Category: psychology

The Two Deaths in Mystical Christianity

Bryce Haymond5 Comments

I think that Christianity may have conflated Jesus's mystical experience of an ego death, perhaps at the time of his baptism when the "heavens opened," in which his individual psychological self "died" and he was was "reborn" of Spirit, or "raised up" (resurrected) to his identity in Christ consciousness (a consciousness of nondual union in God/Reality), with his biological death on the cross. These two deaths seem to have been conflated at some point, resulting in a supernatural conception of the resurrection.

David Bentley Hart on "How Can We Know God?"

Bryce HaymondLeave a comment

David Bentley Hart (b. 1965) is described as "an American polymath whose work encompasses a wide range of subjects and genres. A prolific essayist, he has written on topics as diverse as art, literature, religion, philosophy, film, baseball, and politics. He is also a writer of fiction." Religiously speaking, he is a "convert from high-church Anglicanism [...]

Qualia, Consciousness, Christ, and Cosmos

Bryce Haymond6 Comments

What is qualia? What is the source of individual instances of subjective conscious experience, like seeing the redness of an apple? Where does the redness come from? I don't know, but here are some ideas. Energy in our environment impinges upon our sense organs causing a cascade of electrochemical reactions and nerve impulses that are [...]

Paul/Silas? our Super Hero Identity vs. our Alter/Secret Identity

Bryce Haymond1 Comment

I wonder if Silas/Silvanus could be Paul's nickname for his own alter ego, the "Saul" of his prior persecuting life, his shadow side, his human side, his "sinful" side, prior to perhaps taking a "new name" of Paul after his conversion experience.

Reconstructing the narrative surrounding the origins of the Book of Mormon

Bryce Haymond16 Comments

It's taken more time to write about this reconstruction, because it is perhaps a more sensitive subject, and more complex, than any I have written before about Mormonism or Christianity, yes, even more so than Jesus or Joseph Smith (which might be an indication that something is off-kilter). The Salt Lake City based Latter-day Saints take the Book of Mormon very seriously as a holy text, as scripture revealed by God, similar to the Bible, and perhaps even more important than the Bible. The Book of Mormon is one thing that makes them unique, their own testament of the divinity of "Jesus Christ," which they believe is also evidence of the unique prophethood of Joseph Smith and the divinity of the church he organized as God's "true church." But I think the truth may be much more nuanced.

Is God a Male Human, or Two Males, or maybe Three? Do I hear Four? Or is it More?

Bryce HaymondLeave a comment

Thinking of God as a male human(s) out in the universe somewhere seems to be a primitive, magical, supernatural, and archaic conception of the Divine, literalizing the pronouns of "He" and "Him," and in the Christian tradition of "Father" and "Son." I've written about this specifically at least once before, but it's worth discussing more.

A Psychological and Mystical Interpretation of the Myth of Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden

Bryce Haymond11 Comments

I think the story of Adam & Eve is a mythological allegory describing humanity's "fall" of consciousness into the dualities of self-awareness, subject/object relationships, and the opposites of existence. This is symbolized in the partaking of the "tree" of knowledge of good and evil, i.e. dualities.

A Map of Reality

Bryce HaymondLeave a comment

Humans want to know what's real, what's reality, what's true. We have explored the outside world and our inner worlds for millennia, and we seem to still not be sure what is absolutely real. I think the issue might be that what is really real is not something that can be seen or communicated through language at our dualistic level of perception. We have to transcend duality experientially and consciously in order to know the "really real," sometimes called the Nondual, the One, the Real, the Absolute, or God. Perhaps only at that level of consciousness may we come to truly know what is ultimately Real and True.

1 Corinthians 15 BHT, Paul’s Earliest Witness of the Resurrection into Christ Consciousness, the “Gospel”

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An addition to the BHT, containing the earliest account of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ in the New Testament, where Paul describes his witness of the resurrection and what it means to be resurrected into Christ consciousness. This seems to be an excellent summary of the Christian Gospel, or "good news," but it is something which I think we've generally misunderstood in Christianity for centuries. I feel that this is one of the most important translations of the BHT that I have been given the Grace to work out yet—yet not I. I was in tears by the end.