The Psychic Jesus vs the Pneumatic Christ

"They (Valentinians) confess with their mouth that they believe in one Lord Jesus Christ but in their minds and hearts they divide him".

- Irenaeus

Valentinians indeed believed in two different Jesus Christs. A psychic one sent by the Demiurge, Jehovah, the God of the Jews and a pneumatic one sent by the un-knowable Holy Father from the above Pleroma.

This dual concept of the Valentinians perfectly explains many hard to resolve problems residing at the heart of the Bible. For example -  The Jesus in Matthew teaches his followers to completely observe the Torah Law till the last stroke of the prophecy is fulfilled but Paul completely contradicts this and says people are only saved by grace and apart from the works of the Torah. Christians often go mum when they are asked this specific question. Scriptures cannot contradict each other because they are the true words of a God and it would mean God is a person who makes contradictory claims  which would be blasphemous to assert. 

The above problem can be easily reconciled with the understanding that the Jesus who walked on earth with the twelve apostles was a completely different person from the Jesus who appeared to Saint Paul of Tarsus on his road to Damascus. Without understanding this basic truth the Ebionites and the Jewish Christians run a huge polemic against the innocent Saint Paul and make him a villain of Jesus of Nazareth while the actual truth is that Paul is basing his Gospel on an entirely different Jesus Christ who never ever walked on earth.

Ebionites, Jewish Christians and many famous scholars, thinkers and philosophers of all ages have accused Saint Paul as the first arch-heretic and are angry against him because he never gave any authority or any concerns whatsoever to the Jesus who walked on earth.

The Ebionite Home Page

Paul placed his authority over the authority of Jesus Christ because the Jesus of Paul was completely different from the Jesus who walked on earth with the other twelve apostles. Paul being a pneumatic is only concerned about the pneumatic Christ and his teachings and not with the teachings of the psychic Jesus of Nazareth who walked on earth. When the Bible is interpreted in this way all the problems between Paul and Jesus Christ of Nazareth and all the problems between the Jewish Christians and the Roman Catholic Church will be resolved quite easily.

The Pneumatic Christ flew down from the above Pleroma and entered inside the body of the psychic Jesus at the time of his Baptism and flew out of his body at the time of his crucifixion and was mocking at the Pharisees by sitting on the branch of a tree in not recognizing the one whom they were piercing. When the earthly Jesus was dead after his crucifixion at the hands of the Pharisees and when his dead body was placed inside a tomb and when his soul was already placed at the right hand of Jehovah how could he resurrect all by himself while he was a dead man lying inside lifeless inside a dark tomb? The fact is that it was the pneumatic Christ who raised the body of the earthly Jesus from death and took the psychic and the spiritual elements from his dead body and appeared in the likeness of the flesh to all the apostles including Saint Paul as the post resurrected Christ. The post resurrected Christ was not the same Jesus as the one who walked on earth before he was nailed to the cross. 

Psychic Christ gives salvation to Catholics, Protestants, Jewish Christians and the countless many other sects of Christianity and the Pneumatic Christ on the other hand gives salvation to the pneumatic Gentiles and to the followers of the Gospel of Saint Paul of Tarsus. In this way there is no contradiction between the Gospels of the twelve apostles who followed the teachings of the Psychic Jesus and the Gospel of Paul who followed the teachings of the Pneumatic Christ.

Five compromises which transformed Christianity into a world beater

With out the efforts of Saint Paul Christianity today would have ended up just like an another sect of Judaism confined only to a small state something like Israel. If not for the charismatic envision of Paul and his acquaintance with the Gentiles, in fully understanding the mindsets of the Gentiles, in clearly knowing what they like and what they don't, I'm afraid with out Paul it would have been impossible for the other apostles of Jesus to gain Gentile converts.

1. Gentile converts need not have to follow the Laws of the Old Testament. 

No Gentile would have converted to Christianity if Christians had enforced strict Jewish Laws on the Gentile souls because the whole concept of a divine law which human beings have to strictly follow to avoid a God's wrath was an alien concept to them and they would have never liked it at all.

