Maybe There's a Heaven...

by LittleToe 141 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Narkissos

  HS,

  Even though a 'non-believer' Narkissos, your interpretation of the feelings that might live within yourself, as you described within your post above are a very 'Narkissos' style explanation.

  LOL, I wouldn't deny that.

  I know it's hard to get this point across (especially across the Atlantic ), but I would rather label myself an "atheist believer" than a "non-believer," which might (?) shed some light on the most obscure narkissisms.

  3) They are all cerebral in nature. As you know, stimulating a certain area of the cerebral cortex can give rise to such experiences, visions, and an overwhelming feeling of well-being and of a personal intense love of 'God. Again the interesting thing is that those who have undergone experimentation in this regard all turn to their various Gods for explanation.

  4) They are cerebral in nature, but the cerebral cortex is stimulated by a supernatural source outside that person.

  Perhaps, if you drop the belief in the individual as a self-enclosed monad, there is no real opposition between # 3 and 4. Only the "source" in # 4 doesn't need to be qualified as "supernatural" or exclusively "outside" anymore.

  I heartfully agree that all interpretations of such "experiences" are dependent on pre-existent cultural material -- what you happen to have read or have been taught. Ross wouldn't have put the name "Jesus" on it hadn't he read the Bible or be raised in a (generally speaking) Christian environment. I wouldn't relate it to "language" or "symbolism" hadn't I read a few theories about that. I don't think any verbal explanation is better than another objectively -- perhaps because there is no such thing as objective language. What we can do is attempting to translate them from one language to another. The sphere of communication, after all, is the intersubjective, not the objective.

  All the best
• 

  LittleToe

  Outlaw:
  Which feeling? The ones I've thusfar described have continued for over five years

  Didier:

  Ross wouldn't have put the name "Jesus" on it hadn't he read the Bible or be raised in a (generally speaking) Christian environment.

  You're right. I would have put the name "Yahshua" on it, for reasons that I wont go into, but related to one of the subsequent "experiences". Incidentally, that's a name I had never come across previously.
• 

  SixofNine

  yeah sure :said in italian american accent:

  Could this have been what you heard? Perhaps it wasn't "god", but "god-father"?
• 

  Narkissos

  Didier:

  Ross wouldn't have put the name "Jesus" on it hadn't he read the Bible or be raised in a (generally speaking) Christian environment.

  You're right. I would have put the name "Yahshua" on it, for reasons that I wont go into, but related to one of the subsequent "experiences". Incidentally, that's a name I had never come across previously.

  I stand corrected: it's definitely original, it owes nothing to Hebrew or Aramaic either
• 

  LittleToe

  Didier:Nearest thing I could find to it in the WTS literature (given that I was still a JW at the time) was Six's Yeshua, in the Insight volumes.

  Six:
  Maybe it should be said with phlegm
• 

  hillary_step

  Narkissos,

  Even though a 'non-believer' Narkissos, your interpretation of the feelings that might live within yourself, as you described within your post above are a very 'Narkissos' style explanation.

  LOL, I wouldn't deny that.

  I know it's hard to get this point across (especially across the Atlantic ), but I would rather label myself an "atheist believer" than a "non-believer," which might (?) shed some light on the most obscure narkissisms.

  Please do not feel that my comment was a criticism, it was not. You as ever ably demonstrate a grasp of both the language and the issues at hand. I was trying to illustrate how all the explanations we may try to give to an experience which we might feel is mystic, would always be broached in language that reflects our own environmental paradigm. Obviously I failed....lol.

  When I was JW, I was a true believer in God. When I prayed for myself and others I truly felt connected to something. It was not an epiphany, but there was an absolute surety that something beyond a man speaking to himself was present in this process. I am sure that many on this Board have experienced a similar thing. I was actually very embarrassed for a while thinking that I had actually been fervently praying into the empty air. My path since has taken me from belief to unbelief.

  A religious person would perhaps describe this process as my having 'lost my faith', but what I have lost is imho more of a committment to a cerebral self-hypnosis. That is why I find the experience of Ross and others so fascinating. I wonder whether in fact these epiphanies are all self-induced.

  Best regards - HS
• 

  LittleToe

  Hillary:
  What convinced you that you were speaking to "empty air"?

