religion...religious...organiz ed religion....
decides2dream
Posts: 14,977
just an interesting perspective on the ideas...not saying it is 'right'...merely an interesting perspective. also too, somehow the idea of being religious and being part of organized religion....do not need to be mutually exclusive...or that God must be an it or a he/she...perhaps the idea that is simply...to be.....
excerpts from love, freedom, aloneness ~Osho
To forget your self is the only sin. And to remember your self in its utter beauty, is the only virtue, the only religion. You need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan, you need not be a Christian - all that you need to be religious is yourself.
***
You are the intelligence of exisitence; you are the consciousness of existence; you are the soul of existence. You are a part of this immense godliness that manifests in thousands of forms: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in human beings . . . but it is the same conciousness in different stages of evolution. And the man who recognizes himself and feels that the God he was searching and looking for all over the world resides within his own heart, comes to the highest point of evolution. There is nothing higher than that.
It makes your life for the first time meaningful, significant, religious. But you will not be a Hindu, and you will not be a Christian, and you will not be a Jew; you will simply be religious. By being a Hindu or a Mohommedan or a Christian or a Jaina or a Buddhist, you are destroying the purity of religiousness - it needs no adjectives.
***
Gautama Buddha is not a Buddhist. The word buddha simply means the awakened one, who has come out of sleep. Mahavira, the Jaina, is not a Jaina. The word jaina simply means one who has conquered - conquered himself. The world needs a great revolution where each individual finds his religion within himself. The moment religions become organized they become dangerous; they become really politics with a false face of religion. That's why all the religions of the world go on trying to convert more and more people to their religion. It is the politics of numbers; whoever has more numbers will be more powerful. But nobody seems to be interested in bringing millions of individuals to their own selves.
excerpts from love, freedom, aloneness ~Osho
To forget your self is the only sin. And to remember your self in its utter beauty, is the only virtue, the only religion. You need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan, you need not be a Christian - all that you need to be religious is yourself.
***
You are the intelligence of exisitence; you are the consciousness of existence; you are the soul of existence. You are a part of this immense godliness that manifests in thousands of forms: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in human beings . . . but it is the same conciousness in different stages of evolution. And the man who recognizes himself and feels that the God he was searching and looking for all over the world resides within his own heart, comes to the highest point of evolution. There is nothing higher than that.
It makes your life for the first time meaningful, significant, religious. But you will not be a Hindu, and you will not be a Christian, and you will not be a Jew; you will simply be religious. By being a Hindu or a Mohommedan or a Christian or a Jaina or a Buddhist, you are destroying the purity of religiousness - it needs no adjectives.
***
Gautama Buddha is not a Buddhist. The word buddha simply means the awakened one, who has come out of sleep. Mahavira, the Jaina, is not a Jaina. The word jaina simply means one who has conquered - conquered himself. The world needs a great revolution where each individual finds his religion within himself. The moment religions become organized they become dangerous; they become really politics with a false face of religion. That's why all the religions of the world go on trying to convert more and more people to their religion. It is the politics of numbers; whoever has more numbers will be more powerful. But nobody seems to be interested in bringing millions of individuals to their own selves.
Stay with me...
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
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If we look through the past ages, and how humans have evolved, and how thusly our relationship to the spiritual level of life has evolved there are some distinct stages.
In the age of Aries, which was the essence of the Old Testament, humans were very tribally oriented. God was considered an entity far removed from us and quite scary. The theme of this age and of was dominance and authority over nature.
The age of pisces entered around the same time the second era of buddhism arose (the Mahayana tradition) and alongside Jesus' emergence on the scene. The Piscean age was about duality and choices. And individualism. The new spiritual ideals on the scene became about compassion, love and forgiveness. Jesus introduced us to the idea of God as our Father--not some scary detached vengeful dude, but a loving, forgiving father. The Mahayana tradition of buddhism held that all humans could become enlightened. With individual choice, we also experienced tension and conflict as we learned to move beyond tribal rule. We moved from strict adherence to the tribe into individuality within the tribe (which expanded to respective nations).
At the beginning of this new millenium, we've moved into the age of aquarius. The hallmark of this age is synthesis and resolution. Unity in diversity. An obvious manifestation of this is how we've moved from essentially physical, tribal ways of existing into the realm of information that spreads like wildfire. Nations are brought together by the internet and mass communication as the focus shift to theory and symbolism. This reflects our rising consciousness. This spirit of unity is moving beyond all borders.
With numerous religious folk bringing the deeper spiritual understandings out from hiding--from hidden monastic practise or from closed religious study, general enlightenment is spreading to regular laypersons in society. We are coming to understand an intimate connection with God/Nature/All-of-life, rather than relying on authority to connect us to this sense. We are plunging through religion into a felt sense of the sacred.
Humans are coming to learn to balance the dualities of the last age--dualities such as right/wrong, better/worse, either/or and to find the equality, balance and unity of this age. This age is about resolution of our inner imbalances, moving into resolution of our outer imbalances with the forces around us. In this age, we learn to unite the past, future and the present back into our view in the now, so we can see a unified picture, and come to REAL-ise the Garden of Eden surrounding us. As we come to live wholly, we come to REAL-ise or Re-COGNISE our wholeness with the underlying forces of life. We are moving from needing the tribe for our sense of spiritual to fully realising that the spiritual exists in and around all of us and connects us.
(This view (edit: includes and) extends from information from author Carolyn Myss. Ph.d. )
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Which is why the term spiritual seems to fit me better. Religious have too heavy connotations to organized religion I feel.