2. Gentile converts need not have to undergo circumcision.

If the Jewish Christians just like Saint Peter had insisted that even Gentiles must undergo circumcision in order to become Christians I am sure Gentiles would have distanced themselves from Christianity.

3. Heavenly redemption by ascension

Every Gentiles eyes and ears would have lit up when Paul says this in Corinthians because Gentiles loved apocalyptic literature and ascension to various heavens.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven. (2 Corinthians 12:2)

4. Christianity as a mystery religion.

Gentiles loved those religions having a mystery surrounding them and many Gentiles of that time were initiated into Dionysian, Orphic, Eleusinian, Osiris and Mithraic mysteries. Paul by transforming the human Jesus into a heavenly father preached his Gospel with a salvation theme similar to the mystery religions and guess what Gentiles loved his Gospel more than anything else.

5. Jesus as the first born God.

No Gentile would have worshiped a human as God or in other words no Gentile would have worshiped Jesus if he was just a human being without giving salvation to the Gentiles in return no matter how divine his parables were or no matter what miracles he made. Paul very well knew this hence he established Jesus as the first born God just as the pagan sun god Helios-Mithras.

One can see that in all the five points which led to the success of Christianity Paul's influence is punched on every one of them.

Empirical evidence of human body levitation

This is one of the yogic powers mentioned in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

3.40 By the mastery over udana, the upward flowing prana vayu, there is a cessation of contact with mud, water, thorns, and other such objects, and there ensues the rising or levitation of the body.
(udana jayat jala panka kantaka adisu asangah utkrantih cha)

Atheists will continue to be skeptical about the existence of the supernatural despite numerous empirical evidences like this and they will convert to theism once they experience the supernatural all by themselves.

Even Saint Teresa of Avila was lifted from the ground.

"A rapture is absolutely irresistible; whilst union, inasmuch as we are then on our own ground, may be hindered, though that resistance be painful and violent; it is, however, almost always impossible. But rapture, for the most part, is irresistible. It comes, in general, as a shock, quick and sharp, before you can collect your thoughts, or help yourself in any way, and you see and feel it as a cloud, or a strong eagle rising upwards, and carrying you away on its wings. 

I repeat it: you feel and see yourself carried away, you know not whither. For though we feel how delicious it is, yet the weakness of our nature makes us afraid at first, and we require a much more resolute and courageous spirit than in the previous states, in order to risk everything, come what may, and to abandon ourselves into the hands of God, and go willingly whither we are carried, seeing that we must be carried away, however painful it may be; and so trying is it, that I would very often resist, and exert all my strength, particularly at those times when the rapture was coming on me in public. I did so, too, very often when I was alone, because I was afraid of delusions. Occasionally I was able, by great efforts, to make a slight resistance; but afterwards I was worn out, like a person who had been contending with a strong giant; at other times it was impossible to resist at all: my soul was carried away, and almost always my head with it,—I had no power over it,—and now and then the whole body as well, so that it was lifted up from the ground. 

This has not happened to me often: once, however, it took place when we were all together in choir, and I, on my knees, on the point of communicating. It was a very sore distress to me; for I thought it a most extraordinary thing, and was afraid it would occasion much talk; so I commanded the nuns—for it happened after I was made Prioress—never to speak of it. But at other times, the moment I felt that our Lord was about to repeat the act, and once, in particular, during a sermon,—it was the feast of our house, some great ladies being present,—I threw myself on the ground; then the nuns came around me to hold me; but still the rapture was observed. 

I made many supplications to our Lord, that He would be pleased to give me no more of those graces which were outwardly visible; for I was weary of living under such great restraint, and because His Majesty could not bestow such graces on me without their becoming known. It seems that, of His goodness, He has been pleased to hear my prayer; for I have never been enraptured since. It is true that it was not long ago. It seemed to me, when I tried to make some resistance, as if a great force beneath my feet lifted me up. I know of nothing with which to compare it; but it was much more violent than the other spiritual visitations, and I was therefore as one ground to pieces; for it is a great struggle, and, in short, of little use, whenever our Lord so wills it. There is no power against His power.  At other times He is pleased to be satisfied when He makes us see that He is ready to give us this grace, and that it is not He that withholds it. Then, when we resist it out of humility, He produces those very effects which would have resulted if we had fully consented to it. 

