Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation - Pauline Christianity = PaleoChristianity

[Voyageur]

Great work, Whitecoast, and yes so much dovetails other works and what the C's have been driving at, osit.

In the work by Ashworth he brings up slavery, obviously of the flesh is one aspect et cetera. Here he makes an interesting point on fear:

“In this section we sense that the reappraisal that Dunn indicates Paul has made of his past is rooted in more than intellectual insight. A state that had not previously been seen as such is, from the new experience of liberation, perceived to have been a state of slavery in which the motivation was fear. It is important to keep the clarity that we have established in previous chapters that it is not, as Dunn believes, ‘the practice of the law’ that is ‘a kind of slavery’ but that there is a state of slavery, for which Dunn’s description is apt – ‘the slavery of the spiritually immature’ – which, according to Paul, is the universal state of humankind, because of which the practice of the law is necessary. With the maturity of freedom, the law is no longer required. It is worth noting that Dunn observes that the sense of liberation must have been felt by the Gentiles who came to faith as well as the Jews and this rather undermines his view that it is ‘the practice of the law’ that is, in itself, the ‘slavery”

Could not help noticing a Ouspensky reference, so wandering to 'TERTIUM ORGANUM', Ouspensky starts his fist major work (1921) with the double quote (Revelations and Paul):

And sware . . . that there should be time no longer.
Revelation 10: 6

That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all
saints what is the breadth, the length, the depth and the height.

St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians 3: 17, 18

This last part "what is the breadth, the length, the depth and the height" follows Ouspensky to the close of his book (Italics Ouspensky's) and the fact that he opens and near closes his book with Paul was interesting:

(in the Conclusion) The apostle Paul's words are still more strange, still more striking in their mathematical exactness. (These words were pointed out to me in a book by A. Dobrotoluboff, From the Invisible Book. The author sees in them a direct indication of the 'fourth measurement of space'.)
Indeed, what can it mean?
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the BREADTH and LENGTH and
DEPTH and HEIGHT.'
First of all what does the comprehension of breadth and length and depth and height mean? What could it be but the comprehension of space? And we know already that the comprehension of the mysteries of space is the beginning of higher comprehension.
The apostle says that those 'rooted and grounded in love' will comprehend with all saints what space is.

The question arises here: why should love give comprehension? That love leads to sanctity is clear. Love as the apostle Paul understands it (Chapter 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians) is the highest of all emotions, the synthesis, the merging together of all higher emotions. There can be no doubt that it leads to sanctity. Sanctity is the state of the spirit freed from the duality of man with its eternal disharmony of soul and body. In the language of the apostle Paul sanctity means even a little less than in our present language. He called all members of his church saints. In his language being a saint meant being righteous, moral, religious. We say that this is only the way to sanctity. Sanctity is something different - something attained. But no matter whether we take it in his language or ours, sanctity is a superhuman quality. In the sphere of morality it corresponds to genius in the sphere of intellect. Love is the way to sanctity.
But the apostle Paul connects sanctity with KNOWLEDGE. The saints comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and he says that all - through love - can comprehend this with them. But what are they to comprehend? COMPREHEND SPACE. Because 'breadth and length and depth and height', translated into our language of shorter definitions, means space.
And this last is strangest of all.
How could the apostle Paul know and think that sanctity gives a new understanding of space? We know that it should give it, but HOW could he know this?
None of his contemporaries connected the ideas of comprehension of space with sanctity. And there was as yet no question of 'space' at that time, at least not among the Romans and Greeks. Only now, after Kant and after having had access to the treasure-house of Eastern thought, we understand that it is impossible to pass to a new degree of consciousness without an expansion of the space-sense.
But is this what the apostle Paul wanted to say - that strange man, a Roman official, persecutor of early Christianity who became its preacher, philosopher, mystic, a man who 'saw God', a daring reformer and moralist of his time, who fought for the 'spirit' against the 'letter' and who was certainly not responsible for the fact that later he himself was understood not in the 'spirit' but in the 'letter'. What did he want to say? - We do not know.
But let us look at these words of the Apocalypse and the Epistles from the point of view of our ordinary 'positivist thinking' which at times graciously consents to admit the 'metaphorical meaning' of mysticism. What shall we see?
WE SHALL SEE NOTHING.

