David Mathisen, Do Ancient Star Myths Tell the Same Story? |426|

is whether Christianity was a cause or a carrier. I think one of the reasons why we see Christianity as such a problematic faith is that it has tried to assert itself as cause, when it is merely the carrier.
agreed. and no matter how badly it was faked and manipulated to serve the unholy desires of not so nice folks, the signal still came thru noise... just like it has in so many other non-Jesus wisdom traditions.

So the core of Christianity is a profound and transformative message about Love.
I think this takes us in the wrong direction. I prefer: the core of spirituality... the core message of god regardless how you find him/her/it... is love.

I've been doing a lot of interviews with mediums lately. message they're bringing back is the same message near death experiencers do... i.e. it's all about love, but we will package it in whatever form, and through whatever historical figure, you need.
 
But the faith is implicated invasion, dispossession and genocide. How is that possible? How is it possible that the followers of Jesus torture and murder dissenters?

I think a lot of this blame might lie within the Old Testament. I always thought Christianity would’ve been much better if it had deep sixed the Old Testament entirely. The text seriously normalizes and justifies brutal and vile behavior in many many places. Often coming from the hand of God. This is passed of as something like “Holy justice.”
 
I disagree. It's fine to say that many spiritually enlightened people belonging to the same religious cult have managed to tap into some deep profound spiritual truths and have thereby been guided towards doing good in the world, but it's wrong IMO to give the institution of Christianity the credit.

Yes. Please let us distinguish between what Christians do and what Christianity does. Jim is right in asserting that Christianity is 'behind' these important developments in the sense that Christians are, of necessity, of Christinity. But what we don't know is how many outwardly Christian folk were also Masons, and how many people of other spiritual affiliations worked with Christians to achieve those ends. There is, for example, a clear linkage between Masonry and the degrees awarded by universities.

Another consideration is that some folk are nominally Christian, but are deeply committed to good works on their own account - so Christianity is the vehicle of there good works, rather than the cause. In the case of slavery let us recall that those who opposed the abolition of slavery were also Christians - so the distinction has to be about personal character and not faith.
 
I think a lot of this blame might lie within the Old Testament. I always thought Christianity would’ve been much better if it had deep sixed the Old Testament entirely. The text seriously normalizes and justifies brutal and vile behavior in many many places. Often coming from the hand of God. This is passed of as something like “Holy justice.”

Completely age. However what became the Christianity we know started off as a Jewish movement, so for Jews it was an extension of their tradition. But once it became a gentle movement the focus should have been on Christ's teachings. This, however, creates a problem for a religious movement - it has no source myth. The Egyptian influence in Jesus' thought indicates it could have adopted an Egyptian source myth - but that would have created a further problem in not allowing Christianity to be distinguished from the 'pagan' traditions from which it patently arose. Keeping the Jewish source myth overcame that problem, but that also meant retention of teachings that contradicted the teachings of Jesus. How convenient to have a religion with a textual history that allows followers to ignore or contradict the teachings of its founding figure - a perfect religion of state - there is no way a religion based solely on Jesus's teaching could or would become a state faith.
 
It's kinda thought provoking how the stars played into the story of Jesus. Wise men as we call them today who were into star interpretation knew in advance of a birth to take place of a person of significance, according to the story. When an unusual star appeared in the night sky they intuitively realized it was their cue to follow wherever it would lead them. Following a star could only be accomplished logically if somehow it was closer by than the other stars in order to be respondent to their following. I'm not much into all the religions that sprang up out of the story of Jesus but I do believe the Gospels on the main, to be true. God, the Creator wanted to see humanity take a new direction. Souls cannot advance in class while the atmosphere of strife and blood and guts was still so prevalent. Quite capable of the supernatural, God could cause the appearance of such a star. It is a shame on us and surely an insult to God/Jesus that we under the right circumstances are still so eager to go to diabolical war.
 
Completely age. However what became the Christianity we know started off as a Jewish movement, so for Jews it was an extension of their tradition. But once it became a gentle movement the focus should have been on Christ's teachings. This, however, creates a problem for a religious movement - it has no source myth. The Egyptian influence in Jesus' thought indicates it could have adopted an Egyptian source myth - but that would have created a further problem in not allowing Christianity to be distinguished from the 'pagan' traditions from which it patently arose. Keeping the Jewish source myth overcame that problem, but that also meant retention of teachings that contradicted the teachings of Jesus. How convenient to have a religion with a textual history that allows followers to ignore or contradict the teachings of its founding figure - a perfect religion of state - there is no way a religion based solely on Jesus's teaching could or would become a state faith.

