"we are unable to experience god without god's revelation to us"
Mike, I would agree that Judeo-Christian thought contains other notions that suggest the separation of God and man.
There is the story of Adam and Eve and the concept of "original sin"; there is the concept of God the Father
(which suggests man as child); man the sinner, and so on. The picture I always understood was man as the deficient being, requiring redemption. Those are the conceptions of
the ego.
Here's a related passage from Adi Da:
The Reality in which we "live and move and have our being" is not actually or merely Other than all beings and things. The "Otherness" of God and Nature is an archaic conception shared by both conventional religion and conventional science. In the case of both conventional religion and conventional science, Man and thus every individual, is, by virtue of a false conceptual understanding of the process of "knowing", established in the mode of the independent observer, the experiencer, the believer, so that his very being is separated from ecstatic participation in the Reality that is both Nature and God.
The God who is irreducibly separate from Man is and Idol, a false God. Such a God is not the God who grants Life and who is Life.
The realm of Nature that Man may only observe and know is a Mirage, a terrifying Illusion, a Lie. Such a World is not the world that is Alive and that is not other than our own Life.
God is not the Supreme Object, related to the body of Man like the Sun is to the Earth.
Nature, or the World-Process, is not the Supreme Object, related to the modern analytical mind like the ancient God was to the ancient religious mind.
God and Nature are a single Paradox, incapable of existing as an Object or Other to Man. Man is inherently INVOLVED in the Paradox of the World-Process. Man is inherently ONE with the Living Presence of Radiant Existence.
So, yes, there are distinct differences in the two points of view.
Namaste!
Jim |