"What did he want to say?..." "What shall we see?" perhaps has also been made a little clearer in Ashworth's work on Paul, with a better understanding of the very 'letters' of which Ouspensky closes with.

 

[kenlee]

The question arises here: why should love give comprehension? That love leads to sanctity is clear. Love as the apostle Paul understands it (Chapter 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians) is the highest of all emotions, the synthesis, the merging together of all higher emotions. There can be no doubt that it leads to sanctity. Sanctity is the state of the spirit freed from the duality of man with its eternal disharmony of soul and body. In the language of the apostle Paul sanctity means even a little less than in our present language. He called all members of his church saints. In his language being a saint meant being righteous, moral, religious. We say that this is only the way to sanctity. Sanctity is something different - something attained. But no matter whether we take it in his language or ours, sanctity is a superhuman quality. In the sphere of morality it corresponds to genius in the sphere of intellect. Love is the way to sanctity. But the apostle Paul connects sanctity with KNOWLEDGE. The saints comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and he says that all - through love - can comprehend this with them. But what are they to comprehend? COMPREHEND SPACE. Because 'breadth and length and depth and height', translated into our language of shorter definitions, means space.

Regarding this quote above from Ouspensky's Tertium Organum he might have meant that of the dimensions that we perceive external to ourselves there is the 'breadth and length and height' which represents the three dimensions of space. Then there is also the "depth" which in this context might relate is our inner conception of this external perception which is an inner cognition of these three dimensions that goes beyond just a mathematical abstraction of the three directions into the realm of consciousness where there is deep understanding, inner light and KNOWING. Space then goes from just a mathematical abstraction to something that is deeply felt with higher emotion. So the fourth term "depth" might relate to what Ouspensky talked about in the book which is "cosmic consciousness" which I guess you can say is "knowing God" where love, light (consciousness) and knowledge converge to an apex point. All three in one.

The outer dimensions of space might correspond to the 'breadth and length and height' which outwardly reflect the inner dimension of space (depth) that we see with the inner eye which is eternity. In this context (from the quote above) it might be that outer space (that we perceive as a two dimensional image on the retina) is but a reflection (or derivative?) of eternity/inner space. So in a sense I guess one can say that looking into outer space is, in a sense, looking into eternity which it is a reflection of. FWIW.

 

[Laura]

What I find so fascinating about all of this is the thread of continuity from Paul down to the Cs... Little did we know that the Cs were teaching us what Paul had learned, though for us it was a rather protracted and painful process.

 

[genero81]

What I find so fascinating about all of this is the thread of continuity from Paul down to the Cs... Little did we know that the Cs were teaching us what Paul had learned, though for us it was a rather protracted and painful process.

I'm almost two thirds the way through. Possibly the most enlightening book I've ever read! Paul said that "now we see through a glass darkly." It's obvious he intended to clarify that 'glass' considerably. But with the translation issues and, on top of that, the deliberate tampering with his writings, what he was teaching was so badly mauled it was almost unrecognizable. Ashworth has done us a great service!

If it's any consolation, the protracted and difficult road has solidified the understanding. We are on surer footing. OSIT

 

[Adobe]

What I find so fascinating about all of this is the thread of continuity from Paul down to the Cs...

Me too on that point. I was thinking yesterday that this is more of a confirmation than anything else. Kind of a hit for the C’s, and Gurdjieff, W.S.M, ourselves, and others.

Just think if we were taught this in Sunday School when we were young! Then again, no free lunches and all, so I guess it has to be that we work for it.

Thank you

 

[Mike]

What I find so fascinating about all of this is the thread of continuity from Paul down to the Cs... Little did we know that the Cs were teaching us what Paul had learned, though for us it was a rather protracted and painful process.