That’s true. Most big belief systems have an origin myth. Scientology even has one, and SCIENCE has one. While there are certain bits of evidence pointing perhaps to something LIKE a Big Bang, we really have no clue whether it happened or not. Frankly, I’d be quite surprised if it all happened exactly the way they have it laid out. And it’s quite possible that nothing Even remotely like the Big Bang ever occurred at all.

As far actually “getting rid of the OT” goes, it also would’ve been near impossible to do as Jesus is recorded as having references it several times during his ministry.
 
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As far actually “getting rid of the OT” goes, it also would’ve been near impossible to do as Jesus is recorded as having references it several times during his ministry.
very important point IMO. don't get me wrong, I'm all for christ consciousness. and I'm totally down with the jesus that near death experiencers encounter, and the jesus that the spiritual masters connect with, but the jesus of the bible totally endorses the old testament. and we all know there's some really really nasty stuff in that book.
 
Ahhh -- ummm -- did nobody hear what I was explaining in this interview or in the videos that I embedded in my earlier post here? The figures and episodes described in the "Old Testament" (so called) are CONSTELLATIONS. So is the figure of Jesus in the gospels who is "referencing" the scriptures of the Old Testament and the figures and events described in those scriptures. The events described in the Old Testament are not literal, they are not terrestrial, and they are not historical. When Moses is placed in "an ark daubed with slime and with pitch" and placed in the water, this did not happen on this earth in literal history. Nearly identical stories fitting into this same pattern can be found around the globe, in the scriptures of ancient Mesopotamia, and of ancient India, and of ancient Japan (in the Kojiki), and in the Maui cycle of myths given to the cultures of the vast Pacific Ocean. These stories are based on a specific region of the heavens, a very important region of the heavens, containing the constellation Ophiuchus and the dazzling heavenly "river" of the Milky Way (which sometimes plays the role of the sea-shore and sea-foam, rather than a river, as in the story of baby Maui cast into the sea-foam). They are not about literal events -- and neither, I would argue, are all the other (supposedly) "really nasty stuff" described in the ancient myths, including the events in the Old Testament (so called). And I say "so called" because the stories described in the New Testament are equally ancient, and the patterns of events found in those texts can also be seen in the myths of other cultures around the world, including of course in the myths of ancient Egypt, and also in the Greek myths (particularly the Odyssey, which has numerous parallel episodes to those in the so-called New Testament), and the Norse myths of far northern Europe, and of ancient India, and sacred stories in the Americas. If I convey nothing else in this interview, I would hope at least that I convey my considered opinion, based on overwhelming evidence, that these stories are NOT LITERAL and are not intended to be taken literally -- and that when we do take them literally we often miss their message and even invert their message.
 
From World's in Collision:

"However, regular institutions and practices in the life of the family would not give rise to myths.

A writer on this subject has correctly pointed out this fact: "What is quite normal in nature and

society rarely excites the myth-making imagination which is more likely to be kindled by the

abnormal, some startling catastrophe, some terrible violation of the social code." 3

Even less than daily tribal life do the daily occurrences in nature give rise to legends. The sun

rises every morning, it travels from east to west; the moon enters a new phase four times a

month; the year has four seasons—such regular changes do not stir the imagination of peoples,

because they contain nothing unexpected in themselves. Daily things do not evoke astonishment

and influence but little a people's creative faculty. Sunrise and sunset, morning dew and evening

mist, are common experiences, and if a single spectacle impresses itself upon us in the course of

life, the many sunrises and the many sunsets in our memory pale and each looks like the other.

Seasonal snowstorms or thunderstorms do not leave indelible memories. Only striking,

perturbing experiences of a social or physical order are designed to stir the imagination of

peoples. Seneca says: "It is for this very reason that the assembly of stars that lends beauty to the

robin-bobin

immense firmament does not compel the attention of the masses; but when a change occurs in

the order of the universe, all looks are fixed on the sky." *

Even local catastrophes, regarded as very violent, do not serve for

» L. R. Famell, "The value and the methods of mythological study," Proceedings of the British

Academy, 1919-1920, p. 47. 4 Naturales quaestiones vii.

WORLDS IN COLLISION 303

the creation of cosmic myths. First in power to impress the races of the earth are the cataclysms

of the past, and on this we have dwelt at length. Comets, because of their causal relation to world

catastrophes, and also because of their terrifying appearance, were the kind of phenomenon to

kindle the imagination of peoples. But for some reason, the impression they must have made on

the peoples of antiquity is not considered in explanation of myths and legends.

