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Dear Drew,
I would like to give you one other thing to meditate on. Socrates would have called you, above all the others at Liverpool, a true philosopher. Socrates also had to speak in symbols and metaphors which only the open heart could understand. He too was surrounded by materialistic pagans. When he said the word philosophy, he said it with respect and love; for to him it means ‘Love of Wisdom.’Wisdom is not some humanistic concept; Wisdom is none other than Jesus. When you trace Jesus (The Word, The Truth and The Wisdom of God) back through history and back through the bible you find Him consistently through the same characteristic: “I am who I am” or “I am who I prove myself to be.” He proves Himself time and time again to be the Wisdom of God. Solomon’s book of Wisdom is nothing other than the words of Jesus: the Wisdom of God.
Socrates and the other Ionian Greeks were aware of the Old Testament writings and they proved themselves to be Ionian through their love of Wisdom. They were the first Christians, and this is why Paul had such success on his journeys through Greece, when he came across pockets of Ionians.
As you said before, words are inadequate to explain the soul and its motivations. This is why it takes a combination of the soul and the mind to understand the true meaning behind the words of Socrates and Jesus. You have this vital combination. You have met the Ionian’s requirement for the study of philosophy through your many years of medical studies and training. You have great appreciation for God’s creation and respect for it, but also a trained logic. You are ready to make the next step, but I get the feeling that your mind is saying no, and your soul is saying yes. This is why I just ask you to take some time and to meditate (listen to your soul) about your next steps. As I said in my email, we did not meet out of chance.
Your friend Shawn
Ps. Do you know where the symbol of medicine came from? It was originally a symbol great caring that is hard for me to put into words, but you live it every day. The worm wrapped around two sticks symbolized unbelievable patience required by the caring professional to slowly extract the parasite worm from the patient without letting it break during the process. This process took days and required huge sacrifice on the part of the doctor. Sometime in the past the worm transformed into a snake; but I can imagine that you want to turn it back into the worm?
Dear Gabriela,
People often get confused when they look at certain figures, like Paul, and make generalized conclusions. Paul was personally visited by Jesus and taught by Him in the desert for three years. Paul was personally given a very important job to do for mankind. Paul trying to spread the Good News to as many as he could, and I can imagine that he might have become a little too driven.The church and the monks have patterned their behavior after Paul, and used his stance towards marriage as the rule, instead of the exceptional case that it was. Being a good husband/wife/ and father/mother is the most important task that the majority of mankind has to do. Very few have risen to the level of a Paul, Socrates, or Origen; who can truly say that their mission in life is not just for a small group of people (like their family members), but for everyone in the world. Had they had their soul-mates at their side, I am sure that their works would not have been hurt at all.
Do not give up hope on love. It still has much to teach us and can widen our perspective so much!
Love ShawnAndrew, I just wanted to clarify. Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly that mankind will never know the true meaning of life. I do not say this out of fatalist perspective, but rather out of a logical one. If the Earth is the proving grounds that Origen says it is, then it would not be a test of faith if we all knew God’s intentions. Origen, and the other Ionian Greeks, required knowledge of the physical sciences before attempting to delve into philosophy. (I can assure you that if you use this measuring stick, you will find who was a real philosopher ‘love of wisdom’ and who was just a ‘sophisticate’.)
My knowledge of the physical sciences gives me assurance that great wisdom and order are behind its creation. I do not, in my wildest dreams, imagine that I will ever know that wisdom in any one lifetime. But it serves as a great comfort to know that it exists. It gives me great pleasure to search for it in all I do; to look for the root causes of pain, suffering and chaos. Until we recognize that an adversary of Jesus exists, we cannot properly understand the widespread discord that exists; and most importantly, we cannot start to do something against it.
Andrew, thank you for bring us back down to Earth. I am sure this will not be the last time!