The effects of rapture are great: one is that the mighty power of our Lord is manifested; and as we are not strong enough, when His Majesty wills it, to control either soul or body, so neither have we any power over it; but, whether we like it or not, we see that there is one mightier than we are, that these graces are His gifts, and that of ourselves we can do nothing whatever; and humility is deeply imprinted in us. And further, I confess that it threw me into great fear, very great indeed at first; for when I saw my body thus lifted up from the earth, how could I help it? Though the spirit draws it upwards after itself, and that with great sweetness, if unresisted, the senses are not lost; at least, I was so much myself as to be able to see that I was being lifted up. The majesty of Him who can effect this so manifests itself, that the hairs of my head stand upright, and a great fear comes upon me of offending God, who is so mighty. This fear is bound up in exceedingly great love, which is acquired anew, and directed to Him, who, we see, bears so great a love to a worm so vile, and who seems not to be satisfied with attracting the soul to Himself in so real a way, but who will have the body also, though it be mortal and of earth so foul, such as it is through our sins, which are so great."

         - Life of Teresa of Avila

Saint Paul, the arch-enemy of the resurrection of the flesh

     By Valentin de Boulogne - Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, TX.

Saint Paul was never really a part of the orthodox church. According to the Apostolic creed of the Catholics the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh is very important to their belief in Christ.

"I believe in . . . the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh. Amen" (Old Roman Symbol [A.D. 125]). 

- Apostle creed

But did Saint Paul ever believed in the resurrection of the flesh? No, he did not as these below verses show.

"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh."

 - Romans 8:3

"Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable."

1 Corinthians 15:50 

Which agrees with the view in the Gospel of Philip.

"Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing."

 - Gospel of Philip

Paul did not believed in bodily resurrection instead he believed only in spiritual resurrection. If the resurrection of the flesh was so important to the Catholics and if Saint Paul vehemently opposed such a doctrine how could Saint Paul be the first pope and the leader of the Catholic Church? The truth is that he was never ever a part of the orthodox church.

Paul, the self hating Jew also hated the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh espoused by the three pillars of the church at Jerusalem who were Jesus brother James, Peter and John who did not fully comprehend the message of the Saviour. Paul had a gospel of his own and the zealot pneumatic Charismatic Paul never once compromised on the doctrines of his Gospel because he received his knowledge not from any man or from an another God or angel or from an another mystery cult but he received his knowledge directly from the Christ with in.

After the death of Saint Paul, his arch-enemies who were members of the Catholic church who claimed themselves to be true Christians hijacked his mission and silenced his polemic against them by carefully manipulating his letters and by forging in his name produced one of the vast cover up in human history. Anyone who did not agreed to the Catholics ended up as Gnostics. Finally they dragged him and submerged him into their own cult giving a false impression to the world as though there was no schism inside Christianity. A new false history emerged with a syncretism of Pauline and Peterine theology and the main mission which Paul passionately preached, stood and died for ended with the mass persecution of the Gnostics in the name of the Catholic Inquisition.

Paul the gnostic opponent of Peter, Not an apostle of orthodox Christianity by Gerald Massey

The time has come to separate Saint Paul from the Catholic Church and to reignite a new hope to his pneumatic mission to the Gentiles and to finally spread the true Gospel of the only true Apostle, Saint Paul of Tarsus. No wonder Marcian of Sinope long figured out this truth and split himself up from the false church of the Catholics.

Measurement problem: A big thorn at the heart of quantum mechanics

Quantum Mechanics blurs the distinction between the observer and the observed. Even after eighty decades since the inception of Quantum Mechanics the measurement problem is not resolved and still haunts the theory in every imaginable way. Physicists however have no problems in continuing to carry out their experiments and making predictions from quantum theory because they can safely ignore the measurement problem for all practical purposes.

