Fragment 32

In this "Fragment" we shall continue the discussion of Christ as the new Adam. I realized that I had too much material for a single "Fragment", so I decided to break it into parts. We shall use different perspectives, and approaches to make some sense of the material. We shall begin by examining some ideas of Jacob Bohme. The book we shall be concentrating on is Bohme's book: "Incarnation of Christ'', also all quotes in this "Fragment shall be taken from that book. If any of the readers of this "Fragment" are interested in reading "Incarnation of Christ'' both Bohme and I recommend reading his book "Three Principles of the Divine Essence '' first before attempting "Incarnation of Christ''. Bohme is incredibly difficult to read. Hegel even complained he had difficulty reading Bohme. So let us begin with a quote from the book. "The tree Jesus Christ in the light world, who has revealed himself in our soul, as his branches. He has come in Adam's place, who has caused us to decay, and perish, He became Adam in the new birth. Adam brought our souls in the new birth into this world, into death of the fierce wrathfullness; and He brought our soul out of death, through the fire of God, and rekindled it in fire, so that it obtained again the shining light, as otherwise it would necessarily had to remain in the dark death in the source of anguish. The above passage has a lot to unpack. To begin with Bohme had no interest in the historical Jesus. Both Jesus,and Adam are best regarded as states of consciousness.The transmutation of Adam to Christ is a psychic event. Adam represents the fallen state of humans, which is characterized by greed, drunkenness, gluttony, etc. Christ is the new man or better yet the new self; the new self. Christ becomes the homunculus, or the new conscience of humans. Of course, this is not an easy feat to achieve. It involves conscious suffering. Again let us go to a quote from Bohme. "Thus every twig in the soul grows up out of divine wisdom. All must put forth out of the torture chamber, and grow as a branch from the root of the tree: all is generated in anguish. If a man wish to obtain divine knowledge, he must repeatedly enter into the torture chamber, into the center." Bohme was fond of tree metaphors. What Bohme is talking about is in occult terminology called "crossing the abyss". The old self must die and be torn apart , so the new self can be born. This brings us to one of the most misunderstood concepts in Christianity. That of being born again. One does not become born again by praying with some street preacher who is handing out pamphlets on how you are going to Hell. Instead it is like someone who has a life changing accident. The example I will use is having an accident and becoming a quadriplegic (quad). I had a friend who crossed the abyss by passing through the gate of Absolute despair. (When I talk about a friend sometimes I am talking about myself, and sometimes I am talking about a real friend) He could not find any references to the vision of Absolute despair in most literature, so he took up reading autobiographies of quads, anjd he still found no references, The only reference he did find was in Donald Tyson's "Necronomicon". To get back to our discussion. Someone who has had an accident and become a quad experiences his-her self as divided in to two different people. The one before the accident and the one after the accident. Everything they believed or presupposed has been shattered. Their outward and inward life is in ruins. This is the torture chamber Bohme refers to. When one enters the abyss one's outward life crumbles into ruins, as does his-her inward life. Although the inward life takes longer to destroy. A new quad must rebuild their life from the ground up. This is the power of the abyss. I will have a lot more to say about the abyss and the way out in future "Fragments". This is what it means to be born again. That the old self is shattered. and a new self must be created. When I was younger I was baffled by how many people that suffer life changing accidents become Christians. I could not understand how after someone experiences such trauma that they could embrace a god of mercy. (I always had trouble believing in a god of mercy, although I never had much trouble believing in demons and gods of pain and suffering.) The reason that people that have experienced a life changing trauma have a strong need to somehow made sense of what happened to them. Christianity offers them a paradigm to rebuild their self. This also connects to Iamblichus doctrine of exemplarism. I am always surprised when I meet Christians that do not know what exemplarism is. Exemplarism is the opposite of ontologism. Ontologism is the teahing that one can reach the mind of god without the help of a god. Plotinus is good example of ontologism. Exemplarism is the teaching that one must have a god to pull one over the finish line. Christianity of course got rid of every god except for Christ. After shattering ones inward and outward life one must have a paradigm to rebuild ones life. Christ v-becomes the homunculus that directs the rebuilding. Of course, as all Setians know there are other paradigms (gods) that can serve this purpose.