Yes, you are most assuredly right, intellect alone can get us nowhere, and this is the failure of many of the philosophers. Origen taught, and we know from the bible that there piece of God inside everyone of us. I have the tendency to call it the heart, as in the proverbial heart; but I mean the soul. If a person is able to connect their intellect with the wishes of the heart (soul), then you end with up with Origen’s ‘sweet reasonableness’. This is what you like so much about Socrates is it not? How many people today possess such a balance of wisdom and love? Yes, it is rare!
As I said, I do not expect to resurrect any historical figure, but when you look at the history of Christianity it was after the time of Origen that it started to become less Christ-like. So the obvious place to pick up the search for the Christianity that Christ intended is with Origen.
Since you brought up the Garden of Eden from Genesis, I would like to digress somewhat and attempt to demonstrate Origen’s Allegorical method on this passage. As I said, Origen paid close attention to detail. We know that this story takes place in Paradise, and if this is the same Paradise that Jesus referred to on the cross, then it is a spiritual place and not a physical one. If that is the case, then how could Adam or Eve die? Origen defines this ‘die’ as when an immortal soul falls away from God. Now, surely it is not an orange or mango that would make them fall away from God. In the description of the garden, we find also the ‘tree of life’, which we recognize as symbolic for Jesus. So who has been tempting mankind from the time of Adam and Eve? ‘The tree of the knowledge of good and evil’, Baal, Amon, and Poseidon are just a few of Lucifer’s (Death’s) many names.
Now why did I have to go and bring him into it? Origen did not see Earth as place where perfection could ever be achieved, because of the constant temptation that the material world possesses. But rather, Origen saw the Earth as a place where each of us, through difficult tests, can slowly become reconciled with God. This does not happen in one lifetime, one generation or even two millennia; but rather unintelligibly slow.
I think that one great mistake we make is not recognizing the enormously negative effect that the Roman Empire has had on modern thinkers and scientists. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Erwin Schroedinger formulates this problem well in this book “Nature and the Greeks”:
“Dropping the metaphor, it is my opinion that the philosophy of the ancient Greeks attracts us at this moment, because never before or since, anywhere in the world, has anything like their highly advanced and articulated system of knowledge and speculation been established without the fateful division which has hampered us for centuries and has become unendurable in our days. … To put it dramatically: one can imagine a scholar of the young School of Athens paying a holiday visit to Abdera (with due caution to keep it secret from his Master), and on being received by the wise, far-travelled and world-famous old gentleman Democritus, asking him questions on the atoms, on the shape of the earth, on moral conduct, God, and the immortality of the soul-without being repudiated on any of these points. Can you easily imagine such a motley conversation between a student and his teacher in our days?”
Origen for me is not someone to place on a pedestal, but rather a rallying point. If we could recover all that he taught, then perhaps we could achieve the same level of harmony between science, Christianity and philosophy that he was able to demonstrate at his time. We have heard from Origen’s contemporaries what a truly great man he was; living the life that he was teaching and winning people to Christianity through his ‘sweet reasonableness’. When was the last time that any religion was able to do this? I do not say that through this we will be able to “know God” and the meaning of our life, but at least we could talk openly about the subjects.
We should take Orgen’s example and look to reconcile the differences between the religions of today, and not to magnify their differences. If we were all created by the same God, and as Origen taught, are all on the path of restoration to God, then we have no reason to encourage fanatical views or cut off any part of society. As children of the same God it is logical that we must “love our neighbors as ourselves” regardless of their current location on their own path of restoration.
We should not single out any one religion as being bad, but acknowledge the mechanism through which they became thus. Consistently through history materialistic men have misused spiritual or philosophical teaching to gain power. Blinded by greed and lust for power they have interpreted/re-written these teachings to be in line with their material goals. Origen shows how the Jewish scribes omitted sections of the Torah in which the Prophets admonished their deeds. The Christian church needed to condemn many of Origen’s core teachings in order to gain its enormous earthly power. By the time that Mohamed came as a Prophet, Origen’s reincarnation teachings were already lost and so they did not find their way into the new Muslim religion.