I had been thinking about this same point the other night while starting the book and following this thread. It is really interesting that Paul seems like he was talking about Christ as an unspoken representation of Caesar, the Wave and 4D back then and then through your experimentation, research, etc, Laura, you come to similar topics and rediscover what looks to be Paul's real ideas and theology and also true Christianity during our time now when it seems like some kind of transformation of society and reality is in the offing and the Wave may be upon us.

It is almost like the macroscopic process of the Wave started during Caesar's time or with Caesar, since the scale for such a thing may be vast and the cosmic processes take thousands of years to start and finish. Maybe that was the first small wave or stirring of it back then. This was seen or given to Paul to understand to some extent and then taught by Paul. When I read Paul, I find him talking as if the Wave/transformation was expected back then and I was left wondering about it. Maybe it did start in part back then and what is said by Paul has been preserved kind of in plain sight in the bible, but not known fully, until it could be rediscovered in part now by the work of people such as the author of this book and then pieced together by you, Laura. I even wonder if some of the decisions by Paul, such as to teach about a universal Christ instead of directly about Caesar was done in part, on some level, on purpose to preserve it in some form to get past the censors back then and possibly even higher level of censors so it could reach the present day to be rediscovered, etc. I have a lot of other thoughts about the topic I've been thinking about and should post soon, but here is a last thought.

I remember, I think rightly, the Sott radio show on Caesar near Christmas time a few years back where Laura mentions she is going to give Christmas back after having stripped down the topic of religion, Christianity etc. I think she mentions Saturnalia as what she gave back at the end of the show.

I've been thinking that through her work over the years of stripping down the lies and trying to see the truth of things in terms of religion, Christianity and reality kind of took away the topic of religion and Christianity from me. It wasn't that I was really religious, even though I was raised Catholic, to start, but I kind of let the whole topic of the divine slip away from me, even if I had it very loosely, if at all, in my grasp before. I didn't know where I stood and was thinking I wasn't religious but did believed in something spiritual after learning from Laura, even if I couldn't explain or describe it exactly. Now it is like religion and Christianity is being given back by Laura, with the help of others here, with her recent discoveries and discussions on the forum about Caesar, Paul, ID and many other topics and threads over the last few years.

 

[luc]

I even wonder if some of the decisions by Paul, such as to teach about a universal Christ instead of directly about Caesar was done in part, on some level, on purpose to preserve it in some form to get past the censors back then and possibly even higher level of censors so it could reach the present day to be rediscovered, etc.

Yes, I had similar thoughts. Just speculating because to be honest I don't know enough about bible history and even the bible itself, but either the whole Jesus thing was put in after the fact somehow, or Paul could clearly see that his mission was doomed to failure so he found a way to at least preserve some of it. And perhaps he succeeded in a way? Christianity is still with us after all and it's not all bad.

Now it is like religion and Christianity is being given back by Laura, with the help of others here, with her recent discoveries and discussions on the forum about Caesar, Paul, ID and many other topics and threads over the last few years.

I feel the same, even though I haven't been raised with religion. There seems to be a bit of a renaissance and re-awakening of high-level religious thought, and in a way it feels like there are more "touching points" between our understanding here and the wider culture, with certain Christian core ideas being reformulated (as in Jordan Peterson's teaching and other thinkers), ID etc. Not that I expect some kind of mass-awakening or heaven on earth, because this seems impossible on principle. But the wave is clearly doing its thing, in all kind of strange ways, or so it seems to me.

 

[Voyageur]

Regarding this quote above from Ouspensky's Tertium Organum he might have meant that of the dimensions that we perceive external to ourselves there is the 'breadth and length and height' which represents the three dimensions of space. Then there is also the "depth" which in this context might relate is our inner conception of this external perception which is an inner cognition of these three dimensions that goes beyond just a mathematical abstraction of the three directions into the realm of consciousness where there is deep understanding, inner light and KNOWING. Space then goes from just a mathematical abstraction to something that is deeply felt with higher emotion. So the fourth term "depth" might relate to what Ouspensky talked about in the book which is "cosmic consciousness" which I guess you can say is "knowing God" where love, light (consciousness) and knowledge converge to an apex point. All three in one.