Schroedinger devised his cat paradox to show the absurdity of the Copenhagen Interpretation which was the instrumentalist view of Neil Bohr. It was here that he coined the term entanglement. The quantum state of the radioactive atom |psi> = |decayed> + |not decayed> and the quantum state of the poisonous gun |psi> = |fired> + |not fired> and the quantum state of the cat |psi> = |dead cat> + |live cat> are all entangled and exist in a superposition of states and evolve according to the Schroedinger equation. Quantum particles behave like ghost particles where each particle passes through both the slits at once and tunnel through walls and change their properties according to the context of the choice of measurements we make on them. Matter exists in a state of potentialities and not in a state of actualities. 

If this is the true nature of matter then why does our world which is made up of matter appears to us in a state of actualities rather than in a state of potentialities. What prevents billiard balls from being smeared out as waves and existing at multiple locations all at once or what prevents them from tunnelling through walls? Physicists have sought to answer this question in many ways while some propose decoherence through environment and while others speculate the existence of parallel worlds and few others taking the wavefunction to be real postulate that the weavefunction collapses to produce a specific outcome which can be recorded in the form of detector clicks and events none of these answers solve the question in hand. Decoherence theory fails to account for Quantum interference observed in molecules as big as Buckminster fullerenes which are so hot so much that it is never isolated from the environment. Quantum entanglement has been observed in room temperatures. The parallel worlds carry too much baggage and no experimental evidence supports them and it is highly unlikely for the wavefunction to be real and objective collapse theories are not the way to move forward.

The contextuality of Quantum Mechanics can be explained by a pair of colourless cosco balls. Let a bowling machine emit a pair of colourless cosco balls which will travel through different tunnels where it passes through a color detector at the each end of a tunnel. Let there be a mathematical constraint in the theory such that if you see one pair of a ball having one color the other ball at the other end of the tunnel should also have the same color. What quantum mechanics is saying to us is that matter does not possess any objective properties prior to measurements or in other words it is the very act of measuring the ball by the color detector which assigns a value say the color red to the ball in an absolutely random way, we just don't know in what color the ball will pass out through the tunnel, it may be red, pink, yellow, blue or green and there is no way of knowing it which is the presence of inherent randomness in the quantum system. The weirdness does not stop here the measurement made by the color detector not only assigns a color to the ball at this end of the tunnel it also instantaneously assigns a color value to the ball at the other end of the tunnel which might be hundreds of kilometres apart violating locality. Numerous experiments have confirmed this behaviour and quantum entanglement is an empirical fact now that measurements not only changes the system which is being measured here it also changes the system which may be situated at the other end of the universe.

All the strangeness, randomness and weirdness of Quantum mechanics is not because of the Schroedinger equation which is perfectly deterministic instead it is due to the measurement made on the quantum system. Every quantum physicist knows that they have to understand what is meant by measurement if they have any chance of clearly understanding quantum mechanics. Given the importance of measurement and observation in the theory of quantum mechanics which was recognized by Fritz London and Edmond Bauer who advocated for the advent of Phenomenology we certainly need to reconsider our notion of perception.

Below I will speculate a lot on how this measurement problem may be connected to the theories of perception in Indian philosophy.

“According to Western medical science, light vibrations from outside strike the retina and an inverted image is formed there. These vibrations are carried through the optic tract and optic thalamus to the centre of vision in the occipital lobe of the brain in the hind part of the head. There a positive image is formed. Only then we see the object in front of us. The Vedanta theory of perception is that the mind comes out through the eye and assumes the shape of the object outside.” (Mind and Its Mysteries: p. 70)

“The mind assumes the shape of any object it intensely thinks upon.” “When you pass through a mango garden, a ray of the mind comes out through the eye and envelops the mango. It assumes the shape of the mango. The ray is termed a Vritti. The enveloping process is called Vritti-vyapti. The function of a Vritti is to remove the Avarana (veil) that envelops the object and the Upahita-chaitanya (consciousness defined by an adjunct). The veil that envelops the mango is removed by the Vritti or the mental ray. There is Chaitanya (consciousness) associated with the Vritti. This Chaitanya illuminates the object ‘mango.’ This result is termed Phala-vyapti. Just as a torch-light illuminates an object in a flash, this Vritti-chaitanya (consciousness conditioned by the mental mode) illumines the object. Only then does perception of the mango take place” (Mind and Its Mysteries: P. 194). “According to the Advaita theory of perception, it is the Chaitanya within us that makes perception possible. The Chetana (intelligence) within us unites with the Chetana (intelligence) in the object, and the result is perception. It does not follow from this that the mind and the senses are useless,…..for they serve the purpose of determining the special object of each sense” (Ibid, p. 205)