Since the invention of the printing press, the great agitation and mass hysteria caused by the

more brilliant comets can be traced in contemporary books and pamphlets. Were the ancients

immune to these feelings? If not, then why are the exegetes of the Bible and the commentators

on the epic compositions of antiquity so remiss as not to think of phenomena that could not but

impress the ancients? Or did no comets appear in the sky during ancient times? This, of course,

is only a rhetorical question."

Constellations do not create myths.
 
Ahhh -- ummm -- did nobody hear what I was explaining in this interview or in the videos that I embedded in my earlier post here? The figures and episodes described in the "Old Testament" (so called) are CONSTELLATIONS. So is the figure of Jesus in the gospels who is "referencing" the scriptures of the Old Testament and the figures and events described in those scriptures. The events described in the Old Testament are not literal, they are not terrestrial, and they are not historical. When Moses is placed in "an ark daubed with slime and with pitch" and placed in the water, this did not happen on this earth in literal history. Nearly identical stories fitting into this same pattern can be found around the globe, in the scriptures of ancient Mesopotamia, and of ancient India, and of ancient Japan (in the Kojiki), and in the Maui cycle of myths given to the cultures of the vast Pacific Ocean. These stories are based on a specific region of the heavens, a very important region of the heavens, containing the constellation Ophiuchus and the dazzling heavenly "river" of the Milky Way (which sometimes plays the role of the sea-shore and sea-foam, rather than a river, as in the story of baby Maui cast into the sea-foam). They are not about literal events -- and neither, I would argue, are all the other (supposedly) "really nasty stuff" described in the ancient myths, including the events in the Old Testament (so called). And I say "so called" because the stories described in the New Testament are equally ancient, and the patterns of events found in those texts can also be seen in the myths of other cultures around the world, including of course in the myths of ancient Egypt, and also in the Greek myths (particularly the Odyssey, which has numerous parallel episodes to those in the so-called New Testament), and the Norse myths of far northern Europe, and of ancient India, and sacred stories in the Americas. If I convey nothing else in this interview, I would hope at least that I convey my considered opinion, based on overwhelming evidence, that these stories are NOT LITERAL and are not intended to be taken literally -- and that when we do take them literally we often miss their message and even invert their message.
Speaking of not listening or reading something, did you read through this thread? This is exactly the point we were making regarding Biblical literalism. I don’t think anybody in here is arguing in favor of the OT being taken literally, except maybe one. This is exactly the point a few of us were making. The point regarding the OT being “nasty” wasn’t directly relavant to any of your points. It was sort of a side tangent. But you sound like you took as some sort of challenge against some point you had tried to make. Conversations meander here, as they do everywhere.
 
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That’s were I’m at in my thinking. We can’t deny the benefits that Christianity has brought society, along with a few horrors. Have the positives outweighed the negatives? It probably depends upon who you ask, but overall there have been some profound benefits to society. But do we need it going forward? I think we can do better. The sooner we can move away from dogmas, especially fear based dogmas like the Christian dogma of hell and salvation, the better we will be for it. The sooner we can move towards showing people the universal power of love and compassion without the fear based dogma, the better we will be for it. The threats of Christian dogma aren’t healthy. We have Christians walking around with the fear of Hell and purgatory driven into them. It also can cause a lot of judgmental thinking. This is really fear based thinking at its worst. What do extended consciousness experiencers and wise men tell us about fear? It’s the opposite of love. It’s incredjbly counterproductive and markedly dangerous for your powerful consciousness to be polluted with such doctorine. Christianity has introduced many people to the power and truth of love and compassion, but we don’t need it for that anymore. We get this truth more powerfully from all these extended consciousness realms. We get it from NDErs. We get if from the writings of people like Yogananda. We get it from channeled information, and we get it from these areas without the needless and fruitless threats of damnation and judgement. And we get it without the thought limiting phenomenon of fixed dogma, which is another stumbling block to our exploration of reality.

One can appreciate something for what it’s given us, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t evolve and stay limited by it
I agree. To me, the real problem with Christianity, and Islam, is that because their holy texts cannot be modified, they for ever carry the seeds of fresh horrors - they can only evolve so far before zealots push the cruel parts of the scripture to the fore again.

The doctrrine that the scriptures are immutable - given by God - is particularly painful, because we know there were written by men, and adjusted to meet the needs of Rome.

