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The Miracles of Jesus Christ
My brain tends to be a weird melting pot of ideas. Slowly simmering on it over the past week have been two pivotal themes: magical aspects of the Bible and alternate universe peculiarities. If you want to take what follows as a mutagenic love-child of these (seemingly) unrelated concepts, then you’ll probably escape with a bit more of your current worldview intact. If not, well then don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The subject of the miracles associated with Jesus tends to be one which is particularly challenging to modern rationalist audiences. If you start out with the assumption that miracles can’t occur and that Jesus wasn’t “real”, then there’s obviously no way you can account for the supposedly miraculous acts attributed to Christ. I understand that fully and respect people ensnared in that type of self-nullifying belief structure. So in order to explore these themes a little more fully and be able to have them make sense to a larger audience than simply the so-called “true believers,” allow me adopt a bit of a speculative science-fiction model of the universe.
Actually, this isn’t all that sci-fi. Theoretical physics seems to talk a fair amount at least about the possibility of there being multiple parallel versions of our universe. This is where the term “multiverse” comes from, as well as the “many worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics.
I’m not going to pretend I know much about quantum physics beyond what’s already floating in the collective consciousness. But I have made a little graphic in the hopes of driving this idea home for people a little more clearly. In the diagram, you’ll notice parallel time-streams, all of which are moving inexorably forward.
But you’ll also notice one line that is jumping around like a madman from universe to universe. This line represents what Philip K. Dick might have referred to as one which is making “orthogonal time shifts.” That is, it is leaping sideways at right-angles and slipping into other timestreams.
So how might Jesus fit into all of this? Well, let’s look at some of his miracles. This one comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. In it, Jesus is on his way to the house of a priest named Jairus to heal his daughter who is on death’s door. But while they are approaching, people come from Jairus’ house saying, “Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?” But Jesus tells the man not to be afraid, but to believe. Jesus then arrives at the house where everyone is weeping and wailing:
39 And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.
40 And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying.
41 And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.
42 And straightway the damsel arose, and walked
Now, we could view this a number of ways: as a metaphorical-mythological story that never happened, as an example of some kind of misinterpretation by the people that she was dead in the first place, or as garden-variety “magic.” But in this case, the word “magic” doesn’t explain to much.
The thing that stands out for me in this story is when the people tell Jesus the girl is dead, and he says basically, “Are you sure? Check again. She’s just sleeping!” And then, lo and behold, she wakes up - as though she were just sleeping.
See where I’m going with this yet? Should be obvious: orthogonal time-shifts into parallel dimensions. Having access to some kind of “cosmic consciousness” Jesus knew how to shift the substructures of reality along a lateral axis into a universe where the event in question went very differently. In Dimension A, Jairus’ daughter did indeed die. In Dimension B, she was only sleeping. History suggests that shamans from time-immemorial have always had this ability to enter other realms through altered states of consciousness. But what if Jesus could not only do that, but could bring other people along with him on the voyage?
If some guy you knew were going around doing this, altering reality like this, you might feel compelled to make a big deal out of it. You might even go so far as to tell everyone you knew about it, write a book, and who knows what else. Is this how the Bible came about? Let’s look at some of his other miracles…
In John 2, the Marriage at Cana, the hosts of the party run out of wine. Jesus mother pleads with him to help out, and he eventually acquiesces:
7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;)…
Again, we see this same sort of basic premise operating. The servants are all like, “Oh no, we’re all out of wine!” And Jesus essentially says, “You sure about that?” And then, all of a sudden, ZAP! A fundamental variable is changed and they are now operating in another time-stream. Try this method on some of the other miracles of Jesus and see what you think. If nothing else, it is a fun method of interpreting these events, the sincere contemplation of which may lead you into other intriguing mysteries as well.
Some other questions which this viewpoint has lead me to… Let’s say this theory is more or less accurate. We can remove Jesus from it if you like, of course. And just suggest that orthogonal shifts sideways into parallel universes is not only possible but actually happens on a regular basis. If it does happen, what is the mechanism that controls it? How do we access it? How and why do universes shift and blend together? How can we tell if and when it has happened?
Maybe this whole thing also gives us a new way to look at Free Will versus Determinism. Maybe within each individual time-stream, everything happens according to a perfectly mechanical system of cause and effect. Nothing is left to chance. Everything just hums onward, as though the universe were a wind-up clock let loose (which is partly a Deist viewpoint, adhered to by some of the Founding Fathers of the United States). Within that framework, the notion of Free Will becomes impossible. Any choices which you feel as though you are making are simply choices that you have to make because of the past. Free Will, then would only enter into the picture when you figure out how to forcibly shift out of the deterministic universe you are living in into another one where things are different. The problem enters when you realize that the universe you just shifted into is also a more or less deterministic one. And because in this universe you have a different past, you are inexorably forced to make different decisions. So things seem different for a while. Until, that is, you become unsatisfied again and suddenly begin to re-remember your ability (Free Will) to shift into an alternate universe.
