rick strongitharm wrote:
> I'd forgotten how important it is to the Christian version of God, that humans not
> live for ever.
There is still, Rick, the esoteric tradition of the Diamond Body,
an idea borrowed by Christianity from Tantric Buddhism.
We find this idea reappearing in Alchemist writings:
"When a man undertakes to create something," wrote Paracelsus,
"he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work
that he desires to create flows into him." In order that it may be
expressed, that it may resound, the Word must be made flesh;
immortality must be incarnated outwardly in gold and inwardly in
the development of a subtle body within this ordinary body: the
"glorious body" or "diamond body" [or] the "spiritual body " of the
Christian.[1]
My focus here is neither on Christianity nor Buddhism, but on one
cultural antecedent of of avant-garde transhumanism.
Bob
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:38 MDT