David
 
Speaking of not listening or reading something, did you read through this thread? This is exactly the point we were making regarding Biblical literalism. I don’t think anybody in here is arguing in favor of the OT being taken literally, except maybe one. This is exactly the point a few of us were making. The point regarding the OT being “nasty” wasn’t directly relavant to any of your points. It was sort of a side tangent. But you sound like you took as some sort of challenge against some point you had tried to make. Conversations meander here, as they do everywhere.
Sorry -- let me try again. I do not understand how, given the perspective that the figures and events described in the Bible are esoteric metaphor (in common with all other myths), one can for example make a distinction between the "jesus of the bible" and the "christ consciousness" -- the stories in the bible are intended to help foster connection with our essential self or higher self, and the figure of jesus (the "jesus of the bible" in the stories) is showing us in metaphorical form how to recover the connection with our essential self (as is Krishna with Arjuna, or Polydeuces with his mortal brother Castor, or Eros with Psyche). Once we understand it is metaphor, I don't see how we can complain about the metaphorical stories containing "horrors." It would be like complaining that Eros allows Psyche to die before reviving her with a kiss, and saying "I can't stand that story because he lets her die," when the story is trying use that metaphor to illustrate something about the egoic mind and how we are supposed to understand the behavior of our own egoic mind, so that we can get back in touch with our essential self (from whom we have been estranged). The myths are using activities from the physical realm (including often-violent metaphors, and often-sexual metaphors, and often-inappropriate-for-young-children metaphors) to try to illustrate very powerful truths involving an invisible realm (or an infinite realm, which is why the use of the stars in the heavens is so appropriate as a proxy for the infinite realm, the invisible realm, the realm of the gods). It's not that I took the comment about "nastiness" as a challenge -- I took it as an indication that I am not making the metaphorical and esoteric nature of the world's myths clear enough. Likewise, this is why I believe the argument that "the myths actually record the visits of literal extraterrestrials in physical craft, which the ancients then described as the behavior of gods and goddesses" is so misleading -- and it is repeated by virtually every proponent of the literal extraterrestrial visitor paradigm, including not just "Rael" and the leaders of the Heaven's Gate cult in the 1990s and the racist author of the Urantia book from the twentieth century but also Mary Rodwell (whom I believe Alex mentioned during our conversation, right about the same time he was dismissing the example of Rael who claimed the extraterrestrial visitors told him they were responsible for all the events in the Bible), for example in her slide reproduced below from a presentation found on the web here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/295742726/Mary-Rodwell-Triggers-of-Consciousness

mary rodwell slide positing gods as ETs.jpg
This is also why I believe Velikovsky's theories are completely misguided -- he is trying to explain stories such as the parting of the Red Sea or the sun "standing still" for Joshua's battle as if they are literal and terrestrial, and in order to try to explain them he posits the theory of Venus hurtling around the inner solar system for not one but several loopity-loops (in order to cause "miracles" at various different points of the supposedly-literal Old Testament narrative), a theory which sixty years later simply cannot be supported because abundant evidence argues that a planet the size of Venus did not go cavorting through the asteroid belt, for example (and, since the stories can be shown with abundant evidence to match up with the constellations, Venus was not needed in order to part the Red Sea, etc). Additionally, we also have plenty of evidence that the planet Venus was observed and described by ancient civilizations making its regular progress along its normal course in the heavens, the same as we see it today, prior to the supposed time of the "historical" events of the Old Testament that Velikovsky was trying to explain via his Venus-gone-wild theory.

So, apologies if I appear to be "defensive" -- what I am trying to articulate is that when we understand that the myths are metaphorical and esoteric (a thesis for which there is an overwhelming amount of evidence) then we can greatly benefit from their message (and, at the same time, a lot of evidence which causes problems for other theories, including evidence which causes problems for the conventional narrative of ancient human history, begins to fall into place). When we fall into the literal paradigm (very easy to do) then the message is in danger of becoming very distorted (and I tend to jump in and try to re-iterate that they are not literal).

I would argue that the "gods were actually ETs" paradigm is another form of literalism (and thus tends towards a distorted interpretation -- such as: all this talk of "DNA upgrades" by visiting ETs can very easily lead to racist dogmas -- this is historically undeniable: just read through the Urantia book, for instance).

I would also argue that the Velikovsky hypothesis is clearly literalistic in nature as well, and received wide acceptance during the 1950s because many people desperately wanted to retain literalistic belief in the scriptures of the Bible, at the same time that scientific advances were causing severe strain on the ability to continue to maintain literalistic belief in those stories.