- The Theory of Perception

Indian philosophy does recognize the existence of a physical world independent of observers which is made up of five elements: fire, earth, water, air and space called as Panchabhoothas and all the objects including our bodies which we can see are made from the mixtures of these five elements. The non-physical mind along with its sense organs which exists in the subtle body reaches out to the external objects made up of Bhoothas and alters the Bhoothas giving rise to the appearance of a classical world and these Panchabhoothas does not possess any objective properties with in themselves and all objective and cognitive properties of an object like speed, position, momentum, spin, angular momentum, velocity, mass, color, smell, dimension and time etc etc are assigned to this object by the mind and in turn alters the state of these Panchbhoothas. It is not that reality is what you make it or that you can change your reality just by observing it differently instead reality is what has been constructively given to us by the external non-physical mind. We don't construct reality inside our brains in fact brain is just a construct of the mind.

Immaneul Kant long argued this in his theory of transcendental Idealism where the categories of the mind constructs the phenomenal reality including the space-time continuum and quantum mechanics upholds this view more strongly than anything ever has.

"Kant taught that space and time are not part of external reality but are rather preexisting structures in our minds that allow us to relate objects and events."

- Steven Weinberg

So again why does billiard balls appears to us to always possess objective properties irrespective of whether we observe them or not while the same is not true for electrons and photons when both billard balls and electrons and photons are made from the same Panchabhoothas? Caslav Brukner and Kofler have explained the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world in their paper answering this very question.

Do classical laws arise from quantum laws?
A coarse-grained Schrödinger cat

“The physics community is mostly divided into two groups,” Johannes Kofler tells PhysOrg.com. “One group believes that quantum theory is underlying the classical world, and that classical physics comes from the quantum. The other group thinks that quantum physics has to be altered. It forbids that quantum mechanics works on a macro level in the classical world by postulating additional laws.”

Kofler belongs to the former group


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2007-11-classical-laws-quantum.html#jCp

“The physics community is mostly divided into two groups,” Johannes Kofler tells PhysOrg.com. “One group believes that quantum theory is underlying the classical world, and that classical physics comes from the quantum. The other group thinks that quantum physics has to be altered. It forbids that quantum mechanics works on a macro level in the classical world by postulating additional laws.”

Kofler belongs to the former group


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2007-11-classical-laws-quantum.html#jCp

“The physics community is mostly divided into two groups,” Johannes Kofler tells PhysOrg.com. “One group believes that quantum theory is underlying the classical world, and that classical physics comes from the quantum. The other group thinks that quantum physics has to be altered. It forbids that quantum mechanics works on a macro level in the classical world by postulating additional laws.”

Kofler belongs to the former group


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2007-11-classical-laws-quantum.html#jCp

“The physics community is mostly divided into two groups,” Johannes Kofler tells PhysOrg.com. “One group believes that quantum theory is underlying the classical world, and that classical physics comes from the quantum. The other group thinks that quantum physics has to be altered. It forbids that quantum mechanics works on a macro level in the classical world by postulating additional laws.”

Kofler belongs to the former group


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2007-11-classical-laws-quantum.html#jCp

Macroscopic Realism Emerging from Quantum Physics

 Above image taken from Caslav Brukner and Kofler paper.

So the classical world is classical because the mind by making coarse grained measurements on external objects has constructed a classical world to us. This view obviously introduces problems for quantum cosmology and also a classical detector can act as a measuring device and there is no need for conscious observers or human beings. So does this mean that even measuring devices have a mind of their own and this leads to some kind of panpsychism? I do not wish to speculate further on this path but the world might be like this who knows but the conclusion of this article is very much this:

It from bit. Otherwise put, every 'it'—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. 'It from bit' symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

-- Wheeler, John A. (1990), W. Zurek, ed., "Information, physics, quantum: The search for links", Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley)