The idea that everything is All One - and that meditation reveals that underlying reality is this one - and is timeless, nameless, stillness, peace... and entails a loss of self-awareness and indeed all thinking and consciousness...
This is an occult attack directed-against God, creation and all of life - against all Beings, including Jesus Christ, all Men, and all hope of resurrection to Heaven.
This, because oneness is another word for primordial chaos, the chaos of purposeless-meaninglessness before divine creation, before any-thing.
To desire oneness is therefore to desire nothing: to desire that God, creation, purpose, meaning and all that is beautiful true or virtuous... be rendered to nothing.
To seek oneness is to seek that which is as low as may be conceived; and yet to call this the highest wisdom!
Such inversion of real-values is the hallmark of Satan.
'God is love' makes me uneasy. God loves (of course!) but to say he *is* love is depersonalizing. It's popular as a message outside churches. I appreciate it's scriptural, in the sense it appears in a letter, but it seems, across the all the gospels, psalms, and letters, a suspiciously depersonalizing choice.
ReplyDeleteYou've written before that God ultimately gives us what we want. To think a loving father would seek to torture his children in eternity is horrible. But not everyone *does* choose life so what happens to the rest? The 'standard' view (where does this come from?) is that the eternal life of the believer is a place of rest, peace, and soothing. 'Heaven', in fact, in the popular image, sounds a lot like a high-end mental hospital. Hell would be be unending torment and suffering.
ReplyDeleteThe desire for oneness is the desire for non existence. This is the simple alternative to eternal life and it's obviously what a great many people, perhaps the great majority, desire: an end to thought, struggle, and existence. What's disturbing is that what is often held out as the 'reward' for followers of Christ sounds like a kind of obliteration of the self, the opposite of eternal life.
"Anonymous" - Like it says on the sidebar and comment form: you need to provide yourself with an identifier (real or pseudonym) to comment on this blog.
ReplyDelete@Crosbie - You misunderstand Love if you regard it as depersonalizing - because actual Love is the most personal thing imaginable.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this will help?
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/05/christians-are-never-commanded-to-love.html
@Crosbie "God ultimately gives us what we want. "
ReplyDeleteYou need to think about this in the everyday sense that people often/usually dislike the actual outcome of getting what they ask for - but that does not stop them from asking, indeed insisting on getting it.
"Be careful what you wish for" is a wise saying - but people aren't careful; even faced with the prospect of eternity.
I found CS Lewis's The Great Divorce helpful in understanding this:
https://barnardsvilleumc.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/ebook-lewis-c-s-the-great-divorce.pdf
I clicked on your link at synlogos because I've never heard of "oneness spirituality." I googled it and most of the links I looked at showed a new-agey picture of a figure in the lotus position with rays going out. Not a good sign. I didn't read much about it, but it reminded me of Teilhard de Chardin's omega point and his encounter with the "The Thing." I agree that this entire idea is occultic and dangerous. God meets us one on one. He doesn't tell us to become one with the universe and then "know Him, love Him, and serve Him" together with the flora and fauna of the world.
ReplyDeleteI think Oneness Spirituality is a modern vulgarisation of a real ancient insight. The nihilistic consequences you point out are only present at the very initial stage as a temptation. The desire to 'sink' either into eternal Being or momentary Non-Being is a failure to realise what constitutes true Oneness -- the transcending of Being and Non-Being, so that each individual, relative thing retains its own identity within the One, and the One itself is manifested in each individual, relative thing.
ReplyDeleteHere's one of the great classical expositions on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ranks
@MAK - I myself regard oneness as bad because wrong, rather than because dangerous - not least because there is no safe way to be a Christian. What used to be safe - i.e. devout obedience to church - is now perhaps the most likely of all paths to lead out of Christianity and into damnation. But by my understanding, creation has *never* been one, and I'm sure that God does Not want creation to move towards oneness; nor Men to move towards unconsciousness or loss of self.
ReplyDelete@IB - I am saying that oneness is untrue, because contrary to Christianity - which IS true.
If someone does Not believe in the Christian God (personal, loving, standing in relation to us as a parent), and does not believe (or does not want) the salvation offered by Jesus Christ - then that is a different matter. For such a person, various insights are possible, but they are insights leading somewhere else than salvation.