Once we understand that the ancient myths are metaphor, then we do not typically say "I don't like the fact that the Jesus of the Bible endorsed the Old Testament," or "I don't like the fact that in the Old Testament, David sleeps with Bathsheba and has her husband killed" or "I don't like the fact that the Odyssey ends with Odysseus killing all the suitors" or "I don't like the fact that Psyche has to die before Eros revives her with a kiss of love" (we instead ask, "what is this metaphor trying to tell me?").

So, contrary to your assertion that "The point regarding the OT being “nasty” wasn’t directly relavant to any of your points. It was sort of a side tangent," I would argue that this assertion goes right to the core of what I am talking about, which is why I responded the way I did. If you (and everyone else here) are already way beyond literalism, then please accept my apologies for my mistake.
 
very important point IMO. don't get me wrong, I'm all for christ consciousness. and I'm totally down with the jesus that near death experiencers encounter, and the jesus that the spiritual masters connect with, but the jesus of the bible totally endorses the old testament. and we all know there's some really really nasty stuff in that book.
I don't understand this reasoning. Put yourself in Jesus' shoes. Faced with helping a low consciousness people come up in consciousness a little higher what would be a reasonable thing to do? Use a text that the people already accept to help them rise a little higher. An enlightened middle easterner who is familiar with the Koran might do the same thing today. The Koran has horrific passages in it as well. It doesn't mean it contains no truth.
Jesus of the bible often went beyond what the old testament said. This means he didn't totally endorse the old testament. How far would he have gotten in that environment if he has come out and said" I reject everything the old testament stands for". Likely he would have been killed immediately and nobody would know he even existed today.
When peoples minds are very closed you have to give them higher truths slowly. If you just state you completely reject everything the people believe, nobody will stick around to listen. It is a very basic teaching method.
 
Ahhh -- ummm -- did nobody hear what I was explaining in this interview or in the videos that I embedded in my earlier post here? The figures and episodes described in the "Old Testament" (so called) are CONSTELLATIONS. So is the figure of Jesus in the gospels who is "referencing" the scriptures of the Old Testament and the figures and events described in those scriptures. The events described in the Old Testament are not literal, they are not terrestrial, and they are not historical. When Moses is placed in "an ark daubed with slime and with pitch" and placed in the water, this did not happen on this earth in literal history. Nearly identical stories fitting into this same pattern can be found around the globe, in the scriptures of ancient Mesopotamia, and of ancient India, and of ancient Japan (in the Kojiki), and in the Maui cycle of myths given to the cultures of the vast Pacific Ocean. These stories are based on a specific region of the heavens, a very important region of the heavens, containing the constellation Ophiuchus and the dazzling heavenly "river" of the Milky Way (which sometimes plays the role of the sea-shore and sea-foam, rather than a river, as in the story of baby Maui cast into the sea-foam). They are not about literal events -- and neither, I would argue, are all the other (supposedly) "really nasty stuff" described in the ancient myths, including the events in the Old Testament (so called). And I say "so called" because the stories described in the New Testament are equally ancient, and the patterns of events found in those texts can also be seen in the myths of other cultures around the world, including of course in the myths of ancient Egypt, and also in the Greek myths (particularly the Odyssey, which has numerous parallel episodes to those in the so-called New Testament), and the Norse myths of far northern Europe, and of ancient India, and sacred stories in the Americas. If I convey nothing else in this interview, I would hope at least that I convey my considered opinion, based on overwhelming evidence, that these stories are NOT LITERAL and are not intended to be taken literally -- and that when we do take them literally we often miss their message and even invert their message.
ok but I think it's a little more complicated than this.

first off I'm in no way claiming to be an expert, and I'm basing everything I know off of a couple of interviews and the great wisdom of skeptiko forum posters :)

I've done a bunch of interviews with joe atwill and he makes a pretty strong case connecting josephus ( who is probably a fictional character whose works were most likely historical accounts of a group of roman historians in the field) anyways these guys went to great lengths to document the roman victory over judea in the first century. we have archaeological evidence of this. so when"josephus" writes about the thickness of the walls surrounding jerusalem we have a way of verifying that.

of course, this doesn't do much to support the idea of jesus's prophecies but it does tie us to some independently verifiable historical events in the NT. then again, this is new testament stuff and you're talking about old testament stuff, but isn't that the problem of deconstructing christianity? I mean, we're talking about having a dialogue with a group of people who's frame of reference is this complete collection of stories... i.e. the bible old and new T.

so here we are deconstructing it and I'm pointing out that if you want to jump on the historical jesus bandwagon then you can't jettison the old testament because jesus himself says that's part of the deal. now this doesn't mean that I believe in historical jesus in the way most christians think about it, it just means that if one was going to advance that argument they'd have to take the old testament with the new testament.

