LECTURE FOURTEEN
a. Asceticism is the adoption of a lifestyle of self-denial and discipline for
religious ends. The end is often mysticism, that is, a direct experience
of God.
b. The problem is how to explain this face-to-face with God. Mystics, in
particular Christians and Muslims, have claimed to see God and been
misunderstood by others.
c. When a Christian mystic sees God he can see the man-God Jesus face-
to-face. Muslims experience God as pure spirit which raises serious ques-
tions among other believers, often resulting in a loss of life for the mystic.
d. There are good paradigms for seeing God in all three religions.
i. Moses experiences God directly on Mount Sinai. He is in the pres-
ence of God but doesn’t see his “face.” After these experiences,
Moses was said to glow.
ii. In Christianity, James, John and Peter get the chance to see Jesus
in his divine form in the event known as the “transfiguration.”
iii. In Islam, Muhammed’s famous night journey takes him up through
seven heavens directly to the presence of God.
e. In order to see God, one normally follows a set procedure.
i. There is first a process of fasting or preparing through asceticism.
ii. The next step is bending the will, emptying the Ego.
f. Often the mystic experience in Christianity and Islam is described in
sexual or inebriation terms.
g. Jewish mysticism is defined more in terms of a journey. God is por-
trayed as the Absolute.
B. Reposing with God- The Afterlife
a. In the Bible when people die they go to Sheol, a place and time of
indeterminate existence. One’s existence was justified during life.
God’s justice was visited on the eighth and ninth generations. But
around the fifth to sixth centuries, the notion of the immortality of the
soul appears in Jewish writings.
b. By Jesus’ time, the Jews believe in the afterlife. God’s punishment will
now occur after life, in Hell or in Heaven, or in the Garden of Eden.
Islam also follows this same belief, saying that God lives in the seventh
heaven and that is where true believers will dwell with Him.
c. All three religions believe that true believers will eventually see God
or else be removed from the presence of God and placed in Hell,
with pain for the body and soul.
d. Heaven has a variety of theological problems, how can one see the
face of God. What will the body be like, etc. Jews have some difficulty
with the fact that the afterlife is not mentioned in the Bible.