Alan Watts Opens Up About Religion (thought provoking video)

many people do not know at all how we Westerners got the Bible, we got the Bible thanks to the Catholic Church and they got hold of the books of the Old Testament, which even in the time of Christ had not been finally decided by the Jews the Jews They did not close the Old Testament Canon until 100 AD. more or less at the Synod of Jamnia and then they finally decided what the canonical books of the Hebrew scriptures were and incorporated them into the Masoretic text, the oldest copy of which dates back to the 10th to early 10th century AD.

The books to be included in the New Testament were not finally decided until 382 AD. again at the Synod of Rome under Pope Damasus, so it was the Catholic church that promulgated the Bible and said we are giving you these scriptures under our Authority and by the authority of the informal tradition that has existed among Us since the beginning inspired by the Holy Spirit to historically receive the Bible about the churches, say so and the Catholic Church insists therefore. that the church collectively speaking under the supposed guidance of the Holy Spirit has the authority to interpret the Bible and you can take that or leave it.

Hindus believe that the Vedas are divinely revealed and inspired as fervently as any Christian or any Muslim Jew. They believe that the Quran is divinely inspired and some Buddhists believe that their sutras are also of divine or rather Buddhist origin. The Japanese believe that the ancient Shinto texts are also of divine origin and who should be judged so if the church says the Bible. It's true, ultimately everything depends on you: are you going to believe the church or not? So I really won't deny anyone's right to have these opinions. In fact, you may believe that the Bible is literally true and that it was actually dictated by God to Moses and the prophets and the apostles and that may be your opinion and you are free to hold it.

I do not agree with you. I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a sense in which the Bible is divinely inspired, but since inspiration always comes through a human vehicle, it is likely to be distorted by that vehicle; In other words, I am speaking to you through a sound system and it is the only one available now if there is any problem with this sound system, whatever the truth may be. If I tell you it will be distorted, my voice will be distorted and you may confuse the meaning of what I said now, therefore, everyone who receives divine inspiration and I am using it in a very vague way, but anyone who receives it will express within the limits of the language you know and by language here I don't mean just English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Sanskrit, I mean language in the sense of what kind of terms are available to you, what kind of

religion

you were raised in , my opinion is that Jesus of Nazareth was a human being like Buddha, like SRI Ramakrishna, like Ramana Maharshi, etc., who early in his life had a colossal experience of what we call cosmic consciousness.

Now you don't have to be any particular type of

religion

to get this experience. Anyone at any time likes to Fall in Love to a greater or lesser degree, but it is found all over the world and when it hits you, you know it, sometimes it comes after a long practice of meditations and spiritual discipline, sometimes it comes for no reason whatsoever. No one can determine, we say. It's the grace of God that this overwhelming conviction arises that you've mistaken your identity, that what you

thought

I

thought

was just old Alan Watts was completely superficial, so you can understand very well how people to whom this happens become They feel genuinely inspired because it is very often accompanied by an extremely warm feeling because you see the Divine and the eyes of everyone else.

When Kabir, a great Hindu Muslim mystic, was a very old man he used to look at the people around him and say to whom should I preach? because he saw the Beloved. By all accounts the traditions of Asia, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and so on are full of miraculous stories and we take them in stride, we don't think there is any sign of anything in particular except psychic power and I'm actually a little scared. of the growing interest in psychic power because that is what I call psychotechnics and we have made such a mess with ordinary techniques that only God knows what we could do if we took hold of psychotechnical techniques and started raising people from the dead and prolonging life is unbearable throughout the answer to the story of Miracles is simply imagine that you are God now what happened the apostles did not quite understand the point they were amazed by the miracles of Jesus they worshiped him like people worship gurus and it is you I know how far can you go if you have been in the land of the Guru and then the Christian said: "Okay, okay, Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, but let it all stop there, no one else, so what What happened was that Jesus was pedestalized and put on a pedestal. a position that was safe upstairs so that his problematic experience of Cosmic Consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance and those who had this experience and expressed it during those times when the church had political power were almost invariably persecuted guardian Bruno was burned at the stake John Scotus origin of his excommunicated Meister eckhart The theses were condemned and so on some mystics got their way because they used cautious language but you see what happens if you pedestalize Jesus, you strangle the gospel at birth and It has been a tradition in both the Catholic Church and Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated gospel.

