Forgiveness is the Cornerstone of Christianity

Say, Today is the Second Sunday of Easter. We are moving to the tail end of the Gospels for the current ecclesiastical year. I will start winding down on my Bible discourses. I have been writing weekly discourses for about three or more years now. It is only appropriate that I call it a day soon, as I am now retreating into the hermitage of my reclusive Jesuit retirement. There is probably nothing much more I can add to my discourses. It is getting to a stage anyway, where anything that I further write will be at such a high transcendental spiritual level that it might be beyond ordinary understanding. Might be best to reserve such type of discussions to a one to one basis. My door will always be open to all in this regard. I have no secrets to hide like some Chinese kungfu masters, who will not teach all they know! Today's First Reading is from Acts 2:42-47; the Second Reading is from 1 Peter 1:3-9 and the Gospel Reading is from John 20:19-31. The First Reading is about how after Jesus' death, the Christian Jewish faithful lived together as one community and owned everything in common. In a sense, they were sort of 'communists'! From a strict spiritual point of view it was a practical good-intentioned attempt that failed, just as the Church has failed and is failing to break down and eradicate self-consciousness, selfcentredness and self-righteousness that is the bane of the Adam; consequence of the acquisition of an 'Ego' from the temptation of the 'Tree of Knowledge' through the guile of Satan the Serpent, the committing of the 'Original Sin' that led to his separation from God, that led to his and Eve's exile, from eternal beings to life as mortal beings, 'ascending and descending' Jacob's Ladder in perpetuity. All such worldly attempts to extricate or eradicate the Ego' of 'Self' are guaranteed to fail. Because as Jesus pointed out to Nicodemus in John 3:6 - "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." If you analyse in detail, scientifically or philosophically, logically and rationally, well, at the very least, spiritually, you will be quite amenable to my slightly unorthodox view that we are all deluded Christians if we think that there can ever be a God as an 'object' or the 'Deity' when there is an 'Ego' or and 'I' as the 'subject' or 'seer'. You see, if we, as 'Adam', went back in time, before we 'became' mortal beings, before the Fall of Adam, before the Original Sin, back to our original state as eternal spirit sons of God, suddenly there is God; or should I say, suddenly there God is! And, there is only God! So, there is in fact no Holy Trinity! God can never be three, from God's point of view. There is only God! Anything else would be a 'graven image'! But however God can be three or three in one, in a worldly sense, as a matter of worldly perception, because God will accept the worldly 'fiction' on our part; just as we would excuse our children for believing in Santa Claus when there is in fact no Santa Claus! It is just a good intentioned conspiracy on our part as worldly parents. It is just constructive fiction! In mathematical terms, it is like saying, let the unknown object provisionally be 3X! It is just what we would call in spiritual terms, a convenient meditation formulae, mantra, mandala, chanting point or contemplative device. It is like rosary beads or the Cross, holy grail, the 'Arc of the Covenant' or the 'fish' symbol. It is only a provisional vehicle to help us transcend from the worldly to the 'spiritually profound'. That is what salvation is in simple terms - the transcendence from the worldly to the 'spiritually profound'. I say 'spiritually profound' because had I used the term 'heaven', I would be ascribing to the 'spiritually profound' a sense of equivalence to another 'world', putting it in the same genre as the 'worldly'. But the 'spiritually profound' is beyond worldly human conceivability! Accordingly, if you are still on track with me, when we are saved, nobody is saved, because nothing 'worldly' is being saved! Because in the 'spiritually profound' there is only God! All else that we worldly see, perceive or conceive are just an 'apparition' or a 'mirage'. It is like a 'dream'!

