TO BELIEVE OR NOT TO BELIEVE

 

THE SECOND COMING

In my last post I focused on the importance of making the right choice between good and evil. In this post I want to talk about why it is so difficult to sort out good from evil and know what to believe and what actions to take. I will focus on one specific very extraordinary belief of the Christian and Muslim religions: That is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But first, let’s look at what we mean by belief. Every belief system, whether it is thought of as science, philosophy, or religion, is a conceptual model based on a set of a priori assumptions that must be accepted without proof, and the most basic of the assumptions of any model is almost always in some way fantastic beyond belief when taken by itself alone! In this sense, every belief system is, in effect, a religion for those who believe in it.

You may think that modern science is an exception to this, but it is not. Experimental science is based on the observation, measurement, and interpretation of empirical data. But the interpretation of observations and experimental data depends on the acceptance of certain unprovable assumptions. At the bottom of the current mainstream scientific belief system we find the unprovable metaphysical assumption of atheistic materialism.

Most scientists have accepted the assumption that everything can be explained in terms of materialism, and that thus there is no need to suppose that there might be a conscious intelligence behind the existence we experience. These assumptions are materialistic and atheistic, pure and simple. That’s why we hear mainstream scientists and students these days saying things like: “I am a scientist, so of course I’m an atheist!”

Scientific atheistic materialism leads to logical contradictions that cannot be resolved within the belief system that created them.  The Standard Model of particle physics and the Big Bang Theory, the major parts of current scientific materialism, both exhibit such internal contradictions. Assuming that everything is made up of nothing but particles and physical forces leads to contradictions like massless and dimensionless particles. And assuming that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of physical evolution, rather than a primary aspect of reality, leads to the belief that a violent explosion could create something as exquisite as a butterfly or a rose!

Those who believe that materialistic science holds the answers to all questions, are actually idol worshipers and scientism is their religion. The unprovable assumptions of particle physics and the big bang theory are their litany, and the celebrated physicalist scientists of mainstream science are their priests.  All finite belief systems fall short of the transcendental elegance of Reality – i.e., the Glory of God! With this understanding that all belief systems are based on miraculous assumptions, let’s turn to one of the miraculous ideas underlying Christianity: The Second Coming.

There are more than 20 Biblical verses mentioning the Second Coming, and there have been at least 50 publicized  predictions since the time of Jesus, made by as many different individuals, including some well-known people like Emanuel Swedenborg, Joseph Smith of the Mormon Church of Latter-day Saints, brilliant Educator Rudolph Steiner, Edgar Cayce the Sleeping Prophet, and Alice Baily of the Theosophical Society. A spectacular reappearance of Jesus of Nazareth, has been predicted for a number of specific dates, ranging from 500 to 2057 AD. But most of these predictions have been wrong. Only a few of them are yet to be determined. For example:

In 1946, Alice A. Baily, a major leader of the Theosophical Society, predicted the return of Christ sometime after 2025.

Some Christians believe that the second coming will be preceded by a “rapture” and a seven-year “tribulation” period  This view was popularized as “Unsealed World News” by the Site Unsealed.org. In 2016, they predicted that this seven-year tribulation would begin with the total solar eclipse in America in August 2017, and end with a similar solar eclipse in 2024.

In theoretical physicist Frank J. Tipler’s book The Physics of Immortality, he claims to have proved the existence of God as part of his Omega Point Theory. In a follow up book, The Physics of Christianity, published in 2007, he says the Second Coming of Christ will occur within 50 years, i.e., by 2057, and will be coincident with the technological “Singularity” defined by mathematician Vernor Vinge as a time when artificial intelligence (AI) will supersede human consciousness, triggering unpredictable changes in human civilization around the year 2030. Futurist Ray Kurxweil has also written about the singularity, and predicts it may occur around 2045.

While I find Tipler’s work, Vinge’s work, and Kurzweil’s writings interesting, the “Singularity” is a complex concept that raises a plethora of questions far beyond the scope of the present post. AI researchers and enthusiasts think that the singularity will bring about a fantastic merger of living human bodies with AI mechanisms through chemical and electronic nano-technology. But AI enthusiasts are mostly materialists, who believe that consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon of physical evolution, and they do not consider the Second Coming as a real thing.

On the other hand, my research and mathematical analysis leads me to believe that Christ Consciousness is real, and that the singularity fantasy is a Frankenstein nightmare likely end in death and destruction, much like the chemical and pharmaceutical industries “better living through chemistry” dream ended in the unleashing of waves of pain, suffering and death from all kinds of disease and dependence on synthetic drugs. So let’s look at some of Biblical references, coming from Origen of Alexandria’s translations of the original Jewish and Christian scrolls to help us understand more accurately what the people who lived during Biblical times were talking about when they used the term.

"For the Lord Himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." – Thessalonians 4:16-17

“While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven." - Acts 1:10-11

“So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.” – Hebrews 9:28

“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” - Matthew 24:42-44

“Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” - John 5:28-29.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.- Titus 2:11-13.

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.” – James 5:7

The concept of the second coming really cannot be separated from the prophecy of the Messiah (Mashiach in Hebrew) in the pre-Christian Bible, because, based on a number of specific statements made by Jesus, he declared himself, in fact, to be the fulfillment of that prophecy. Here are two scriptural verses identifying him as the Messiah:

Once when Jesus was praying with his disciples, he asked them, “Who do they say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others say that one of the prophets reincarnated”. “But what about you? he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”

 Jesus admonished them not to tell this to anyone. 

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” - Luke 9:18-21

So Jesus confirmed Peter’s answer that he was indeed the Messiah, but commanded the disciples to tell no one, because the ancient prophecies were not yet fulfilled.

Another time, when Jesus and his disciples were passing through Samaria on their way from Judea to Galilee, he encountered a Samaritan woman at a well, and after he revealed knowledge of things no ordinary person could not have known, she said to him:

“Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. … a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” John 4:5-26

Except for his disciples and a small following however, the majority of the Jewish people of the time, down to the present time as well, have not thought that Jesus was the Messiah for a number of reasons, but primarily because they expected the Messiah to be a Warrior-King in the lineage of King David, who would defeat the Romans and all their enemies, rebuild King Soliman’s Temple, and rule the world from his capitol in Jerusalem. My purpose in this post is not to argue either side of this debate or present analysis of arguments about who may or may not be the Messiah, but rather to make the point that such arguments are irrelevant, based on a deeper understanding of the real nature of spiritual evolution and consciousness.

The source of most of the books of the Christian Bible is found in the writings of Origen of Alexandria, who translated most of the scrolls attributed to the disciples of Jesus from Aramaic into Greek around 200 AD. My research suggests that because of certain deletions and changes in the original works of Origen, forced upon the Catholic Church by Roman Emperor Justinian I for political reasons, statements about the second coming became confused with the End Time and Judgement Day predictions Jesus shared with his disciples.

The model of reality presented by TDVP with the application of the transcendental physics and the mathematical logic of the calculus of distinctions is a reflection of reality manifested by, of, for, and about consciousness. When the consciousness of an individual is temporarily expanded beyond the physical body and mind, as in NDEs or any other type of OBE, it glimpses the potential of Christ Consciousness. This is why Jesus called himself the “Way-shower, the truth and the light”. A glimpse of Christ Consciousness or Cosmic Consciousness is tantalizing and compelling, but real enlightenment is the direct experience of the higher states of consciousness.

In my opinion, the experience of human existence is for the sole purpose of the expansion of consciousness from the finite to the Infinite. There are many levels and types of awareness on the path to ultimate enlightenment, variously called insight, illumination, Transcendental awareness, Spiritual Ecstasy, Satori, Sabakalpa Samadhi, Nirbakalpa Samadhi, Transfiguration, Kutastha Chaitanya, Christ Consciousness, Ascension, Cosmic Consciousness, etc., … all the way to Absolute Oneness with God. Any sudden awakening to a level of awareness beyond your current state, whatever it may be, is an experience of enlightenment that may seem like the Ultimate experience. But the ultimate awareness of the holistic nature of reality is beyond the comprehension of most of us at this point in Earth’s planetary time cycle.

One Spiritual Master said it this way: “The experience of the Ultimate is not an experience at all – because the experiencer is lost. And when there is no experiencer what can be said about it? Who will say it? Who will relate the experience? … The knowledge is there, but the knower is not. That has been the problem for all mystics.” – Bagavan  Sri Rajneesh in Only One Sky.

Or, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein put it: “That about which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.” But volumes can be communicated in the communion of silence. This is why those who are propelled on the spiritual path seek the company of Saints. The touch of the Master can enlighten, and even touching his garment can heal.

So who was Jesus, what is Christ Consciousness, and when is the Second Coming? In my opinion, to answer these questions, one must first understand the nature of consciousness in its various forms.

I agree with physicist Erwin Schrӧdinger, who said in What is Life? his book of thoughtful essays, that consciousness has no plural. As sentient individual manifestations of consciousness experiencing reality by identifying with sense-limited organic life forms, we are all connected at the deepest level of our existence with the all-pervasive field of Primary Consciousness. Most of the current consciousness research, including mine, suggests that consciousness is a fundamental, if not primary, aspect of reality, linking all sentient beings. It is in consciousness research and the analysis of belief systems, that science and spirituality really come together to reveal what consciousness is, and how human beings relate to it.

As explained in previous posts, ultimately, Primary Consciousness is the only Reality. Its form is multi-dimensional, self-referential, and infinite, expanding out and convolving back in upon itself, like a nine-dimensional Mobius strip. It is the ultimate logical system in which all forms arise from the conscious process of the drawing of distinctions. My understanding, arrived at through the development of the Triadic Dimensional Vortical Paradigm with application of the Calculus of Dimensional Distinctions to the vortical combinations of quanta, is that in order to put the basic concepts of the existence, appearance, and Second Coming of Christ into the proper perspective, the primary assumptions of human belief systems, the concept of spiritual advancement as a species and as individuals, and the expansion of individual consciousness are important factors that must be considered.

The existence of Primary Consciousness is what makes our physical reality possible. Without the organizing action of Primary Consciousness through the non-physical effects of gimmel, there could be no physical universe to begin with, and without the continuous action of Primary Consciousness in finite form, the parity expressed by Newton’s third law and the entropic nature of matter expressed by the second law of thermodynamics, would cause any quantized physical structure, accidentally formed, to decay as radiant energy and expand to infinity and a state of maximum entropy almost immediately. So the obvious existence of conscious beings in the expanding universe and the law of conservation of mass/energy, implies the impossibility of absolute nothingness. In plain English, there is no such thing as nothing.

Consciousness, as we experience it on this planet, is evolving from the first spark of simple awareness to Cosmic Consciousness, which includes complete awareness of all things. Christ Consciousness manifests when human consciousness combines with God’s Holy Spirit to become a bridge between finite human consciousness and the Infinite. Jesus of Nazareth spoke as the embodiment of Christ Consciousness when he said: “I and the Father are One.” And “I am the Way-shower, the truth and the light” and “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The first coming of Christ Consciousness occurred just before the darkest time in the dark age of Kali Yuga, with the birth of Jesus as a fully enlightened Son of God. So what is the Second Coming? Because there is no plurality in Consciousness except for its temporary partial confinement in finite physical forms, the Second Coming happens when Christ Consciousness enters and expands the consciousness of a sentient being. This is why Jesus, his disciples, and others, like the Apostle Paul, told people who chose the spiritual path in those times, that some of them would see the Second Coming during their lifetimes.

A second coming happened when Jesus appeared to his followers after being crucified. The Bible says that Jesus returned multiple times after His death, appearing to a number of people over a forty-day period. The Bible specifically says that on Easter Sunday Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, as well as the women who came to his tomb (Mary the Mother of James, Salome, and Joanna), Peter, and two other disciples on the Emmaus road. He even invited the disciple Thomas to touch his wounds, to prove that he was real. Some of the Biblical references to Jesus coming in the clouds could be describing the way believers experience his coming into their consciousness.

Although technically it should not be called a second coming, the Bible does predict an eventual return of Christ as a benevolent King to reign over a long period of peace on Earth. When will it happen? The Bible is pretty clear that no one can predict the date, because it will only happen when so many people have been deceived by the dark forces of evil, that Divine intervention is necessary to prevent us from completely destroying ourselves. Why should we have to go through all this confusion, pain and suffering? The main theme of the Bible, and Christ’s teaching is that it is all of our own making. As images of the Infinite, like Adam and Eve in the Biblical story, we were given free will to choose our own path through the dualities of physical existence. By learning to make the right choice, we eventually progress from mere sparks of awareness to Oneness with the Infinite,

ERC-July 2, 2021