritable, down to earth good gardener would speak of causality, uncertainty, inseparability, conservation, complementarity, irreversibility, infinity, materialism, relativism and interconnection as interrelated or consupponible.

Why is this important? Well the good gardener always relates to the question pertaining to all questions and the problem that really prepossesses all others. As an unexceptional lifeform we need to know where we came from, what are the limits, what are our goals, to what do we tend to, to what do we have control over, to what are the possibilities, to what is determinable and to how much we desire the indeterminable.

Renee,
The trinity is a 3rd century Roman spatial concept to include the humanity of Jesus in a concept of Godhead. Jesus always talked about himself and God being one - not three. He that has perceived me has understood the Father, he said to his disciples. Again, I and the Father are One [not two]. Jesus in his humanity never claimed his humanity was God. He always identified himself as son of man. Those that recognised the nature of his character and spirit recognised the spirit of God.

Identifying three distinct persons is clearly polytheism. God is Spirit - not a spirit and the Holy Spirit is not another person or spirit - but God alone. The three character aspects used by Matthew "in the name" is a singular name not names of three persons. Compare Isaiah 9: 6 How many persons are identified here? One! A child born whose name is Everlasting Father and Mighty God.

Quote, "The Trinity is a good way of configuring this relational identity. We belong to God, who is a union of three distinct persons - Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, or Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

When we identify ourselves we identify aspects of only one character, I am a son, I am a father, I am a worker etc.

Our relationship to God is exactly as was Christ to the Father. The spirit of God within will reveal the very character of God in the world. We bear the image of the character we see as Lord of our lives.

Peter

I would be interested in your comments on Pope Benedict's Easter Vigil Homily; is this similar to the line of your thoughts you share in this forum.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20060415_veglia-pasquale_en.html

".... How can we understand this? I think that what happens in Baptism can be more easily explained for us if we consider the final part of the short spiritual autobiography that Saint Paul gave us in his Letter to the Galatians. Its concluding words contain the heart of this biography: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). I live, but I am no longer I. The "I", the essential identity of man - of this man, Paul - has been changed. He still exists, and he no longer exists. He has passed through a "not" and he now finds himself continually in this "not": I, but no longer I. With these words, Paul is not describing some mystical experience which could perhaps have been granted him, and could be of interest to us from a historical point of view, if at all. No, this phrase is an expression of what happened at Baptism. My "I" is taken away from me and is incorporated into a new and greater subject. This means that my "I" is back again, but now transformed, broken up, opened through incorporation into the other, in whom it acquires its new breadth of existence. "