Interesting points from you both, which also sounds about right according to my perceptions.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
take a good look
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agreed. i usually use the term 'spiritual' as well. however, i enjoyed the idea that hey, organized religion does NOT alone mean religious, and that to be religious is more in line with simple spirituality, and that the comnnotations of organized religion HAS taken over the beauty of the term religious.
also too, i particularly found of interest this excerpt:
"The moment religions become organized they become dangerous; they become really politics with a false face of religion. That's why all the religions of the world go on trying to convert more and more people to their religion. It is the politics of numbers; whoever has more numbers will be more powerful. But nobody seems to be interested in bringing millions of individuals to their own selves."
certainly not the first to suggest such, but the language and tone of these words still far more respectful, and perhaps more in line with my personal philosophy of it all, articulated in a way i have never been able to verbalize. so much more of course, but just these few passages i felt compelled to share here.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Sorry but, that point is moot. Jesus wasnt a Christian, he was a Jew. I dont get how that matters. These men were simply the founders of a religious movement that went on to bear their names.
Also, its OK to define these beliefs with adjectives and different names. Judaism in The Hebrew scrips was the chosen belief system, created by God himself. The Old Law Covenant (Mosaic Law) and its practices being the center of it. Then Christ or The Messiah was finally born and that ushered in a "New Covenant" under Christ which wiped out the rules of the old Law. He scrificed himself to cover our sins so that the people wouldnt have to make daily sacrifices, etc for atonement.
I dont get whats wrong with that?! I think you have a good "blanket" grasp on religion but it doesnt seem you are very aware of the details of the bible. And God is in the details
in case you missed it.....the first post clearly states...
so yea, i didn't write it...it is merely food for thought, spark for discussion. if you don't get anything from it, ok. but nice to see you automatically assume from a couple lines here my "grasp" of anything regarding religion. i'd hardly hazard to guess one's full knowledge on ANY topic from a few posts on a message board. anyhoo...these are not my thoughts personally, i didn't write em, and i made clear that i didn't...merely that i found them interesting.....
btw - it's about ALL religion, not just christianity in any case. there IS much more to the world, and the world of religion...outside the judeo-christian faiths. one does not need to be an 'expert' on any one of em to discuss the general concepts of religion and/or the philosophy of religion.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
A "few" posts? Now THATS not fair. You have over 10,000 posts, we all have a ceratin writing style that others become accustomed to, and thats fine.
Your recent posts on religion are really interesting but tend to not be focused and meander a lot. I guess I am just more black and white, the gray stuff doesnt satisfy me, its not logical to me sometimes.
No offense D2D, I always look for your posts
and do you think my over 10,000 posts are all about religion? not even close.
and yea...i am ALL about the grey, to me, that is the utter STUFF of living. if all were so black and white, it would all be far too easy to me...then it would all simply be right or wrong, and yea...i don't see too much in this world to put in such neat little categories. some things, sure...but not too many. b/c for any one thing we can say 'this is wrong'...it seems we always manage to come up with 'exceptions'...so yea....life is grey for me.
btw - what you see as lack of focus, i happen to see AS details. it's all perspective. my focus is pretty clear, it just may be so different from what you *see* it might appear rather fuzzy. but, to each his/her own........
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
i am not saying one way or another...just a small possible interpretation of the writings here, and why it 'DOES' matter that Jesus wasn't a christian, etc. just a thought...
and yea, i think the main focus of osho here..is that religion should come from within, and that while spiritual guidance is great....all should find their own path, their 'inner religion'......all possibilities in any case.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
"Nature as it's own religion; Gospel of the land"
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
I hear you there! Nothing is just black & white - that is so restrictive (and judgemental!) ... a multitude of shades of gray!
Native American spirituality says it all. It forms an integral and seamless part of their very being. It is in them, in nature and all living creatures. No 'organised' religion here! I believe this is how it should be.
The bible (I know there are soooo many threads about this.... :cool: ) is just a compliation of stories written hundreds of years after the alledged 'facts'. And it is also only a very small part of these stories written. Slowly but surely, science is explaining the 'miracles' that happened and eventually, this book will end up a lovely 'fairy tale'. It may well be that Jesus existed, but so did his brother James... so did other 'prophets'...
A native american woman said:
"If you take the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind." Be at one with nature and yourself and nature - you don't need an organisation to dictate how you need to behave in order to be rewarded by 'heaven' or punished in 'hell'.
as a scientist, I am 200% with you on this...
2007: Copenhagen, Werchter
2009: Rotterdam, London
2010: MSG, Arras, Werchter
2012: Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin
2014: Amsterdam, Stockholm
Like Apollonius of Tyanna
Scientists haven't proven much of the historical accounts in the Bible. They can't prove Jesus existed. Even though they can prove Apollonius existed around the same era. The great flood, not even close. Sure many floods occured any one of them could be metaphorically applied to the great flood, but none were really that great. Noah's Ark, still searching for that one, they've been staring at pictures of Mt. Ararat for ages with no luck. As far as I know, there isn't much they can prove from the Bible.
Funny you say "fairy tale" that is exactly the impression I get from it. I started reading the Qu'ran and quit after the story of Abraham. It's just far too fairy taleish. It needs to be juicier.
Of course! Some of the obvious ones are when 'the lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah' (genesis) or 'the parting of the seas' (exodus) - pure scientific facts and no miracle or divine intervention.
Even archeology debunks lots of the bible stories.
A story like the bible helped explain things people did not understand at the time and thus was a comfort to them.
It's not for scientists/historians to prove whether Jesus existed or not. Christians state that he does (born from the immaculate conception of Mary... father being a 'spirit' - cool!!!). If they wish to believe it.....
Also, not sure if scientists are out there to 'prove' anything from the bible.... they are just explaining phenomena that once were mysterious and divine but are now not so divine because we know how it happened (knowledge they did not have in those days).
Ah Voltaire.... I studied Voltaire thoroughly... great humanist.