Dear Gabriela,
I just wanted to explain my comment about Suzanne. I told you that something happened to me when I was young. I am not sure what it was, but it was not good. It turned me from my path at an early age. My childhood was not the nicest and I grew up in a vulgar environment. All of my relationships with women were very physical and had nothing to do with friendship. After my grandmother died, my life changed for the better. When I met Suzanne, I did not want to repeat my mistakes of the past and was starting to relearn my reason for being here.I was able to start a relationship with Suzanne that was based on friendship alone. I am happy to have such a relationship.
I will have to look closer into the teachings of Origenes, but he lived a life of very modestly. It is said that he did not have any interest in women in a sexual sense. Socrates did not either. They loved women (and men) for their minds and for who they are; the spirit that fills them.
Suzanne was the first woman that I was able to see as my equal and then my superior. She has provided balance in my life and I am very grateful of what she is able to do for me.
I hope I make some of sense for you. It is hard to explain, but from where I cam from in the earlier part of my life, I was happy to be able to finally have a normal, equal relationship with a woman.
Love Shawn
Dear Andrew,
There are many pearls in what you say. I hope this dialog will help you to bring them to those that seek them!My hidden agenda in this whole thing is help all types of people to understand that “love thy neighbor as thyself” is the only way to live life. You know that with your heart and Edward knows that with his mind. Alone the two of you have limited impact, but together you will help to reach many! In the end it really does not matter if the mind knows it or the heart does, only that it becomes imbedded in our society.
God’s strength to you Andrew!
Dear Gabriela,
I have this same connection with two other people in this world, and none of them are my wife. One is my daughter, and I feel so happy every day to know that we are soul-mates. The other is Teresa, who makes me cry for the entire time that I am with her. She sees right into my soul and I am completely naked in front of her. She keeps telling that we are only human and that we will never live up to the expectations of the Angels. They do not know how hard it is to be a human, but Jesus knows how hard it is. That is why we can pray to Him. He has been here and He knows how hard it is.
God has given us a great present; that we are able to KNOW each other is fantastic!
Love ShawnDear Gabriela,
Yes, I too cried for most of the time that I was in church today. I guess I was both happy that Gary, the priest, used my topic of prayer in his sermon. But also it was because I was sad that I am not the best tool for the spiritual world. I do not always listen to them and I let my will get in the way of His Will.We have started out dialog this weekend and I am happy with the people involved; we are all very different! This helps the reader to be able see many sides, but to choose his own path. I hope that it will workout the way that He wants it to.
Have a wonderful Sunday.
Love ShawnPs. Thank you for sharing your relationship. Suzanne was the only women that I knew with whom I did not have a physical sexual relationship with. From the beginning we were friends, and we still are. Most people do not understand how I can get along with her gone for 2 months, but you can understand. I am connected with my wife at the heart, and that is something rare.
Dear Gabriela,
I have taken the liberty of placing our dialog on my forum website at http://forum.origenes2000.orgOnly you and I have access to it now, but at some point in the future maybe someone might want to read what we are talking about. I will not let anyone look at our conversation and would ask your permission if we found someone who was also ready to hear our words.
You can post your replies to my comments right on the website and then I will get an email that you have added to the dialog. I hope this is okay with you, I sure helps me to be able to look back over what we have said in the past. Please have a look and let me know.
Love ShawnDear Gabriela,
It is an honor me to be able explain to you my belief. It is a belief held by very few people in the world and therefore often comes across as foreign. But when we dig down behind the meanings of Socrates, Jesus and Origenes we find the pearls that I am giving to you. People with a highly materialistic orientation to life cannot understand or appreciate these pearls. Jesus warned us not to through to through the pearls to the swine, not just because they cannot understand it, but because they can use pieces of the Truth to support their lies. I guess what I am trying to say is that we must be reserved enough to only give the pearls to those who are looking for them with a pure heart.The physical world is just a shadow of the Spiritual World, but there is much confusion about the words that people have used to explain it and its inhabitants. The second commandment says: “Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth”
This commandment is the second one and the most descriptive of the ten. It is important to actually understand what it is saying. It breaks the Spiritual World into three categories: 1) The Heaven above, 2) the earth below and 3) the waters beneath the earth. This is where Origenes’ allegorical method was so important; to actually understand what these three places are. He placed great emphasis on the symbolic nature of names, numbers places and directions. I will attempt to put into words what is meant by these three places.
