Day: June 22, 2007

An article which seems to be the basis for the Discover piece’s discussion of the Rainbow Body…

The Rainbow Body

…with some extra anecdotes. Father Tiso mentions his own vision of Christ, which is fascinating, plus some bilocation stories of Christian Saints. Post-mortem visions of Saints is pretty big in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Both believe that Saints share in the Beatific Vision – basically God’s eye-view of Creation – thus they can hear our prayers and know what’s happening here on Earth.

Crass Physicist Question: Just how do they do so much in a timely way?

Answer: There’s another dimension of Time.

Seriously, there’s a very notable Physicist who has been in the news about his “Two Time” theory, which seeks to complete various physical symmetries by adding another time dimension – call it “Orthogonal Time”. To hear all our prayer requests at once – and how many are asking a Saint to talk to God at the same time? – all a Saint needs to do is “move” a bit into Orthogonal Time.

If you have Eternity to play with, what’s a bit more Time?

A lot of Christians, especially Sectarians, think all deceased persons are really dead until they’re physically Resurrected by JC – but what did JC say about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? That to God they were Alive! There’s a lot of sophistry brought to bare on this verse by Sectarians, but really they’re twisting JC’s words to deny the “literal meaning”. Other Protestants aren’t too sure what the post-life is really like – usually vague descriptions of Heaven or the New Jerusalem fill the void.

And me? More later…

A quick posting, plus some commentary later (I promise)…

Mirror World …Titan – a frozen Earth?

Soul Search …DIY uploading into your Rainbow Body.

Science and Islam in Conflict …when everything is Allah’s Will how can science claim consistency?

Circles of Life …how eccentric can an Earth get?

Hot Times on Titan …come 6 billion AD Titan will defrost to a toasty -73 C.

A link from the Soul Search piece is just an archive card at Australia’s ABC radio…

Father Francis Tiso …reconciling Christ and Buddha.

…which really interests me. I read about the Rainbow Body in John Robinson’s 1970 book on Christology (The Human Face of God) as a possible example of how Christ’s body was transformed. I’m sure fundamentalists might not like the idea of Buddhists resurrecting, but as Robinson (and many others) have pointed out Jesus was too big an event to be limited to just Christians. He made it possible for all people to resurrect into the New Life by defeating Death for all of us.

Early Buddhism agreed with Christianity that we’re all in thrall to the Power of Death – what Christians call ‘Satan’ and Buddha called ‘Mara’ – and outlined the way of approaching a true understanding of the escape route. I think the ‘Clear Light’ that Tibetan Buddhism aims for, and looks to for answers, is the same Light that the Gospel of John talks about which shines on all of us – and we reject it because of the consciousness of our sin that it causes. As The Epistle of James tells us, God shines his light on all with no partiality, but we’re led astray by our own desires. In the Tibetan Bardo Thodol the Light can only be entered by those prepared for it, freed from earthbound desires.

But what is freedom from desire all about? The Greeks called it Apatheia – freedom from passions – and it was considered it an attribute of the gods. I think it’s kind of hard to put into words, but it doesn’t mean we “feel nothing”. Instead we rule our feelings and aren’t ruled by them – and we rule them by recognising their causes, their progression and their dissipation. Mindfulness. In Christian terms, the Fruit of the Spirit – Love. More on that later.