  My first "experience" was after having got ready for work, and heading to leave the house. Spirituality was the furthest thing from my mind, when I woke up that morning. If anything was self-induced it must have been at an incredibly sub-consious level. Given that I don't even put the radio on in a morning, and never have, there were no external elements to particularly trigger the whole cascade, either.

  Obviously that doesn't preclude your suggestion, but I imagine that you are still looking for a connection to fervour and ecstatic behaviour?
• 

  Narkissos

  HS,

  I didn't mistake your comment as criticism, and (as I later stated) I do agree with your point entirely. My additional remark on the "non-believer" label was not really a reply to you but an attempt at clarification for potential readers, who may have a hard time understanding where I stand.

  My feeling is that the popular debate on religion in America is just too hot (also for its political connections) to make room for many shades of nuance. Being a liberal Christian or a mystic-inclined atheist sounds like a betrayal to both "sides" in a very clear-cut "us and them" context. Almost as difficult, mutatis mutandis, as being a Republican Catholic in Spain during the civil war.

  Your point about prayer is very interesting. I would make a difference, though, between the religious sincerity of prayer (which to the praying person is definitely more than talking to the ceiling), and the "epiphany" to which prayer may or may not lead, but, if it occurs, is actually the end of prayer. The latter, often, is a shortcut from the religious relationship which implies a clear separation and distance between the believer and his/her god, into a wordless sense of presence where separation, distance, and even distinction vanish. I am conscious of the orgastic overtones of this description (mystical literature is suspiciously reminiscent of erotism) and the psychological or neurological explanations it may beg for (release of tension, guilt, fear, etc.). Btw it is often frowned upon by exoterical religion too (the cases of Hallaj in a Muslim context or Meister Eckhart in a Christian context come to mind). A contemporary philosopher like Edmond Jabès called that theophagy, the mystic actually eating his/her god. From every perspective, it is a highly questionable experience which lends itself to many explanations and counter-explanations, but to those who experience it it is nonetheless mind-blowing and unforgettable, whatever the (culturally-bound) interpretations they can come up with as they try to make sense of it.

  I would add that stepping back (or down)from such an experience, for any reason, is a very respectable and beautiful human choice too. It takes all roles for the human play to be performed, that's where I believe Paul's major pars veritatis lies(not all are prophets etc., no one lives or dies for himself alone, to God we are out of our minds but to you we are in our minds, etc.). Mysticism and rationalism, folly and wisdom need each other just as much as they oppose each other imho.

  Ross,

  I was kidding you. What I meant is *Yahshua doesn't correspond to any historical form of the name, which in Hebrew is either Yehoshua` or Yeshua`. More generally the theophoric element, when it comes first (as a prefix) in a personal name, is never yh = Yah but either Yhw (Yeho) or Yw (Yo). I don't know where you may have heard Yahshua` (apart from revelation of course) but it is definitely "in the air" -- I have seen it used by a number of posters here, I still recall having a discussion about that with Shelby (AGuest).

  Edit: see for instance http://www.yashanet.com/library/Yeshua_or_Yahshua.htm
• 

  proplog2

  As I was going about my business I recalled reading a book 30 years ago "The Further Reaches of Human Nature" by Abraham Maslow. He was very interested in what he called "Peak Experiences" of "Self-Actualizing People".

  I never thought much of Maslows "Needs Theory" but he did give an interesting secular spin on the kind of experience being discussed here.

  There is another Psychologist from University of Chicago with an unpronounceable name Mihaly (something) who wrote several books on what he called "flow" events.

  Narkissos: My use of the word "own" is in the sense of "integral".
• 

  LittleToe

  Proplog:
  Thanks for that. I'm familiar with some of Maslow's work, but not the area you suggest. I'll look it up.
  Meanwhile is this the Mihaly you refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

  As if I didn't have enough bedtime reading!

  Didier:
  Would you agree that when we hear unfamiliar things we transport them into our own tongue and familiar syllabuls?

  Speculate with me a moment - How might an Aramaic hearer transliterate something that sounded like "Yahshua" into their own tongue, for re-pronunciation and interpretation (given the propensity for names to have a meaning)?

  I held my tongue when Shel recounted such things, though we were in communication.