1) The Heaven above. This is where all the souls live who are at one with God. I call these beings of light Angels. We come across other words in the Bible such as Seraphim and Cherubim, but we realize that our imagination and our vocabulary are not big enough to describe all the Spiritual Beings living at one with God. When I say Angel, I mean such a being, with his/her unique personality and spiritual body.
2) the earth below. I take this to mean the spiritual place between Heaven and Hell. This is the spiritual place that is close to earth and from which we are born into this world. It is where all the souls reside who are on their path of restoration. Angels work here teaching and training the fallen souls; preparing them for a new life and helping them to learn from the past one.
3) the waters beneath the earth. We know Poseidon (Neptune) as the king of the bitter sea; referring to Lucifer, the king these waters below the earth: Hell. This is where Jesus went after He died to conquer Lucifer and to free all of us from Lucifer’s grasp who were being held against our will.
Greek mythology is rich with stories about the gods. But one has to read closely in order to see from which of these three places each god comes from. So in reading Homer or Plato you can question yourself: “Is the author talking about a human, a fallen soul in Hell, a fallen soul on its way back to Heaven, or an Angel of God?”
I hope that help you to see the problems of discussing the Spiritual World, and it is interesting to imagine why God does not want us to make any image of anything in any of these three paces.
As far as a bibliography on Origenes goes, I can give you a good link to many books. http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/origen.html What I enjoy the most are his commentaries on John. You must remember that most of his remaining books were ‘adjusted’ to meet with the dogma of the church of the 5th and 6th century, so anything that is closest to his hand is the best. The fragments of books 11 through 32 of his commentary on John a good example of his thought process. You may also consider reading Henri Crouzel’s book on Origenes. It was originally written in French, I have the English translation. He is seen as pro Origenes, but not as much as me. Of course the best book on Origenes is from Robert Strauli, but
unfortunately this is only in German at the moment.I wish you God’s strength on your path!
Love ShawnDear Andrew,
I hope you are not losing interest all ready? Edward just got on board yesterday after his summer vacation and I hope to Ewen up soon, although he has had his hands full for the past few weeks. So please do not give up on me yet, I certainly have not given up on you.This weekend I will be putting out some ground rules and starting a few topics to discuss. Please stay with us!
Best regards, ShawnDear Andrew,
The reason that I chose the dialog format is because my monolog can lose people pretty quickly. The dialog requires each speaker to be short and pregnant, and then to consider what the other has said. We should attempt to stay along a path until the everyone is happy about what was said on that subject, and agrees to go on to another. I have the tendency to raise hundreds of provocative points in a monolog, but do not have anyone to question them and probe deeper. I myself do not know when I have said enough, but together we can decide.I hope that the others have as much to offer as you do.
Best regards, ShawnDear Gabriela,
Yes, I do remember. It is a battle for me everyday to concentrate on the present, but it is the most important time. When our life is over, we do not want to regret having wasted it on dreaming!Origenes taught that we are fallen angels who have been given a path of restoration back to our original divinity. This path is a gradual one in which our souls start the journey at the appropriate level within creation. Those who had accumulated so much guilt in helping to bring about the Fall have started their restoration in the mineral level, if they have chosen to return to Jesus yet.
Yes this restoration is such a slow process that people are not willing to accept that fact that their soul spent millions of years banned inside a stone before they were able to learn a little bit about patience. Or that there are enough fallen souls to inhabit every insect, every blade of grass, every animal and every human on earth and still leave room for countless more who have not even started their path of restoration. But “some things are true whether you believe in them or not.”
