Djana refers to:
"'The Old Way to the One...'" (p. 303)
Before that, Ydwyr had told Djana that the Old Way was not for either of them to tread because they must not abandon reason. Any worthwhile "old way" must not abandon but transcend reason:
"I have found the small path known of old that stretches far away. By it the sages who know the Spirit arise to the regions of heaven and thence beyond to liberation.
"It is adorned with white and blue, yellow and green and red. This is the path of the seers of Brahman, of those whose actions are pure and who have inner fire and light."
-Juan Mascaro (trans.), The Supreme Teaching IN Mascaro (trans.), The Upanishads (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1984), pp. 133-143 AT pp. 140-141.
Practice and experience, not mere ancientness, bestow authority. The simplest way to oneness is just physical death. Then our body returns to the oneness of the material environment from which it had been differentiated! I think that "heaven" and "liberation" refer to experiences that the Upanishadic rishis had had, not to a hereafter, although of course it was widely believed on apparently good evidence that consciousness was not a property of organisms with central nervous systems but an ontologically distinct immaterial substance.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the true Old Way to the One is Catholic Christianity.
Ad astra! Sean
Dogmatism.
I cannot say for sure what the true way is but I certainly do not accept what I was told at school.
Kaor, Paul!
No, not dogmatism. Divine revelation. Where we differ is your denial of the supernatural, which I affirm.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the proposition that a number of doctrines have been been divinely revealed is precisely a Catholic "dogma"!
And affirming "the supernatural" is compatible with many beliefs other than Catholicism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course. But I don't believe those non-Christians who also believe the supernatural is real are right.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
None of us believes the other is right! That's why we disagree.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course. And I believe the evidence, such as the miracles recorded at Lourdes, supports Christianity.
Ad astra! Sean
Whereas I think that monotheism is philosophically untenable, that the evidence is that consciousness is a property of organisms, that the accounts of the Resurrection can be accounted for without reference to a literal Resurrection, that blood sacrifice is barbaric, that God the Father (if He exists) cannot possibly have wanted his incarnated Son to die in agony, that such a death cannot possibly have been the means of salvation, that Paul expected the Second Coming while he and other converts were still alive, that Christ was supposed to fulfil the Abrahamic tradition, not to start a new tradition and so on.
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