The outer dimensions of space might correspond to the 'breadth and length and height' which outwardly reflect the inner dimension of space (depth) that we see with the inner eye which is eternity. In this context (from the quote above) it might be that outer space (that we perceive as a two dimensional image on the retina) is but a reflection (or derivative?) of eternity/inner space. So in a sense I guess one can say that looking into outer space is, in a sense, looking into eternity which it is a reflection of. FWIW.

In those terms, yes, it seemed like the three (breadth/length/height) and the forth, the invisible Depth (the mind delving in all?) become one, as in 'comprehensions' - akin to knowing as above so below. And therein, Paul's awareness suddenly expanded exponentially like a sun burst. Ouspensky writes:

Man's progenitor was a creature . . . with simple consciousness merely. He was (as are to-day the animals) incapable of sin or of the feeling of sin, and equally incapable of shame (at least in the human sense). He had no feeling or knowledge of good and evil. He as yet knew nothing of what we call work and had never laboured. From this state he fell (or rose) into self-consciousness, his eyes were opened, he knew that he was naked, he felt shame, acquired the sense of sin (became in fact what is called a sinner) and learned to do certain things in order to encompass certain ends - that is, he learned to labour.
For weary eons this condition has lasted - the sense of sin still haunts his pathway
- by the sweat of his brow he still eats bread - he is still ashamed. Where is the deliverer, the Saviour? Who or what?
The Saviour of man is Cosmic Consciousness - in Paul's language - the Christ. The cosmic sense (in whatever mind it appears) crushes the serpent's head - destroys sin, shame, the sense of good and evil as contrasted one with the other, and will annihilate labour, though not human activity.

Ashworth states of the Fall:

“In Paul’s account of the fall, the loss of the appropriate response to God, which Paul says is to honour and give thanks to God, worship and serve God, is tied together with a coarsening of human consciousness – ‘they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened’ – and a descent into idolatry. The implication of this is important for understanding Paul. The assertion of futile human thinking is tightly linked with the loss of the ability to perceive the invisible things of God. The ‘futile thinking’ and ‘darkened mind’ is bound up with a situation in which God is not glorified and thanked and, as a further consequence, is no longer ‘known’. Once, according to Paul, the perception of the invisible things of God is lost all that can be perceived is that which is created. The fall, according to Paul, is a change in perception, a loss of the perception of the divine connected with the assertion of futile human thought and a darkening of the heart. The consequence of this is that humankind can only see clearly the physical and comes to be identified with the physical stuff of human existence. This is ‘the lie[…]”

 

[gnosisxsophia]

So the fourth term "depth" might relate to what Ouspensky talked about in the book which is "cosmic consciousness"...

There must be something in the water as I returned to TO also (noting the Ouspensky / Paul link) following Laura’s comment regarding 1 Corinthians...and yes kenlee, interestingly the 4th dimension or inner content (depth of ‘things’) is introduced in chapter 2 as a main essence - and not measurable in ‘our’ space!

 

[thorbiorn]

Then 'angel':

angel (n.)
"one of a class of spiritual beings, attendants and messengers of God," a c. 1300 fusion of Old English engel (with hard -g-) and Old French angele. Both are from Late Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, literally "messenger, envoy, one that announces," in the New Testament "divine messenger," which is possibly related to angaros "mounted courier," both from an unknown Oriental word (Watkins compares Sanskrit ajira- "swift;" Klein suggests Semitic sources). Used in Scriptural translations for Hebrew mal'akh (yehowah) "messenger (of Jehovah)," from base l-'-k "to send." An Old English word for it was aerendgast, literally "errand-spirit."