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Our 'ascending and descending' Jacob's Ladder, is not just Jacob's Dream, it is also our dream! The 'dream' is very real however! You will surely agree that our dreams our very real in our experience of it, when we are caught up and embroiled within our dreaming! Our reality, alive as human beings, is similarly very real in our experiencing of the virtual reality of it. But it is only the dream of our eternal spirit! You see the ultimate reality of the 'spiritually profound' is being caught up in the web of deceit that the false 'Ego'' Self' is trapped in, whereby the inversion which is the dreaming is taken to be the worldly reality by the 'Ego' 'Self'! Have I lost you? In other words, in the 'spiritually profound' there is only God. Once you have an 'Ego' 'Self' you are caught up in the Jacob's Dream. The 'Ego' 'Self' is caught up within the 'Dreaming' that is the human world. The 'spiritually profound' is outside of the 'Dreaming' that is the human world. The 'Ego''Self' that is you only exists outside of you! In fact the human world only exists outside of you. In fact in 'Dreaming' terms, it therefore exists only within your 'mind'. Trust me neither the world nor anything else you see, perceive or conceive, exists outside of your 'mind'! Otherwise Jacob was falsely dreaming! 'You' that is the 'Ego' 'Self' that perceives who you are, only exists outside of you because 'You' exists because of the world around you, because of how you see the world as perceiving you. When you attempt to seek your 'You' or the 'Ego' 'Self' that is you within you, it is not there! You go beneath the skin, to the muscles, to the organs, to the blood vessels, anywhere within you, none of the components have an 'ego'. I have used a small 'e' sort of 'ego' to emphasise the point, that the 'Ego' 'Self' is in the 'mind' But even with the 'mind', it does not have an 'ego' within the 'mind'! The 'mind' when it has an 'Ego' 'Self', it does so by 'projecting' an 'Ego' 'Self' outside of the mind, projection of the composite body that is 'you', whereby the 'Ego' 'Self' is greater than the total sum of the individual components of your body, including your 'mind'. That is why you can only find God within you, for within you is the only place on Earth where there is no 'Ego' 'Self'! That is why Jesus said to the Pharisees in Luke 17:20-21 - "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." So, salvation is not of worldly beings, regardless of what you are told. As sons of Adam, our salvation is the salvation of Adam, the redemption of the Original Sin, the reversion of of our deluded inverted 'Dreaming'. Salvation is therefore of the soul or the spirit! Not of the 'Ego' 'Self'! And voila! This leads us to the Second Reading in Peter 1:3-9 - '3 Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 4 and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you ..... 8 You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; 9 and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.' Outside of the Four Gospels, and even then trust only the words (in red type in the Catholic Bible) of Jesus, I have little confidence in the rest of the New Testament. I make a slight exception in the case of 1 Peter. This is because the purported author is Peter the Apostle. In contrast, St Paul by the way was and is not an Apostle. He was born long after the death of Jesus! Be even more cautious when reading the Epistles of St Paul! Even then I have my doubts whether St Peter was or is the author of 1 Peter. If St Peter could write, the Gospel of Peter would make up 90% of the New Testament. Despite my reservation, today's Second Reading does make it clear that salvation is of the 'soul or 'spirit'. Accordingly, when you refer to the earlier preamble in the Second Reading - 'the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead', please bear this in mind. Further, the Second Reading also points out quite clearly that 'faith' is about 'salvation of the souls' i.e. salvation of the 'spirit', in other words, that faith to be true, must be 'spiritual faith'! This takes us to the Gospel Reading and about Doubting Thomas who refused to believe until he could worldly see for himself, as in 'seeing is believing'. In John 20:29 Jesus retorted - "Thomas,