With the Christianity that Origenes taught, there was no way for slavery to be successful. There was no way for men to oppress women. There was no way for the ‘holy roman empire’ to survive! These things are only possible when people value their lives so much, so that they will do anything to stay alive, even if it means living a life that ignores all teachings of Jesus and the Prophets. It is greed and power that destroyed the Christian belief in reincarnation.
This is all in the footnotes of my paper, but I am attaching another paper that I wrote a while ago on reincarnation. It gives some biblical references to reincarnation and should help to understand the infinite Love of God better. I have roughly estimated when the Fall occurred and came up with something like 305 billion years ago, with another 13 billion years left until Lucifer is restored to Heaven. “The first shall be last…” These are just rough numbers, but the give you an idea of God’s infinite patience and our long journey away from Him and now back to Him.
The first souls who were able to re-enter Heaven did so only 2000 years ago after Jesus reopened the gates of Heaven that have been closed for 305 billion years.
The ‘holy roman empire’ also brought into a materialistic sense Jesus’ forgiveness of sin. This allowed the priests to forgive all the wrongdoings done for the empire. The sin that Jesus forgave was our sin against Him 305 billion years ago, not the ones that we make everyday. These He told us must be “repaid to the last farthing.” If people knew that the sins in this life must be repaid in the life hereafter and in the next lives on earth, then they would live quite differently than they currently do.
This is why Origenes’ teachings were destroyed by the roman empire. It would have lost its power. I hope this helps you in some way. I feel that I can tell you the full extent of what I believe. I cannot do this with many people and therefore do not have many true friends either. But maybe were sent here to have many friends, but rather to be provocative enough to get people to start thinking about these topics for themselves and start breaking down the many false misconceptions that exist in this world.
Love Shawn
Thank you Andrew for an interesting introduction. You have laid open a number of issues that are close to my heart, and I would be happy to give my opinion of them. Having called this group together, I should also introduce myself. I come from an engineering background, but now have a day-job in the insurance industry. I became interested in philosophy because I came across too many broadly accepted concepts that just did not make sense. This was not just in religion, but also in areas of science being pursued by the most highly trained minds. I thought to myself, when these brilliant guys are not able to understand our world, then who truly can?
I have come to realize that very few people today or in that past have really “got it”. Aristotle was a student of Plato, but when we really look closely at his work, we find huge fundamental errors. It may have been reasonable for Aristotle, based on what he understood of the world, to really think all the material in the sky above must be lighter than stones on the ground; because if it was not then it would fall to the ground. This is one of many seemingly reasonable explanations of the planets and stars above us when one does not possess the full truth. But only one who has full access to the truth would see that there is only one reasonable answer to every question. Since the ‘normal earthling’ does not have access to all the pearls of truth, he is destined to create a reality in which he feels safe and comfortable. Only those who dare to step out of their comfort zone have the ability to learn a higher reality.
The individuals who are able to reach this higher reality are truly rare indeed. To possess the goodness required by Jesus produces a level of humility, which seems irrational to the average citizen who is fixated on his own self good. This balance of humility and reason required by Jesus’ greatest commandment has been seen in Socrates, Jesus, and Origen of Alexandria. It was Origen’s ability to explain the most difficult parts of scripture that attracted me to him. He has been referred to as possessing a high level of “sweet reasonableness”, and this is congruent with Andrew’s symbiosis of the intellect and the heart.
I have been ever grateful for Professor John Nash’s contribution to the world, because I find uses for it everywhere in helping to breakdown widely held perceptions. If we apply Nash’s gaming theory to the coexistence of the heart and the intellect within a person, we see that both the purely intellectual mind and the purely loving heart produce a far inferior person when compared to the high level of person that could be achieved through a perfect coexistence of heart and mind. The interesting thing from Nash is that you only need a little cooperation between mind and heart in order to produce a person with more intellectual potential than the pure intellect.
