Death, Rebirth, and Meditation

[The Hammer]

Death, Rebirth, and Meditation – Integral Life

Found this article today and gave it a read. It has some interesting things to say about the mind body spirit and the process of death/dying. As well as some of the common underpinnings that seem to dominate all mystical traditions.

Thoughts?

@Sunstone @Quintessence

 

[Orbit]

Death, Rebirth, and Meditation – Integral Life

Found this article today and gave it a read. It has some interesting things to say about the mind body spirit and the process of death/dying. As well as some of the common underpinnings that seem to dominate all mystical traditions.

@Windwalker might have something to say about this.

 

[LightofTruth]

Death, Rebirth, and Meditation – Integral Life

Found this article today and gave it a read. It has some interesting things to say about the mind body spirit and the process of death/dying. As well as some of the common underpinnings that seem to dominate all mystical traditions.

The teaching of the Bible is unique in that it teaches eternal life only through resurrection from the dead. There are a couple exceptions to this rule so far(Enoch and Elijah). And there will be more exceptions because the faithful living will be translated into God's kingdom when Christ returns. They will have been changed to immortality in the twinkling of an eye. But other than that, and until that time comes, the Christian must hope on the resurrection of the dead to experience the world to come.

I don't know of any other religion that holds to that principle. Most have some sort of idea that souls exist the death of the body.

 

[The Hammer]

The teaching of the Bible is unique in that it teaches eternal life only through resurrection from the dead. There are a couple exceptions to this rule so far(Enoch and Elijah). And there will be more exceptions because the faithful living will be translated into God's kingdom when Christ returns. They will have been changed to immortality in the twinkling of an eye. But other than that, and until that time comes, the Christian must hope on the resurrection of the dead to experience the world to come.

I don't know of any other religion that holds to that principle. Most have some sort of idea that souls exist the death of the body.

Maybe in modern times, but Christian Mysticism has been around just as long as Christianity and talks about much of the same symbols and sensations, just transcribed with Christian thought. Not sure if reincarnation is part of that, but I would think it is. Christian mysticism - Wikipedia

Not all is what it seems.

 

[SigurdReginson]

The teaching of the Bible is unique in that it teaches eternal life only through resurrection from the dead. There are a couple exceptions to this rule so far(Enoch and Elijah). And there will be more exceptions because the faithful living will be translated into God's kingdom when Christ returns. They will have been changed to immortality in the twinkling of an eye. But other than that, and until that time comes, the Christian must hope on the resurrection of the dead to experience the world to come.

I don't know of any other religion that holds to that principle. Most have some sort of idea that souls exist the death of the body.

Eternal life through resurrection of the dead? Could you unpack that a little for me?

When I was a christian, I was taught that when we died we were given a new body in heaven.

 

[LightofTruth]

Eternal life through resurrection of the dead? Could you unpack that a little for me?

When I was a christian, I was taught that when we died we were given a new body in heaven.

When the disciples went to the tomb where Jesus' body was laid the angels told them that he was not there, that he rose from the dead. And Jesus showed himself to at least 500 afterwards, and before he ascended to heaven to sit at the Father's right hand. The body that Jesus now has is not subject to death. Paul says that death no longer has dominion over him. The hope of the Christian is to be raised in the likeness of his resurrection. When death will no longer have dominion over them. Paul explains this whole process in 1 Cor 15. The faithful dead are raised with a spiritual body. Just like the body Jesus now has.
I believe this teaching is unique from the great majority of religions.

 

[Left Coast]

@atanu would likely enjoy the article in the OP.

 

[Left Coast]

Death, Rebirth, and Meditation – Integral Life

Found this article today and gave it a read. It has some interesting things to say about the mind body spirit and the process of death/dying. As well as some of the common underpinnings that seem to dominate all mystical traditions.

Thoughts?

@Sunstone @Quintessence

Parts of the article were too much for me to accept, but I did appreciate the point about meditation being a death to ego. Indeed, that does seem to be a central theme running through many of the world's major religious traditions.

More than one Buddhist teacher I've listened to has made an insightful point about reincarnation.

I don't personally buy the idea that we have an immaterial soul that is actually reincarnated in successive lives.

However, in some sense, we are being constantly reincarnated. Every moment is new. Even on a purely physiological level, cells that make us what we think of as "us" are dying, being sloughed away, and being replaced anew. Our minds are continually being molded and shaped in new ways by new experiences. Even seemingly mundane, repetitious experiences are never really exactly the same twice.

So the processes of birth, death, and rebirth are all around us, and within us, all the time. There's something very beautiful about that.

 

[ajay0]

Maybe in modern times, but Christian Mysticism has been around just as long as Christianity and talks about much of the same symbols and sensations, just transcribed with Christian thought. Not sure if reincarnation is part of that, but I would think it is. Christian mysticism - Wikipedia

Not all is what it seems.

It is quite possible that reincarnation was a part of the original christianity as taught by Christ and the early christian sects.

The early Christian gnostic sects as well as Origen also taught about the concept of reincarnation.

Imo, reincarnation as a teaching was there in the early christian scriptures, which were possibly edited out by the romans in the councils of Nicea and Constantinople as it conflicted with their own ideas and sensibilities about spirituality. St. Jerome had criticized Origen's views on reincarnation in his writings.

 

[atanu]

@atanu would likely enjoy the article in the OP.

Thank you. I will read.

 

[Windwalker]

Death, Rebirth, and Meditation – Integral Life

Found this article today and gave it a read. It has some interesting things to say about the mind body spirit and the process of death/dying. As well as some of the common underpinnings that seem to dominate all mystical traditions.

Thoughts?

Yes, I relate to what Wilber is talking about in the article. I've had an NDE experience, and I practice the types of meditation which brings you into, or rather opens you to these subtle and causal states. Meditation is very much a sort of rehearsal for actual death.

I like to say, we should live our life as in death. That is we need to live our lives through a letting go process, whereby we then open to these higher and more subtle dimensions of being. I think of meditation as retraining the normal gross-level mind and its attachments to seeing and living life with this higher state of being.

Basically, meditation as death rehearsal is to prepare us for what we encounter in death, in order to not flee its Light and back into the gross realms of existence. Encountering the subtle and causal realms of reality, can appear terrifying. You are absolutely naked before it, and its immensity and power is beyond comprehension.

If however you've become familiar with it through meditative practices, you will know it as it comes, and move into it, rather than away from it. And if you are devoted enough to it, you experience that Liberation as That here and now in this life. You die, while alive, so you know Life as it is. I suppose, this is the metaphor of being "born again", in a real, true sense. That's what Enlightenment is.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I think the whole process has to to with our atomic composition and even string theory.

Our entire being is composite and eternally interchangeable. Death and birth experienced simultaneously as we all continually live and die all the time.

A bit like Alan Watts, The Real You, or the Heart Sutra.

Even ringing a bell to experience the entirety of the Heart Sutra and Rebirth in a ding.