Maybe each time you shift, you forget that you shifted. Like the waters of Lethe in Hades which make souls forget their previous lives. This then also becomes an interesting alternate explanation for reincarnation. That “past” lives aren’t really in the past at all - or at least not in the past of this universe you are experiencing. They are instead parallel lives and “past life” memories are simply experiences from your alternate world(s) which are bleeding over into your current perception.
Perhaps what Jesus was was simply an entity who was completely freed from this deterministic “karmic” system of parallel lives, managed to fuse them all together and was able therefore to freely traverse these variations between universes. (See also: divine intervention, deus ex machina) And his gift of “eternal life” to “those who believe” was to teach others this technique as well, of using their Will to become Free (Free Will). And maybe what happens when each of us undertakes an “orthogonal shift” is that we become fused with whatever Jesus was - since Jesus may be nothing more than a rift in the system which became embodied in order to teach us freedom from that system… In fact, maybe what fundamentalist Christians are really referring to when they talk about the Rapture is not a physical floating up into Heaven, but a mass of people orthogonally shifting to another dimension together!
Homework: go watch Donnie Darko and Dark City and get back to me.
See how fun that was? We could go and on with this sort of thinking, but I don’t want to cook your brain all at once!
November 14th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
pretty awesome, but what would that say about the other aspects of his ministry? like, he always tried to downplay the miracles and whatnot. what does that have to do with the sermon on the mount, etc.? if jesus really had these powers, why not ’shift’ us all into the universe in which everything is great for everybody?
or maybe that’s what the ‘apocalypse’ is?
November 14th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Good questions!
So far in the Gospel of Mark (only one I’ve partially read through in any closeness), I haven’t seen Jesus downplay his miracles at all (unless I haven’t gotten that far). He doesn’t seem to really address them at all. They are just things he does while he is travelling. He is just trying to help people and teach them in whatever way possible, whatever way they need to be reached. Some people need teachings and some need miracles.
The two don’t seem incompatible to me at all!
Taken another way though, I think Jesus teachings are designed to break worldly detachments which in turn prepares the soul to shift orthogonally. Looked at in that esoteric sense, the teachings are a necessary prerequisite.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Isn’t it also possible that time, unto itself, is orthogonal movements within a multiverse of nows? If there are a multitude of possibilities available to our consciousness, then perhapse consensus-reality-defying events, such as synchronicity & psychokinesis, may actually be “alternative” versions of reality that were aligned. Perhapse that’s the nature between visible reality & invisible reality. What happens when a shift comes into play; does it cause a rift? What would be the nature of rifts, and how would it effect other timelines; provided that each timeline is a timeline unto itself.
There’s a funny theory that Matti Pitkänen has defined, called Topological GeometroDynamics; or TGD for short. Apparantly no other physicist understands it, but has written 2,000 page books on it, using “alternative theoretical physics,” p-Adic Numbers and the Riemann Hypothesis. There was a paper published in NeuroQuantology awhile back that introduced this theory. I had thought it was all about group consciousness, but I just did a double-take after reading an abstract on TGD-inspired theory of consciousness, and discovered that its almost precisely what I just described in the above paragraph; Here’s an excerpt:
“TGD inspired theory of consciousness relies on two identifications. The identification of quantum jump between quantum histories as a moment of consciousness reduces quantum measurement theory to fundamental physics and solves long list of paradoxes of modern physics. The identification of self as a subsystem able to remain unentangled in subsequent quantum jumps provides a quantum theory of observer and one can identify self also as a fundamental statistical ensemble… Selves form a hierarchy and self experiences its subselves as mental images and is in turn a mental image of a higher level self.”
Reading some of Matti’s writing seems almost like a spliced together mixture of theology & physics, but actually finds it important enough to work it out using cryptic mathematics. i’m not sure if its mathematical scribblings of a seeming-madman, or actual musings of a fringe alternative-physicist; or both. More here, and here
November 14th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Well, talk about 2 of my favorite ponderousnessisms!
It always struck me how all the early traditions and sources tell us Jesus was first and formost a “miracle-worker,” including Josephus and the Babylonian talmud. The question is whether he produced such signs and wonders all his life, or only after his baptism and anoiting. Certainly his 3 yr “ministry” began with the latter event, where he embarked to become IMHO the premire philosopher of Love, service and sacrifice.
It’s interesting not to see evidence of any shamanistic estatic states in his methods, but appears to demonstrate a calm composure. He seemed to command the very nature of the object - producing miracles similar to some of the vedic siddhis.
