As Contemplative Christianity Incorporates “Enlightenment” of Eastern Advaita ( Hindu) & Non-Dual ( Buddhism ), Will They Ultimately End Up Denying God ?

Genesis narrated the events of the fall, and till this day, it still appears incredulous to many Christians how the seemingly small lie(s) uttered by Satan could lead to the fall of not just Adam and Eve but all of greater humanity. The potency of those lies were not immediately apparent until we see their full manifestation today.

In Eden, Satan only laid the foundation of Spiritualism. The final manifestation , the masterpiece of Satan’s deception will only be seen in the last remnant of time. “ Satan has long been preparing for his final effort to deceive the world. The foundation of his work was laid by the assurance given to Eve in Eden:  “Ye shall not surely die.” “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”Genesis 3:4, 5. Little by little he has prepared the way for hismasterpiece of deception in the development of spiritualism. He has not yet reached the full accomplishment of his designs; but it will be reached in the last remnant of time. “I saw three unclean spirits like frogs; ... they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto thekings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Revelation 16:13, 14."

Satan’s foundational design incorporates these features…1] immortal/divine soul  2] awaken/eyes opened/discover that humans are gods and 3] knowing good and evil. What kind of a deceptive masterpiece will finally emerge from this foundation ?  In addition to incorporating the above features ,  the masterpiece must also unite the “kings of the earth”.

Much as we are warned against séances and familiar spirits of the dead,  yet séances still do nothing to bring its practitioners and much less the secular “kings of the earth” to think that we are gods. So, what is the ultimate development of Satan's lie in Eden? What is that ultimate masterpiece of deception that will bring humanity under the strong delusion that they are gods ? “Ye shall be as gods,” he declares, “knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5. " Spiritualism teaches that man is the creature of progression; that it is his destiny from his birth to progress, even to eternity, toward the Godhead ".

We must at this point first understand the design of the foundation that Satan laid, then only can we later grasp the nature of the his "glorious" finished masterpiece of deception. In Hinduism there is “advaita vendanta” ( av ) translated into English as “non-dual” (nd) . This is the basis of pantheism. Now the av element is in every form of meditation ( with the exception of Biblical meditation ), be it eastern, Catholic, Christian mantra/yoga, Centering Prayer, etc…. all which begin with “emptying” of the mind.

What is av or nd ? How does it operate?  How can “emptying”, or “nothingness” or “silence” be so dangerous ?

AV is a non-dualistic philosophical system that proposes that the whole universe is made of the same spiritual essence and there is no division, ie no duality  between its parts. Initially, the spiritual essence was conceived as “energy”.  Gradually as Catholicism merged eastern practices into their own contemplative tradition, the spiritual essence began to be personified and characterized as “ center”, “spark of the soul”, “ belonging to God” which/who “does not die”.  Read Father Thomas Merton's quote in A#02, Archive A #02.The philosophy when applied in meditation gave rise to a large number of spiritual practices whose sole aim is to “discover” one’s immortal-divine and finally in deeper meditation, to experience the mergence of one’s divinity with the DIVINE. Over time, pantheistic energy has evolved into personified panentheistic  gods. 

Where is AV’s sting ? All meditative practices derived from the east, incorporate various ways of emptying the mind. The ways may be mantras ( included now are those with Christian words ! ), following ones breath, a riddle ( what is the sound of one hand clapping ??), mindfulness, etc, all of which are accompanied with a myriad of neural phenomena ( calming of amygdala, alpha/theta sleep waves, endogenous dopamine causing addiction and visualization, activation of temporal causing out-of-body sensation ) and the most significant of which is that the “emptying “ process in screening of all incoming information from the frontal lobe causes the parietal lobe to go offline. The parietal lobe gives you your position in 3-dimensional space and also gives you a sense of your body-boundary.  All these are lost when the parietal goes off-line and the phenomena is the experience of “universalism” when the meditators are indivisibly one with the universe and the universe is one with them.  AV philosophy finds its “reality” in this neural phenomena. This euphoric experience in combination with some of the other neural phenomena described above are given names like nirvana, awakening, cosmic consciousness, satori and lately Christian contemplatives call it being in the presence of God or intimacy with God. 