I get your point that we shouldn't read the old testament literally but I hope you get my point we do have to read some of the new testament literally.

there's a lot to unravel.
 
Sorry -- let me try again. I do not understand how, given the perspective that the figures and events described in the Bible are esoteric metaphor (in common with all other myths), one can for example make a distinction between the "jesus of the bible" and the "christ consciousness"
well for one thing we have accounts from people who have had near-death experiences where they claim to have encountered jesus. this creates a problem. who is this jesus they encounter? is this "jesus of the bible" in spiritual form? or as others have reported is this the manifestation of spiritual consciousness that takes on the form that is most useful to convey a particular spiritual message?

But maybe I'm misunderstanding, are you suggesting that there never was any historical jesus? because this is problematic too. I don't buy the whole christian narrative, but have some points regarding first century history that don't easily go away with the idea that all this stuff was made up.

-- the stories in the bible are intended to help foster connection with our essential self or higher self,
again, it's more complicated than this. some of the stories in the bible are intended to advance a social engineering / control agenda that the romans had.


and the figure of jesus (the "jesus of the bible" in the stories) is showing us in metaphorical form how to recover the connection with our essential self (as is Krishna with Arjuna, or Polydeuces with his mortal brother Castor, or Eros with Psyche). Once we understand it is metaphor, I don't see how we can complain about the metaphorical stories containing "horrors." It would be like complaining that Eros allows Psyche to die before reviving her with a kiss, and saying "I can't stand that story because he lets her die," when the story is trying use that metaphor to illustrate something about the egoic mind and how we are supposed to understand the behavior of our own egoic mind, so that we can get back in touch with our essential self (from whom we have been estranged). The myths are using activities from the physical realm (including often-violent metaphors, and often-sexual metaphors, and often-inappropriate-for-young-children metaphors) to try to illustrate very powerful truths involving an invisible realm (or an infinite realm, which is why the use of the stars in the heavens is so appropriate as a proxy for the infinite realm, the invisible realm, the realm of the gods). It's not that I took the comment about "nastiness" as a challenge -- I took it as an indication that I am not making the metaphorical and esoteric nature of the world's myths clear enough.
as I keep saying over and over again I'm thoroughly impressed by the evidence for your theory... but I can't understand yr interpretation of the evidence.

I mean, we're talking about thousands of years for some of these myths. hundreds and hundreds of generations of storytellers. hundreds of generations of wise men who've taken shamanic journeys, and accessed the extended consciousness realms where spirits dwell. I would fully expect the stories to change, morphe, and be rebooted in order to reach a new audience.

just look at what we know about the bible and how the stories changed over the centuries. and this from a culture who by all accounts was trying to keep the stories intact.

heck, I just completed two interviews with two different highly-skilled mediums who had entirely different views of reincarnation. both are in constant contact with their spirit guides... what gives> similarly, look at all the differences in the channels material we have today. I see potential parallels with yr myths, do you?
 
Yeah
Likewise, this is why I believe the argument that "the myths actually record the visits of literal extraterrestrials in physical craft, which the ancients then described as the behavior of gods and goddesses" is so misleading -- and it is repeated by virtually every proponent of the literal extraterrestrial visitor paradigm, including not just "Rael" and the leaders of the Heaven's Gate cult in the 1990s and the racist author of the Urantia book from the twentieth century but also Mary Rodwell (whom I believe Alex mentioned during our conversation, right about the same time he was dismissing the example of Rael who claimed the extraterrestrial visitors told him they were responsible for all the events in the Bible), for example in her slide reproduced below from a presentation found on the web here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/295742726/Mary-Rodwell-Triggers-of-Consciousness

View attachment 1272
you're kind of distorting mary rodwell message. remember who she is. she's a counselor who's talk to 3000 people who had ET contact experiences. she's not challenging your star myth theory. her main point is that there is evidence for ongoing genetic manipulation by ET. by the way I just interviewed bruce fenton who provides substantial scientific evidence that backs up this theory. at the end of the day I think this theory is highly complementary to the star myth theory, but I get that you're not there.

if you dogmatically hold the line on ET contact yr always gonna be on the outside looking in. the evidence is overwhelming. I've cited this many times so one more won't hurt :)

Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with ...
 