Related might be: Angiras (sage) - Wikipedia

Angira

(Sanskrit: अङ्गिरा / áṅgira, pronounced [ɐ́ŋɡiɽɐ]) is a Vedic rishi (sage) of Hinduism. He is described in the Rigveda as a teacher of divine knowledge, a mediator between men and gods, as well as stated in other hymns to be the first of Agni-devas (fire gods).[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiras_(sage)#cite_note-Williams2008p55-2In the Russian Wiki

In many Buddhist texts it is said that Gautama Buddha was a descendant of the sage Angiras.[2]

 

[thorbiorn]

In the work by Ashworth he brings up slavery, obviously of the flesh is one aspect et cetera. Here he makes an interesting point on fear:

“In this section we sense that the reappraisal that Dunn indicates Paul has made of his past is rooted in more than intellectual insight. A state that had not previously been seen as such is, from the new experience of liberation, perceived to have been a state of slavery in which the motivation was fear. It is important to keep the clarity that we have established in previous chapters that it is not, as Dunn believes, ‘the practice of the law’ that is ‘a kind of slavery’ but that there is a state of slavery, for which Dunn’s description is apt – ‘the slavery of the spiritually immature’ – which, according to Paul, is the universal state of humankind, because of which the practice of the law is necessary. With the maturity of freedom, the law is no longer required. It is worth noting that Dunn observes that the sense of liberation must have been felt by the Gentiles who came to faith as well as the Jews and this rather undermines his view that it is ‘the practice of the law’ that is, in itself, the ‘slavery”

Regarding fear, there was in the Cassiopaea and Caesar Session from 2014:

Session 12 July 2014

Session Date: July 12th 2014 Laura, Ark, and Andromeda at the board Pierre, Perceval, Tomek, PoB, Kniall, Chu, Atriedes, Data, No-man's-land, Parallel, Mr. Scott, Alana, Timotheos Q: (L) Today is July the 12th, 2014. It is Caesar's birthday, or close enough. I mean, how the hell do you really...

cassiopaea.org

Q: (Atriedes) If you could give 3 pieces of advice to the world, what would they be?

A: I was wrong to think I could change the masses by example. Humans are fickle and self-centered for the most part. Thus, if you wish to really effect changes, it can only be done by early education, and even then it is fragile and will not last. In the end you must be true to your own nature and fear nothing. If you do that you may make a difference after you are gone. That is not exactly what you are looking for, but there are no 3 pieces of advice that serve all events.

 

[thorbiorn]

Me too on that point. I was thinking yesterday that this is more of a confirmation than anything else. Kind of a hit for the C’s, and Gurdjieff, W.S.M, ourselves, and others.

True, though until about 24 hours ago I would not have guessed that the acronym "W.S.M," could stand for William Stainton Moses, mentioned in the post by @luc on the previous page and in: Stainton Moses: Spirit Teachings (“Imperator“ channelling)

 

[kenlee]

There must be something in the water as I returned to TO also (noting the Ouspensky / Paul link) following Laura’s comment regarding 1 Corinthians...and yes kenlee, interestingly the 4th dimension or inner content (depth of ‘things’) is introduced in chapter 2 as a main essence - and not measurable in ‘our’ space!

Just to elaborate slightly (which is my interpretation of Ouspensky's scheme of dimensions) on my earlier post I think Ouspensky spoke of there being a total of six dimensions allowing for six degrees of freedom for anything existing in the universe. There are three outer dimensions we call space (length, breadth, height) and three inner dimensions or 'higher spaces'. There is Time or a sequence of linear actualizations. There is Eternity which is a repository of potentialities and there is Repetition or 'spin' which mediates Eternity with Time. The outer dimensions are but a reflection of the three inner dimensions.

