Now we really have to enter into more esoteric waters for this. Necessarily this would sound as floating in the air for most but it's still completely logical if we think about it without prejudice.Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon May 10, 2021 8:45 pm Also, what makes you think that he was represented exactly and only by the Christ and not by Krishna (per Bhagavad Gita) or Vajradhāra Buddha or any other traditional Deities, and that only Christianity presents the "true" perspective on the Divine? It was very eye-opening for me to learn from NDE accounts how different the Being of Light turned out to be compared to what I learned before from Christianity.
The first thing is that when we see a human form with our senses we should not at all imagine that we have some atomic entity before us. As I mentioned on several occasions, what man is in the current stage is really the integrative memory process that gives us the I-ness of our experience. Our bodily sheaths are much more something that we live in symbiosis with. Things are even more complicated when we're dealing with higher beings which express through human bodies.
The bodily sheaths of Krishna were inspired (used as a tool) by the Sun-being and even higher Divine forces. The focus of investigation should be what exactly was different in the case of Krishna and in the case of Christ. When we read Bhagavad Gita with deep feelings we can't help but notice: "When Krishna speaks we have the Divine speaking. There's nothing human in Krishna." The Divine was speaking through the bodily sheaths of Krishna in the most magnificent way. If we read deeply we can't help but tremble before the unfathomable splendor of the Being that speaks to us. What happens from that Being's perspective when it was the time for Krishna's physical sheath to be laid aside? Nothing really. The Divine being was completely unaffected by this, that body was something completely external to it. The Divinity was inspiring the bodily complex from the heights of the spiritual world. When the body was gone, it was simply that the tool for this inspiration was gone. This affected in no way the Divine. And this is only to be expected when we deal with a supreme God expressing itself through a bodily avatar.
Bhagavad Gita portrays in a magnificent way the culmination of an epoch of evolution. The basic mood can be expressed as something like: "The soul is sinking deeper and deeper towards the sensory dream-pictures. Unless this is counteracted, the soul runs the real danger to be dissipated in the fragments. The impulse of Krishna gives the soul force that counterbalances this descent. Yes, the soul is sinking deeper and deeper into decoherence but it must keep the image of the Divinity within itself if it is to survive and keep its wholeness."
All this is very different when we reach the Christ event. Here we have the Sun-being which penetrates the bodily sheaths all the way to the physical. The time had come when the Divine not only had to counterbalance the descent but it had to infuse its nature into the physical world in order that it can be redeemed. When we deal with the Christ we see a Sun-Spirit that dwelt within the bodily sheaths provided by Jesus for three years - from the baptism at Jordan to the crucifixion. At that time the Christ being experienced something unique, which he didn't know before that. He was sucked in by the bodily sheaths, in effect he experienced the human condition. This is the most important difference compared to the way the Divine expressed in previous times. The Divine could now experience pain, hunger, temptation, weakness. And most importantly - the Divine was to experience death. What does it mean to experience death? It means that for the time of incarnation we experience our I-ness in tight relation to the reflecting apparatus of the body. The reason death is such an obstacle for man is that he doesn't know himself apart from this inner-bodily reflection. The Divine had to experience momentarily this state. This didn't cause him to forget his Cosmic nature but nevertheless he was thrust down into the fragments, into the world of concrete forms. The Divine is now dependent on these forms for its self-consciousness. If the forms dissipate, the Divine consciousness would also dissipate. Then the Divine turns around the whole process and infuses the physical world with the Divine nature - the body must become the temple of the Divine in the truest sense. The forces have been planted into the physical body which when developed will give the ability of the Spirit to speak forth the forms.
If we understand clearly we can see that we're dealing with something completely different here. In the impulse of Krishna we have the basic mood: "The sensory world is Maya. Don't forget me - the Divine nature - which is the true reality". In the Christ impulse we have the Divinity penetrating the world of Maya and beginning the process of its spiritualization and redemption from within. What does this mean? That we can no longer look upon the picture of Maya as something that we must simply not fall for, but we need to understand how the Spirit works behind the appearances. To spiritualize matter, in the broadest sense means to find the Cosmic forces that work into and shape the forms. This work begins from our own body. This is the archetypal deed of Christ. If this was not performed the gap between the Maya picture and the yearning of the soul towards the Divine, would go further and further apart. The souls drawn by the senses would be complete engulfed by the fragments. The souls that yearn for the Divine would be completely alienated from all Earthly happenings, they would simply wait patiently, interfering as little as possible with the world, until their time for departure comes. Through the Christ event the Sun-Spirit permeates and fertilizes the Earth body. This may sound absurd from materialistic perspective but is nevertheless a fact of spiritual perception - the physical matter of Earth received a new quality after the event of Golgotha. The force that counterbalances the entropic dissolution now exists within the very substance of the Earth. As it were, now every particle is a fertilized egg from which the Divinity has the potential to grow.
These are very deep topics and it's perfectly normal if very little of the above is immediately understood. The important thing is to realize that everything is moving, evolving, unfolding. The Divinity that spoke through Krishna is not exactly the same as the one that went through the gate of Golgotha, nor it is exactly the same as the Divinity that speaks today within our souls. The Sun-Spirit is itself going through metamorphic development. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;" Nothing stays static or ever repeats in the exactly same form. This is precisely what the Christ impulse should lead us to experience. Through the event of Golgotha a Cosmic process was triggered that begins to redeem the world of Maya. Not simply to cast it away as useless dream picture, but to infuse if with the forces of the Word. In other words, we only know the world of Maya when we attain to the perspectives from which that world is spoken forth. This is what it means to spiritualize matter - to experience how the Spirit works into the forms and take on from there our own creative work. This work begins from our own substance. Physical matter is the last thing we'll master. We begin from the more immediate and malleable towards the more resisting and opaque. We begin through our thinking substance which must first and foremost transform the astral substance - our desires and passions - and make it a docile instrument of the Spirit.
As far as the Bodhisattvas, these are the most advanced members of the human evolution. Every time a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha an important impulse is added to human development. The important thing is that in the Buddha impulses humanity works as if from below upwards. Something is transformed within human nature in order to accommodate the Divine. As I've said several times, the deed of Gautama Buddha hasn't even reached its real significance yet. The perfection of perceiving, thinking, feeling, willing - which is at the heart of this impulse - is yet to be unfolded in its true grandeur. Similarly, in the future Bodhisattva Maitreya, through his attainment of Buddhahood, will unfold the impulse of Love in ways unfathomable today. Love is to become a real creative force.
All of this happens in the context of the unfoldment of the Christ impulse - the Spiritualization of reality through Love. This is the master blueprint. What happened through the event of Golgotha is only the seed for something that will unfold in all future time "and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.". Just as our ordinary life can be very diverse, yet it all starts with the birth event, within the context of which everything unfolds, so the birth of the Spirit within the physical realm marks a starting point within the context of which the Cosmic unfoldment will proceed. There'll be many more impulses that will concretize the details of this process but nevertheless everything is within the same context - that the Divine should grow more and more from the seed that physical man is. This is a twofold process. Physical man is the soil that is being refined below but the true Man comes from above and transfigures it. The accommodation of this higher Man is something that we can initiate only in complete freedom, out of Love.
As long as we understand things in their evolutionary context everything fits into place. The whole Cosmic development is an organic process, rhythmically unfolding.