The gospel means good news, and I can't for the life of me think what good news about the gospel is normally conveyed here. the revelation of God in Christ in Jesus and we are supposed to follow his life and example without having the only advantage of being the son of the boss born of a virgin knowing that he is the son of God having the power of Miracles knowing that it is basically impossible to kill him , that in the end he will rise again and we are asked to take up our cross and follow him when we don't know that about ourselves at all, so what happens is we are set free, therefore a gospel that is in fact an impossible religion is impossible to follow the path of Christ many are Christians they admitted it I am a miserable sinner I am far below the example of Christ but you realize the more you say that the better you are because what happened was that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue and therefore Therefore you will always be aware of your defects and, the more defects you feel, the more aware you will be, in other words, of the vast Abyss between Christ and yourself, so you confess and, if you have a good loved one, understanding Confessor will call you my daughter , you know that you have sinned very seriously, but you must realize that the love of God and Our Lord is infinite and that, naturally, you are forgiven and you know that you have committed murder and robbed a bank and fornicated and so on the priest is perfectly patient and calm, well, you feel terrible before the love of God.

I've hurt Jesus, saddened the Holy Spirit, etc., but in the back of your mind you know you're going to do it. once again you will not be able to avoid it you will try but there is always a growing feeling of guilt this is the Christianity of most people now there is a much more subtle Christianity of theologians, mystics and philosophers, but it is not what preached from the pulpit, what would be the true gospel, the real good news is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, but that he was a powerful Son of God who came to open everyone's eyes to the fact that he also They are and this is perfectly clear if you go to chapter 10 of Saint John verse 30.

There is the passage where Jesus says that I and the father are one. There are some people who are not close disciples around him, they are horrified and immediately take stones to stone him, he says many good works I have shown you from the father and for which of these you robbed me and they said for a good work we are not stoning you but for blasphemy because being man become God and he answered, is it not written in your law? I have said that you are gods. He is quoting Psalm 82. Is it not written in your law?

I have said that you are gods if God called gods those to whom he gave his word and you can. Do not deny the Scriptures, how can you say that I blaspheme because I said that I am a child of God? Well, there it is all in a nutshell, because if you read the King James Bible that came down with the angel, you will see italics in front of these. words Son of God the Son of God because I said I am the Son of God and most people think that italics are for emphasis, they are not italics indicate words interpolated by translators, you won't find that in Greek in Greek. says a child of God, so here it seems perfectly clear to me that Jesus has God in the back of his mind that this is not something peculiar to him, so when he says "I am the way", no one comes to the father but through me .

I am this I is the Divine in us what in Hebrew would be called ruach Adonai so the point is that the ruach is the divine in the creature by virtue of which we are children or of the nature of God manifestations of the Divine this The discovery It is the gospel, which is the good news, but this has been perpetually repressed throughout the history of Western religion because all Western religions have taken the form of heavenly monarchies, which is not the religion of Jesus, which was the realization of divine sonship, but the religion about Jesus that pedestalizes him and that says that only this man of all the children of woman was divine and you had better recognize him completely convinced before examining the doctrines of any other religion, which It is the superior religion and that is why it becomes a strange religion.

Just as he has turned Jesus into a monster, into an unnatural man, he claims to be unique without realizing that what he teaches would be much more credible if he were truly Catholic, that is, he reaffirmed the truths that have been known since time immemorial and that have appeared. In all the great cultures of the world, if we can see this, Jesus speaks not from the situation of a historical deus ex machina, a kind of extraordinary, strange event, but it is a voice that joins other voices that have said in all the places. and time wake up lady wake up and understand who you are you are not scolding any rational demonstration of the right way to behave is going to inspire people with love something else must happen I feel that then you will see that it is enormously important that churches stop talking the shops become centers of contemplation what is contemplation contemplum is what is done in the temple one does not come to the temple to chat but to be still and know that I am God and that is why if the Christian religion is the gospel of Christ it means anything instead of just being one of the forgotten religions along with our Serious and Mithras, we should see Christ as the great mystic in the correct sense of the word mystic, not someone who has all kinds of magical powers and understands spirits and so a mystic strictly speaking is one who brings about union with God, by whatever name I may call it, this seems to me to be the crux and message of the Gospel summed up in the prayer of Jesus which a John records while speaking about his disciples. praying that they may be one. just as your father and I are one so that we may all be one, oh realize this divine sonship or basic identity of Oneness with the Eternal energy of the universe and the love that moves the Sun and other stars.