Then there was the seventh degree of freedom or seventh dimension which was completely non material/non metrical and would account for all that which was non material which would include anything we can imagine/dream of including (I think) the world of higher values and from which creativity originates. In this domain of the seventh dimension there were an infinity of dimensions only limited by the imagination which really means there was no limitation to it. So there are two domains of reality. One domain is metric (that is, it can be measured in some way, it has 'weight') and the other is non metric (that is, it extends into the world of true imagination and creativity which has no limits). The metric domain 'exists' but is not real in the truest sense of the word and the non metric domain is real but does not exist. Only when they come together and harmonize can we speak of what reality truly is. Reality is a harmonization of the two domains and "ascension" is an assent of the consciousness/awareness from the existing material world into the non material world of higher values.

I think Maurice Nicoll (a student of Gurdjieff) in one of his books spoke of there being two aspects of Truth. There was Truth and then there was the Good of the Truth There was the Truth (i.e., existing truth, factual truth, measurable truth, etc.) which (my interpretation) comprised the 'breath, length and height' of the real world and then there was the 'Good-of-the-Truth' or (my interpretation) the 'depth' of the real world. Both domains together working in harmony and balance makes anything existent within the six dimensional framework truly real. The metric domain gives the non metric domain it's existential existence and the non metric domain gives the metric domain it's essential reality. Both together in harmony makes for the Real World.

FWIW and the above is just my interpretation on something that I may or may not understand!

 

[Adobe]

Point taken, thanks thorbiorn.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I just read the section on sin and law, in which Ashworth reads a passage in Romans in the light of the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It was a revelation! ;) Reading it was one of those moments where things just click. Ashworth is developing Paul's understanding of "law" as a childminder, there to protect young children from wandering into danger. Children have a thirst for discovery - for the unknown - but they don't yet have the discernment that adults do. Their unlimited nature impels them to explore. But their parents, who have more experience, understand that some things are too dangerous, and place limits on their adventurousness. It's only when children grow up that they can see this bigger picture, and understand their parents' choices in placing those prohibitions on what is the child's true nature. It's such a beautiful and on-point account of free will and the fall.

We need free will in order to learn. If all knowledge were just automatically implanted in us, it wouldn't be knowledge. It wouldn't have any weight. The law is like objective morality. There are certain ways of being which "work", which are in harmony with nature, which align with God's will. And there are those ways of being which don't - which go against nature, against the common good. But what happens when you introduce beings with free will - portions of the divine will, sparks of the divine being, unlimited in nature? It is inevitable that they will choose for themselves. They will rebel against the divine order to greater or lesser degrees. They will have to LEARN for themselves.

As children, we do not experience objective morality as our own. We can only come into contact with it through our 'parents' - through culture, education, religion, and perhaps the divine whisper speaking to our developing conscience. But as we are still children, we have our own will. It is not one with God's. It wants to do its own thing, and it DOES its own thing - ALSO largely based on culture, education, and the impulses from our own bodies.

Through the prohibitions of the law - as experienced externally - we come to know all the "bad" things we can potentially do. We can get high, engage in all sorts of debauchery, exploit our fellow humans, experience all sorts of pleasures at the expense of others and our own higher potentials. So the law leads to sin. But it is through sinning that we come to understand sin as sin - to see WHY it is perhaps not the best path to take in life. It is a path of entropy. It leads to death. It cuts us off from the expansive, creative force of the cosmos.

And that is the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. To be stuck in that place where one part of us knows we are doing something wrong, but where we do not have the power to DO any different. "Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo." You could add, "blessed is he who develops his soul in a flash if divine grace!" For the rest of us, it is a long and painful process.

We must learn consciously to separate the "I" (which wills good) and the "it" (which does evil). And through daily effort to build the strength of this I, and to convince the unconscious parts of ourself to have a new wish - to make the divine will our own. The wish to be real must be stronger in us than the wish to be mechanical, and for the 'body' to have its way. But it IS possible. And great people have set the template, perhaps in quite extraordinary and 'supernatural' ways, providing the energy we need to make it a reality. There's a bit of that spirit still present in Paul's letters, among other sources. So I think we can be thankful to those "sources from above" for passing on their portion of the spirit to us - even if is quite an effort to receive it at times - so that we may share in it, and have it grow in us, together.

OK, sermon mode off! ;)