I don't understand this reasoning. Put yourself in Jesus' shoes. Faced with helping a low consciousness people come up in consciousness a little higher what would be a reasonable thing to do? Use a text that the people already accept to help them rise a little higher. An enlightened middle easterner who is familiar with the Koran might do the same thing today. The Koran has horrific passages in it as well. It doesn't mean it contains no truth.
Jesus of the bible often went beyond what the old testament said. This means he didn't totally endorse the old testament. How far would he have gotten in that environment if he has come out and said" I reject everything the old testament stands for". Likely he would have been killed immediately and nobody would know he even existed today.
When peoples minds are very closed you have to give them higher truths slowly. If you just state you completely reject everything the people believe, nobody will stick around to listen. It is a very basic teaching method.
maybe, but yr kinda making a lot of assumptions about Jesus. who do you think Jesus was?
 
I'd say Jesus was what the Buddha was. A spiritual teacher. They were human beings but had a high level of consciousness. They embodied two different teaching styles. Gautama withdrew from the world and let the student come to him. Jesus went out in the marketplace and met the person at the level they were at in consciousness. He offered them a teaching that was higher then where the people were but not so high that they couldn't accept it given the culture from where they were.

I believe you're conflating Jesus with official Christianity that came later. Or with Judaism the culture in which he was born. He transcends both. It is disappointing that Christianity took Jesus' example of a human on the higher stages of the spiritual path and made him into a God. Thereby destroying his example and putting him on a pedestal.

Few credible historians dispute that Jesus was a real person. If you believe in life after death which I assume you do, Jesus is alive. He's still a teacher.

If because of your upbringing in a Christian church you're unable to stomach the thought of Jesus, that's fine there are other spiritual guides. But Jesus still has a lot to offer.
 
[FAO David Mathisen]

David, Let's suppose you're right. Myths worldwide have a similar underlying structure and we don't know exactly why that is -- could be some kind of connection that disparate populations have with the collective unconscious, and that connection could be flavoured by local cultural factors. Let's take seriously the contention that you have uncovered this similarity and are claiming that the myths are trying to tell us something important about how to make spiritual progress in our lives.

If there can be superficial differences providing glosses on an underlying commonality between the myths of Ancient Greece, Egypt, the Norsemen, societies in Middle and South America, etc. then it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the myths might be equally capable of evolving as human societies evolve. Who knows, the latest version of the myths may be cast in the mould of ETs and UFOs. If that's the case, then maybe that's telling us that the older versions aren't currently apposite to our situation (though one can see the value in documenting them and trying to find parallels with newer myths).

There is some evidence that the ET/UFO mythology is an updating of the mythology of the past. Read, for example, the book Meaning In Absurdity by Bernardo Kastrup. In the first chapter, he gives a few examples of strange events, one of which is the following:

Springtime in North America, in the 1960s. A man steps out of his house and comes face to face with a saucer-shaped object hovering above his yard. A hatch opens and the man sees three entities inside the craft. The supposed aliens are small and dark-skinned, like certain types of fairies. One of the entities holds up a jug to the man, a gesture the man interprets as a request for some water. Space aliens, able to fly undetected across solar systems, needing to stop by and reveal themselves to a man in order to fill up a jug of water? What is the logic of that? Nonetheless, the man obliges, filling the jug with water from inside his house. When he returns, he sees one of the entities inside the craft frying what appears to be food on a kind of grill. Upon taking note of the man’s interest in their food, one of the entities hands the man three pancakes. Thereafter, the entities close the hatch, take off, and disappear. Naturally, it would be easy to dismiss such story as the delusions of a pathological mind, especially given the fact that no physical evidence could be found upon further investigation; that is, except for the pancakes, which were sent by the United States Air Force for analysis at the Food and Drug Laboratory of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Kastrup explains that the man was Joe Simonton, whose

case was analyzed and reported by respected French UFO investigator Dr. Jacques Vallée in 1970. As it turns out, the pancakes that the ‘aliens’ supposedly gave Joe were made of perfectly regular earthly ingredients. Puzzlingly, however, they did not contain any salt. As Vallée stresses, Joe Simonton was considered a very reliable, sincere, and trust-worthy man, this being the reason why even the Air Force took his original claims so seriously. Vallée then goes on to compare Joe’s experience with old fairy stories from Celtic folklore. As it turns out, there is a wealth of folk stories where the fairies either offer or ask for food. Interestingly, fairies never eat salt. Vallée makes an elaborate and convincing case for the relationship between modern encounters with ‘aliens’ and old fairy lore. He suggests persuasively that ‘aliens’ and ‘spaceships’ may be simply the modern ego’s interpretation of the same primary stimulus that inspired the original folk stories about fairies and elves.