I wasnt aware that the deist model was necessarily so mechanically deterministic. I take the watch image as just a metaphor for systems, therefore an organic approach can be taken where freewill is the decider at the crossroads of every choice. The paths of choice lead us into a maze of infinite variables, each producing & conditioning new possibilities exponentially, in a seemingly chaotic thread of events. The process isn’t chaotic, but cause & effect on a subtle scale, influenced by choice.
This is how it may be said that “god” knows the end results, but knowledge isn’t the same as determining the outcome.
Anyhoo, cool graph and pretty colors!
November 14th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
REALLY interesting way of putting it. I will have to dwell on this for a while!
November 14th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Well yes, exactly- miracles as a means to an end, not a handout- he wasn’t saying “I am special, worship me,” he was saying, “Follow me”- literally.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Yes! And from what I gather the Bible is literally a magical instruction book on how to not just be like him, but to “be” him in an esoteric sense. Hence the importance of reading aloud, acting out stories, etc. Or at least that is the premise I’m currently exploring
November 14th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
I believe you will really reap the benefits of thinking about this topic by not thinking of time in a linear fashion. This is simply the way we perceive it, as many theorists have told us.
In terms of invoking the shift - I recommend Salvia Divinorum. It does the job, and then some. Not to mention the incredible emotional and mental after effects.
Can any other psychonauts back me up on this?
November 14th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
I’ve used it before but never had any revelations about time as such
November 14th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Lots of good stuff in Thomas which could be interpreted in this way:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html
Also, this I think relates to JP’s questions perhaps:
November 14th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Okay, so this raises a few points for me:
1. If something such as time is actually different from how we perceive it, then how are we supposed to change how we perceive it?
2. Does changing our perception of it bring us closer to how it actually is or simply substitute one metaphor for another?
3. Are there certain metaphors which would be more valuable for understanding time? If so, what are they and how are they more valuable?
November 14th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I’ve always loved the EWG model.
Maybe some of us are also (randomly) experiencing this kind of orthogonal time-shifts –maybe this is why some of us remember that Jack Palance died a few years back instead of last week–on another timeline, he did die several years ago
November 14th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
WEIRD! Every time i have an idea i come here and you’ve written it down for me!
November 14th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
An easy way to imagine that is like a cartoon, a crapload of still pictures that flow rapidly to appear to be moving. Jesus just had wicked-ass control of the flow.
Well, I’m totally mind-fucked. I’m to go watch some mindless network television.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
great graphic, by the way
November 14th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
synchronicity . i`m telling my children not to hold firecrackers in thier hands while the wicks are burning because there is enough explosive force in one of those things to seriously damage your hand and i just finished relating a story about a bass player in a band i played in that had only two fingers on his left hand from a firecracker accident when i notice a man sitting at the next table from us at starbucks has two fingers missing on his right hand.
we create the jumps in event streams with our thoughts. the more we do it the more like-minded events run into our stream. like your diagram, which is wonerfully clear in demonstrating this function. i think most people are either not paying attention to the syncronicities or deny them so much that they stop happening………..they actively push them away.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Perhapse, within a multiverse, mythical stories such as the bible were once true; in their own regards.
One shtick I may have with the multiverse idea though, is that if an entity traverses between two or more verses, the existence of that entity automatically alters that supposed timeline; thus concluding that the timeline is not really a separate timeline complete unto itself, but actually an opensource reality. Unless, of course, its similar to what Donnie Darko says; operating within god’s channel. As if the shifts and rifts were going to happen anyway, and were part of the pre-defined course of the multiverse as a whole, rather than an aberration between two seemingly-separate realities.
Mayhapse I’ll write a PKD-inspired rift on christianity’s role within a multiverse at some point in the future. Question is, will it be me writing it? lol
November 14th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
are you not familiar with Ong’s Hat yet? because that’s what you’ve been leading up to in these past few discussions:
The urban legend (or alternate history text) states that a facility manned by renegade Princetown professors conducted quantum physics experiments, and according to conspiracy theories, discovered a new theory for dimensional travel.
They were largely based in the ghost town of Ong’s Hat, New Jersey, hence the name.
November 15th, 2006 at 12:25 am
some other things to mull over (most of the ong’s hat related text is utter bs, but there is some useful information hidden in it if you want to sift through it. fun stuff!):
“Charles-Andre Gilis has pointed out that in the Islamic tradition the Ka’ba symbolises the centre of every state of Being, as is demonstrated by the tradition recorded by Ibn ‘Abbas according to which there exists a Ka’ba, similar to the one belonging to our world, in each of the seven heavens and seven earths (cf. La Doctrine Initiatique du Pélerinage, Paris, 1982, pp. 45-6). In the introduction to the Tâj, Ibn ‘Arabi refers to the Visited House (al-bayt al-ma’mûr), situated in the seventh heaven, the celestial prototype of the Ka’ba (p. 557).”
and this interpretation of the law of seven:
“Gurdjieff talked of a ‘law of seven’. This law in its ‘pre-creation’ state - that is, before the universe existed at all! - had seven equi-distant intervals in it. It was a closed cycle. After the creation, the steps were no longer equal. The reason for this was that some gateway or opening had to be provided for different processes to connect with each other, or to form a relationship. The original single-value state (Absolute) divided into multiple states, or ‘fractions’ of the whole. The modified law of seven allows these different fractions to blend and return together towards the single-valued state. Only, this return would be an enrichment and not simply a repetition.”
