John Grieve: Theology of the Other    
 Theology of the Other5 comments
27 Aug 2008 @ 08:32, by John Grieve



Theology of the Other

It is my basic belief that the fundamental contradiction of the human condition, our basic duality, is that we are all both human and divine. We are all human but we also partake of the nature of the divine godhead. This has been known to mystics for millennia and perhaps before that to the people who shared the Perennial Philosophy as part of their indigenous culture.

It is also my belief that it is the denial of this fact that leads to the problems people have with “the Other”. It is not just minority groups or Nature itself that represent our problem with “the Other” but essentially our denial that we are divine. It is indeed ironic that traditional “civilised” accounts of the “Fall” of man and woman portray it as a result of the “hubris” of wanting to be like God. Our “hubris” consists rather in thinking we are greater than God in our isolated individuality, cut off from ourselves, each other, Nature and the Source itself. Putting our faith in this isolated individuality, and all hopes of global salvation based on it are the two main fallacies that have to be tackled by humankind. The reality is exactly the reverse. It is the Self-conscious level of awareness which cuts us off from this knowledge of the real duality of our nature. We don’t have to become like God, we have always shared in being so, and the “Fall from Grace” is a forgetting of this basic truth. Original Sin is not thinking we are Gods, but that we are greater than God/dess on account of our isolated, alienated individuality. Our extreme individuality, narcissism, is an expression of this. All the problems which are besetting the world today from racism, war, homophobia, sexism, hatred of disabled people, all sorts of scapegoating of others, and particularly climate change all stem from this crisis of identity. Everything in the world is teaching us the same lesson concerning “the Other”. God is the real Other, and our denial of all “the Others”, within us and society, is the same thing on a different scale.



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5 comments

27 Aug 2008 @ 10:03 by deepwater @121.222.25.210 : God.
I disagree that God is Other in any way. There are of course innumerable interpretations as to what 'God' might mean, used as a word symbol for something which is beyond the comprehension of the major portion of distracted humanity.
However I maintain that 'God' is the inner quality which we all share and is intrinsic to all manifest existence (of which we are a part).

I do agree that our false sense of separate self is the reason for our perceiving the 'other' at all, rather than the truth of the matter which is that we are all one in essence. That is to say that you are me and I am you, in the sense that we are all manifested from the same underlying source.

We spend too much time focused in the false belief that we exist as separate entities and not enough time rediscovering that we are in fact just effects of the process of the universe (God) unfolding.

Out of interest John you may like to take a look at {link:http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v550/__show_article/_a000550-000065.htm|link}
For a deeper analysis of how the concept of 'God' fits in to the bigger picture.

Namaste.  

31 Aug 2008 @ 09:11 by johnjoseph : Goddess

To the Alienated, everything is Other, Nothing is Self  

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