Label: image of god

A healthy faith?

A healthy faith?

Subtle topic, which maybe you shouldn't even bother with. A mystery you should leave alone? It so easily ends up in an emotional position war between for or against, too.

Yet! I wanted to try to gather my thoughts around the concept-phenomenon of God. The topic has also come up in a couple of posts recently. Personal, impersonal? Neither or both? A personal, living entity that you can have a relationship with? Or "Universe", raised above good and bad? A metaphysical operating system, a rounding mark out in the Cosmos, a connecting station for one's "karma" most? (In it interview study I did a few years ago, with people who had an alternative, neo-spiritual outlook on life - like I myself had for so long - it was this area which left me most puzzled, even sad.) I myself am mostly an agnostic. But a warm one. As I stated before. I am interested in functioning God relationships. Regardless of this most are animations of existence that people make themselves. Or if it's real.

And in practice, psychologically, maybe it doesn't matter so much?

(Image: “Cosmic Tailor”, by Rodrick Howard)

Does God exist?

Does God exist?

I keep it open that god is in fact just an "animation" we humans make of existence. There are many different types of this animation. With "the mature", if we are now to use the valued designation?, it is of a different kind, than with the majority. Then with "the last electric kick", call it Enlightenment, Cosmic Consciousness, etc., as some have testified about, does this "animation" just become even more solid, integrated in the person?

God is at earlier stages a need for security, comfort, to have a confidant, "someone on one's side". At higher levels, a kind of tenderness for existence, to be able to give "someone" the credit, someone to relate to, a kind of pretend friend. (But in depth as the "returning" son, not as those who stayed at home, to borrow an image from the Bible.)

Much like how you animate and name a boat, car, summer house you love... Or a country, think of the national anthem (is like many such anthems, I guess), you see your country as a living, delimited whole... "You shut up, you glorious…” how it goes now, o other such Swedish songs that sound like you are singing to a loved one… The image of God at higher levels is like “a universal patriotism”, which includes everything?

But then, that the difference is not so great, if it were objectively the case that existence is animated by a single overarching being, or not... The mature's love for existence is of such a complete kind that he/she already relates to existence as if it were animated.

I can imagine that for the advanced (speculation! : ) ) then individual survival and the world's good and bad have somehow merged. A perspective where whether you yourself will live on does not mean much. You are so immersed in the world that you don't care. Emotionally. Then if you have a certain self-experience or strong intuitions that you as an individual will live on, that is still secondary.

And, well, I can't say boo or boo, definitively, about the true nature of God. I don't have any personal experience of the "enlightenment" type. I can only trace it all as far as my mind goes. And I then extrapolate how the more mature - but still "unenlightened", i.e. who do not claim to have anything qualitative other than the common man to start from - might experience existence.

But, I keep it open that it is actually the individual himself who "warms up" the world. That the experience of existence as divinely benevolent and loving is something that comes from the individual himself, is mostly a reflection of a loving, altruistic, humble mind, so to speak...

(The above are some clips from a discussion about the nature of God.)

Is there god in the new spirituality?

Is there god in the new spirituality?

“In many esotericists one can sense an obvious difficulty in integrating God into their philosophical system, since there is practically no place for God in the universe of occultism. This applies to a great extent to theosophy and its offshoot anthroposophy and Martinus' cosmology."

Arlebrand, 1992

This is a rehash of an old discussion. About "God" in old and new spirituality. Much has been said, twisted and turned, already before. But since I think the topic touches on the most important thing, so here we go again... I'm cutting a bit from the old post, what I wrote there:

"A few years ago, I conducted an interview study on new spirituality from a psychological perspective. Many answers & reasoning were expected, I was familiar with the area before. Nor were the answers I received when my informants told me about their view of 'god' completely surprising.
But overall, that part of the study made a particularly deep, indeed disturbing, oh sad, impression on me. It became almost too clear how the 'new-spiritual god' can hardly fulfill the psychological function that the standard, for example, Christian deity could."

“[It was] a very strange god that I had described to me... A god that is both personal and impersonal. Both and and neither or. Neither evil nor good, but somehow still good, but hardly 'parental good'... You create your own destiny, the divine is more like a kind of rounding mark out in the cosmos for your own karma, it doesn't add up. You have your own misery prepared for, you have to go through that to learn. God more like a principle of justice, a kind of program according to which the universe operates. The absence of warmth and personal care was palpable.

That being said, I am not claiming that there is actually a god with one or the other set of attributes, or personality. But psychologically emotionally - for many of the followers of new age/new spirituality/western esotericism, etc - you still have to say the new spiritual god is a bargain."

New age and "God"

New age and "God"

The respondents show a great interest in theological questions. Some of the Church's views, in particular the notion that Christ's death on the cross could free the living from guilt, are rejected with arguments of reason. The church's image of God, as it is perceived, is also being questioned with apparently good and well-thought-out arguments. While God is a living mystery to the Christian, he does not seem to be so to the respondents. He is by all accounts difficult to get a hold of (personal or impersonal), but the respondents have clear answers to questions about God's attributes in general, his extent, his role in the world and relationship to the individual, as administrator of our karma, etc. So in some sense the new spirituality has dethroned even God. With psychoanalytic terminology, could it be said that the followers managed to see through God, "penetrated" and triumphed over him, too?
At the same time, the image of God that emerges is rather strange. He is not powerful or stern, like the god of the Old Testament, but rather aloof, indifferent, or with an almost instrumental relationship to us. It is not exactly the image of a "good parent" that comes to the fore, seen through the eyes of attachment theory. He lets people suffer, but he does this out of love, explains one of the respondents. For us to become perfect. At the same time, it is clear from the interview responses that there are many people in the world who will have to suffer greatly in the future. It is close at hand to ask whether the image of God and the attitude towards the outside world do not interact in some way, and whether the relationship with God has not been characterized by "identification with aggressors".
The new-spiritual god did not create humans, since we have existed for all eternity. Therefore, there is also no underlying debt or reason to feel or show him any gratitude. Nor has this god let his son die on a cross to lighten our burdens. Nor is there any debt of gratitude there. This god does not help or assist us in any active way. Man is thus independent, both in relation to the earthly parents and to God. However, Arlebrand (1992) believes that there is a missing object behind the neo-spiritual search. This search has degenerated into “spiritual materialism and consumerism. Without contact with God, man is forced to fall back on the worship of himself and his personal needs... Man is ultimately not looking for 'something', but 'someone'" (p. 224f).
Granqvist et al. (2009) believe in their work based on attachment theory to have been able to demonstrate that people with a neo-spiritual orientation have a disorganized/insecure attachment to a greater degree. What of this can be explained by the influence of the doctrine itself, and what has to do with childhood experiences or biology? In relation to ordinary religion, some individuals can repair a flawed attachment, Farias and Granqvist (2007) believe, something called "earned security", while this could not be demonstrated in the research on the newly spiritual.

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