AV and non-dual was the “awakened” experience of Buddha in meditation. His eyes were opened, all polar opposites suddenly vanished. Initially, Buddha was deeply troubled by endless rounds of life and death, reincarnation, his karma, etc, but suddenly in meditation he experienced the euphoria, the disappearance of all polar opposites, he experienced the “liberty” that there was no” life and no death”, “no good and no evil”, “no heaven and no hell” and “no God and no Satan” and consequently there was no karma and no further reincarnation as the polar opposites of good/evil and life/death had cesaed in Buddha's perception.

Here is the ultimate danger…… that when experiencing  av or non-dual,.... in the instant that the altered mind  denies evil, it also denies good. In the moment that the Devil is denied, God is also denied. The Bible describes a raging controversy between God and Satan which will reach an ultimate resolution when God ultimately destroys evil.  AV is the antithesis of Biblical truth in that it denies the God of the Bible and His ultimate destruction and victory over evil! This is the hidden sting of av, all eastern meditation and even their Christian derivatives,  as they are all based on av or nd.

So Satan's lie of "knowing good and evil" does not mean the discernment of good and evil, but that in the av and nd state of mind, as gods, one transcends beyond good and evil by the denial of both good and evil at the same time, with no sin and no consequence.  This strong delusion is romanticized as “love” and “freedom”.  !

AV was incorporated into Catholic meditational practices ( Click R#01 -03 )  and has now evolved into the modern Contemplative Tradition of the genre of principally Father Thomas Merton ( Contemplative Prayer ), Father Thomas Keating ( Centering Prayer ), Father Richard Rohr ( Non-Dual Christianity ), etc. Leading men of the Protestant faiths, authors, speakers, educators are promoting the ideas and practices of the modern Contemplative  Tradition.  Their names are Rick Warren, Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Brian McClaren, Leonard Sweet and 100 +  others, a list of which may be found on this link. 

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=8359&pfstyle=wp . Renovare is one major Catholic/Protestant platform promoting the av of the modern Contemplative Tradition.

The Hegelian Dialectic ( HD ) is a method of resolving disagreement in which some proposition (thesis) is opposed by another proposition (antithesis) with a resolution by a higher-level proposition (synthesis) or fusion of thesis and antithesis. This is how lawyers, bankers, regulators, philosophers, politicians, etc think. 

Can we apply HD to Biblical truth versus error ?  No, as we will end up with a synthesis of truth and error that is neither truth or error. 

The “kings of the earth” are the foremost practitioners of Hegelian Dialectics and are now drawn deep into benefits of meditation. Medically, it is accepted as therapy for a vast range of ills by the likes of Harvard, western ( UK and Australia ) hospitals and psychotherapists . Socially it is cool. Politically, it is believed that it will bring us into global consciousness and world peace as stated in the aspirations of the first International Yoga Day just a few days ago. The biggest and richest of companies and nations rely on it for stress management and creativity. Meditation has claimed Steve Jobs as their poster boy.  In the sphere of religion, where it is felt that since the “presence of God” is with all man and all faiths, we would be guilty before God not to unite.  “I saw three unclean spirits like frogs; ... they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Revelation 16:13, 14.

Satan’s lies in Eden of man’s inner-immortal-divinity, his awakening ( eyes open ) and realization of his inner-godhood and his transcendence beyond good and evil , all these are seamless features of the modern Catholic Contemplative practices which have taken deep root in Protestantism and have turned Satan’s lies into “experiential truth”. 

Will the emerging church and contemplative Christianity be also seduced by the ultimate deceptive development  of Satan's original lie in Eden and end up falling away from God ?

Read more on how the false belief and experience of the "immortal soul" through meditation is uniting CHristianity and all other religion Archive A #02