Posted by Phil on November 13, 1998 at 08:45:22:
In Reply to: Re: Duality and Non-Duality posted by Johnboy on November 12, 1998 at 11:44:18:
I liked your reflections very much, johnboy. The following pgh is especially good, I think.
: we do not access the complete inner nature of God vis a vis certain attributes and we experience this inaccessibility dualistically. we will access the complete inner nature of one of God's attributes and we experience this, progressively, nondualistically.
e nonduality. that this dynamism of dualism-nondualism pervades and perdures in eternity seems to be the very essence of eternal relationship.
I think you're right on with the following as well.
: the goodness, the Goodness---that we pray to ---is not fundamentally different from the goodness we experience as self. we can say this at the same time that we maintain a dualistic posture regarding God's other attributes which we will never experience as self. God can be watching, judging, approving and intervening in our lives in as much as it is not our bodies, our minds, our souls which "become" God but our wills which are being transformed by the very gift of God's Self. being perfectly conformed to His Will and sharing His every desire and participating boundlessly in His Goodness do not necessitate our "becoming God". as we come to "know" our own true nature, we will come to know the very nature of God's goodness. we will not, however, come to participate fully in His other attributes. that this is okay is one of the lessons we learned from the Incarnation. that God is other than myself is an inescapeable dualistic notion based on my numinous experiences.
: our consciousness may be nothing more or less than one aspect of God's inner nature (once ultimately transformed). this is not to say that the converse would be true, that God is nothing more (or less) than our own consciousness.
I may be so, jb, but without making an ontological distinction between God and one's consciousness, then how does one avoid implicating God in evil? Know what I mean?
Peace, brother.
Phil