November 15th, 2006 at 8:36 am
The longer I’ve been reading this site, the more I’m noticing the thematic groupings the subsequent posts (and series of posts) fit themselves into. Tim, have you ever thought of grouping them that way on a more static page from which they’re linked? Sort of like your “Best Of” page, in a way, but with an added degree of chronological attention.
While I don’t think any of this is necessary to the regular reader (as they’ll know whats been written and where to find it), it could be a great resource to passer-byers and newcomers who are interested in seeing not just what you’ve written about (which the “Best Of” handles fine), but when you’ve wrtiten about it in regard to everything else — what trains of thought lead you to it, what conclusions you’ve taken away, where it makes you want to go next, etc. Your podcasts might to play an interesting and useful role in something like this.
Just wanted to bring these thoughts up. This recent series of posts has been absolutely terrific and does a great service to your explorations, your writings and this site. Excited to see where it goes. Keep it up.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:35 am
My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions!
Read My Inaugural Address
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman
November 15th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
A book that really made me re-think all the Christ miracle stories was Lives of the Muslim Saints by Farid al-din Attar:
hxxp://omphaloskepsis.com/ebooks/pdf/mussm.pdf
I don’t want to get into the specific details here, but there are many miraculous stories in there, and the teacher/student discussions of them really opened my eyes.
1. Will. (Grace?)
2. Unless all perceptions are completely indistinguishable, one perception must be at least relatively better than another in some circumstances.
3. I really, really like Ibn Arabi’s conception of the Divine Names of God. Set aside any conception of linear time for a moment. Roughly:
The incommensurable and ineffable One desired to be known and the vehicles of knowledge of Him are the Names, which describe His supernal attributes. They are things like Glory, Strength, Compassion, Beauty, King, Treasure, (these should remind you of the sephiroth.)
Now, there is a certain unavoidable conflict between the various attributes of God. This is necessary, since the true Lord transcends all encapsulation, he is not simply Severity or Mercy, he is severe beyond Severity and merciful beyond Mercy. The natural conflict between the relatively finite Names generates a dialectic process, which creates the world.
As the God contemplates himself and explores himself, the consequences of his transcendent attributes develop in deeper and further detail. His self-knowledge reveals the infinite world hidden within Him. This is the origin of the shifting experience of life. It is also completely compatible with many other cosmogonies, including emanationist ones like the Neoplatonic/Pythagorean/Hermetic ideas I am primarily interested in right now, or the Kabbalastic view of creation.
How does our conventional view of linear time fit in? The set of experiences measurable in linear time is a tiny subset of all experiences. When we say something happened at a particular time, we mean we have engineered a set of circumstances where a clock reading co-incided with an event. This is a co-incidence in the plainest meaning. The linear ordering of these events is imposed by us, we do this unconsciously even though relativity has been well-understood for 80 years.
Praise God that He has made the world, and filled it with His likeness!
Four texts by Ibn Arabi on the Divine Names:
hxxp://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/fourtexts.pdf
November 15th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I always wondered about that Kaa’ba …
Super posts all over!
That’s exactly what was thinking above, and Francis Scully put so well, and Alistair hits on too …
Reminds me of a certain native American concept of time I learned in anthro 100: the timeline of NOW bends into, encorporating the FUTURE, dragging slices of the PAST with it. Rather than a discrete present dimension it actually includes bits of what was, and what’s ahead. In this model Time is more like a Tri-dimensional unity.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Whoa - is that where they came up with the name of the tv show?
November 15th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Aw shit, I just realized you mentioned Dark City! WAY underrated movie!
November 15th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Yes, exactly! As you can imagine, an idea not conducive to church forming and power aspirations…
November 15th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10:21
I’m actually starting to really enjoy how grossly people misinterpret the Bible, cause when you can get past other people’s bad ideas about it, it is tremendously rich and useful
November 15th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
[…] The news for today here in Seattle has everything to do with the subjects we’ve been discussing lately. Which is weird because we have been discussing some weird topics. It seems that professor John G. Cramer at the University of Washington is attempting to go somewhere where we’ve all been before: the past. I’ll let the Seattle PI fill you on some of the details: If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum “retrocausality.” […]
November 18th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html