Transcendent god

Marduk s double-headed axe is an instrument of division, the most important characteristic of a transcendent god. God created the world with this instrument of division. Division is how Yahweh created the difference between light and darkness and separated the upper firmament from the lower. ° Marduk similarly divided the body of Tiamat into two parts.He created the sky and earth from the waters of these halves. 

The whole worldview of Late Antiquity, with its idea of heimarmene which dominates the gods, the world, and men, is here as if bracketed together and marked with a negative sign. It becomes a prison from which there is no escape, unless the liberating act of the transcendent God and his helpers open up a way on which men... can escape. ... 

Ayahuasca is one entheogen of particular interest to spiritual explorers. The term entheogen comes from theo, or god/spirit, and gen (create). Thus, entheogens are substances that generate experiences of transcendence and God. Peyote or psilocybin mushrooms are traditional examples of entheogens, and often taken for the purpose of having a mystical experience. 

Why is DMT a less valid path to God or transcendence than a Gregorian chant, Baha i prayer, or Melungeon meditation How can we say that a mystical experience triggered by prayer is superior in revealing truth and beauty than the experience triggered by drugs or abnormal electrical firing in the brain s temporal lobes And what about people who both pray and meditate and explore with DMT ... 

Our cosmos—the world we see, hear, feel—is the three-dimensional surface of a vast, four-dimensional sea.. . . What lies outside the sea s surface The wholly other world of God No longer is theology embarrassed by the contradiction between God s imminence and transcendence. Hyperspace touches every point of three-space. God is closer to us than our breathing. He can see every portion of our world, touch every particle without moving a finger though our space. Yet the Kingdom of God is completely outside of three-space, in a direction in which we cannot even point. 

God s existence his transcendence above finite creatures and his immanence in the world as a whole, by which extension may be called an attribute of God,... 

It can be stated that Spinoza s intellectual love towards God differed widely from the personal relation Boerhaave had with his God. It is directed to the pleasure of mental satisfaction accompanying the satisfaction of being able to explain nature, rather than having a relationship. Boerhaave s God, however, transcends His creation, and His fatherly hand acts in the world. Therefore, in order to know God, reason alone is not enough but has to be accompanied by experience and revelation. Boerhaave must have been horrified by the idea, expressed by Spinoza, that the human mind was as mortal as the body. 

Boerhaave further argues that the mind transcends the material level of the body as it can think about immaterial objects hke universal truths, God, axioms, virtues and mathematical knowledge. 

It is claimed that drugs provide mystical experience and that this has valid religious content. Mystical experience may be defined as a combination of feelings of unity (oneness with nature and/or God), ineffability (experience beyond the subject s power to express), joy (peace, sacredness), knowledge (insight into truths of life and values, illuminations), and transcendence (of space and time). 

When used in a ritual context by the shaman, teonanacatl provided a bridge between everyday consensus reality and extraordinary states of consciousness that allowed perception of events and situations that were not ordinarily accessible the weather was forecast, illness was diagnosed, aspects of the future might be seen, such as whether or not the harvest would be good. Thus, his ingestion of the God s flesh made the Aztec shaman seem like a god, able to transcend time and space. 

The final stage is marked by a feeling of calmness. Time and space have no meaning. There is a sense that one has transcended matter. In this state, one final supreme thought breaks into consciousness - "I have become God."... 

A final twist to the fate of the homunculus may be seen in the Demonstration of the Existence and Providence of God published by the Calvinist divine John Edwards in 1696. Edwards s book is above all a natural theology, and as such it expounds at length on the wondrous intricacy of the human body. The author finds particular support for his view in the fact that the symmetry and interconnectedness of the body s parts testify to the transcendence of their Maker. This sets Him apart from mere earthly workmen, who cannot create such organic perfection as to impart genuine life to their products. 

---