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because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." To fully understand this qualifying statement by Jesus we have to refer to what Jesus said in John 9:39 to the Pharisees who doubted that he had made a blind man see - "For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not (worldly) see may (spiritually) see, and those who (worldly) see may be made (spiritually) blind." Practitioners pay scant regard to this exhortation of Jesus. So, take careful note. Christian faith is not a worldly faith or religion by a worldly 'Ego' 'Self' dependent on what that worldly 'Ego' 'Self' can worldly possibly see or believe in. Christian faith is spiritual faith which requires one to be "born of water and the Spirit" (what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:5). Spiritual faith therefore only arises when one is (and as) a man (i.e. born of water) and has been baptised or awakened to the eternal spirit son of God in him (i.e. born of the Spirit)! It is only at that stage that he can enter the kingdom of God within him (refer to my earlier discussion on this point above), for he can then 'not worldly see and may spiritually see' - i.e. one "who have not seen and yet have believed." That is when he sees from 'within', in the spirit son of God in him, where there is no 'Ego' of 'Self', which he has conversely, should or when he sees 'without' of him. For some inexplicable reason, the main thrust in Christian tenets is that of 'love and compassion'. At the theological soteriological or maxim level this is indeed correct. For the Twin Commandments say that we have to (1) Love God with all our heart, mind and soul and (2) Love our neighbours as we love ourselves. But theory is far and distant from spiritual practice. For Christianity is 1% theological base and 99% spiritual practice. Spiritual Practice is all about 'forgiveness'. In practice, most of what we indulge in is prayer, not prayer as in vain repetitions so that we think that God may hear us more for our many words or standing in churches or on the corner of the streets like public exhibition or demonstration, so the public or others may see or bear witness to our religious rigour, ritual and piety (refer to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:5-7 in this regard), but prayer as in the Lord's Prayer as and that Jesus has taught us, as in private contemplation. If you study the Lord's Prayer you will definitely discern that it is all about seeking 'forgiveness'. So when Jesus returned eight days after his death he breathed (ponder on this point carefully and understand what form Jesus appeared as after his death, such that his modus operandi is now by or through breathing) on his disciples and said at John 20:22-23 - "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." This is like a rejoinder to the Lord's Prayer; but this time, when it came to actual practice, note however that the disciples now also had the benefit of being blessed, awakened or baptised by the Holy Spirit! But note that the spiritual practice in this 'after death' pronouncement by Christ is again about 'forgiveness'! Note there are two limbs to this pronouncement. The 1st limb is sort of prescriptive and the 2nd limb is sort of proscriptive. The 'long and short' of the pronouncement is that, taking it from your victim's point of view, if he 'forgives' you, you are forgiven; if he does not forgive you, you are not forgiven. So, your sin or trespass is not redeemed if your victim does not forgive you. It is not discharged! You will continue to reap what you sow according to the Immutable Law of Cause and Effect. There is a misconception that God will forgive us for the sins that we have committed or commit against our victims. That is misunderstanding the Lord's Prayer totally! For, God can only forgive us for our personal trespass against him, which is the Original Sin (separation from God) that we inherited from Adam. God 'forgives' us in the sense that he will welcome us back home as the Lost Prodigal (Spirit) Son, because of his unconditional love for us as his spirit sons. Our trespass of the Original Sin of separation from God was in and by our 'spirit'! But in taking us back, as we are, as 'sinners' in our 'Ego' 'Self', for committing sins against our victims in our 'Ego' 'Self', God has not in fact forgiven our sins as our 'Ego' Self', in that regard. That is strictly a matter between our victims and us, in our state of'Dreaming', under the Immutable Law of Cause and Effect. If that were not so Jesus would not have said that we will definitely reap what we sow. Do not forget that our victims themselves, in the 'spirit', are also children of God! God loves all his lost sheep equally! Now, looking at the pronouncement from our perspective, we should therefore forgive those who trespass against us and conversely and accordingly we should personally seek forgiveness from our victims! Only our victims can forgive and absolve us of our sins against them! We cannot cheat by using an intermediary or a surrogate. That is what Jesus meant when he said

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that we have to personally carry our own 'Cross'! Christianity is not an 'open' ticket to 'get out of jail' (the jail that is Jacob's Ladder) free! The other important factor to note is that it is our eternal spirit son of God, the Lost Prodigal Son, the 'lost sheep' that is returning home. In our eternal spirit son of God we are not and can never be tainted by the sins of the sons of Adam, the false 'Ego' 'Self' in us, the 'goat' in us, that is caught up in the 'Dreaming', that is the 'ascending and descending' of Jacob's Ladder. An eternal spirit is pure and a perfect clone of the Spirit Father. None of the components comprised in its 'eternality' can ever be tainted by sin. That would be contrary to what 'eternity' means and encapsulates. The 'Dreaming' has therefore no effect on the eternal spirit Dreamer. Otherwise it will not be a 'dream'! The Devil's witchcraft is in deluding the eternal spirit son of God that it is in fact its false worldly 'Ego' 'Self' enwrapped in the 'Dreaming'! That is what 'Judgment Day' is all about! It is about separating the eternal 'lost sheep' that is lost within the mortal worldly 'goat' Ego' 'Self' son of man. Many think that Jesus is the 'stone' that is rejected that has become the 'cornerstone' (refer Matthew 21:42). That may be so, and it does sound persuasive and compelling. But what is a 'cornerstone' or 'keystone' depends on what is being built. It is defined and determined by the context. In terms of what we hope to build by way of 'prayer', by way of 'salvation of our soul' and spirit, the 'keystone' or 'cornerstone' is 'forgiveness'. When you are yet to be baptised in the spirit, i.e. you have only been baptised by water, then the Lord's Prayer is adequate. But when you have received the Holy Spirit, when you have been baptised by the spirit or when you have awakened to the spirit son of God in you, i.e. awakened to the 'Lost Prodigal Son' in you, and you want to return home to the Spirit Father, you must then (1) forgive your transgressors, oppressors or perpetrators and (2) seek forgiveness from your victims. Or else, you will still have to expiate your karmic consequences by reaping what you have sown. Do not reject this stone called 'forgiveness'. Attempting to seek forgiveness through surrogacy is a form of 'rejection'. Rise to the spirit! Be a man! Seek forgiveness from your victims! Love and God Bless! Chuan 27/4/14

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