Later, Kastrup says:

To Harpur, the calls of the absurd are protrusions into our consensus reality of phenomena anchored in the daimonic realm: a realm that is both material and immaterial; both fact and fiction. Thus, ‘daimonic reality’ is a kind of intermediate realm between the physical and the spiritual, between reality and imagination, embodying characteristics of both. Harpur identifies this realm with what Jung called the ‘collective unconscious,’ although Harpur – more explicitly than Jung – does not restrict the daimonic to the inside of our heads alone. In the realm of the daimonic, the imagination operates in its most natural form: through analogical – not literal – thinking; through metaphor, not causally closed modeling. Indeed, Jung has suggested that parables and similes are an older, more archaic mode of thought than linear logic and rationality. This archaic mode of thinking currently survives mostly in dreams.

Maybe it's not so much that the myths are trying to tell us something, as that human beings sometimes (perhaps more pervasively in the past than the present) have access to a "daimonic realm". It may or may not be actively trying to tell us something, but the point is, regardless, we may infer something about the nature of reality -- that it might be neither wholly logical/physical nor wholly "spiritual".

The "daimonic realm" may be one which has its own characteristics that we may sometimes be able to perceive, and we might ask ourselves whether, most of the time, we aren't experiencing a "reality" that isn't complete, but rather one that is prevalent in our culture. Ask ourselves if we're like someone walking around with a patch over one eye, seeing the world only from the physicalist viewpoint. Maybe others wear a patch over the other eye and interpret everything in spiritual terms. Maybe those most attuned to reality don't wear a patch at all and see the world "binocularly", so to speak.

We are creative beings; we may participate in, be co-creators of, the "reality" we perceive. For many in the West, that reality is physicalist and devoid of meaning. Others may be appalled by the nihilism and be seeking a world filled with meaning; one might say they're on a spiritual path. But both may be missing a possible truth: that either view on its own is deficient. With both eyes open, we may have a pathway to observing reality differently, and the potential to interact with it in ways most of us can't comprehend.
 
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As far actually “getting rid of the OT” goes, it also would’ve been near impossible to do as Jesus is recorded as having references it several times during his ministry.

But let's remember that Jesus as depicted in the NT is not history. There would be a benefit in creating a fiction that links Jesus to the OT if that link could give reason to circumvent new teachings. However, at the same time you would expect a Jewish radical thinker to refer to the bedrock of his faith tradition. He was, apparently sufficiently well schooled so as to argue with Rabbis.

The whole point of Jesus' radical teachings is launch a departure from how things were - but not just for the Jews. Paul, a Greek Jew, fused Greek and Jewish thought together to create the idea of the Christ - which probably has an Egyptian source as well. It was Paul who precipitated the radical extension into Gentile communities and was probably the real 'founder' of Christianity - which then created a mythic fiction of Jesus.

It is interesting that when people debate whether Jesus was an historic figure or not they tend to focus on the Pauline character - the mythic fiction - and not on whether there was an actual Jewish mystic who triggered the whole Christianity thing, but who had nothing to do with that side of it. I am interested that a number of sources [high level spirit guides] assert Jesus as a 'real' person, but then go all foggy about what that actually means - and that may be because those talking to them don't ask the right questions. That's typical conduct, however.

We fail to ask ourselves what precisely is it about Christianity that has enable such an apparently flawed faith to endure. I want to suggest there are themes drawn from the mystery tradition - of Greek and Egyptian roots that are not as clear in the Jewish tradition - the assurance of life after death [which became falsely conditional], the idea of transformational sacrifice [a mystery tradition and shamanic idea] and transformative idea of love and forgiveness. Of those 3 ideas on the latter seems to an innovation for the time. However there is the innovation of fusing the 3 together to make the critical foundations of the faith. This is not unique to Christianity - but that faith drew those ideas into common potential.

Nothing here needs the OT, but the OT takes the heat off the raw message and enables theological and institutional avoidance - and in a paradoxical sense this has preserved the potential of a faith that would have otherwise been crushed. Just a personal theory.
 
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