Alan McDougall wrote on Jan 2nd, 2008 at 4:49am:Hi,
Why would god give us a body that was an illusion? Jesus was born through the body of his mother marry. He died id terrible abject horror and pain. he had to eat etc to survive just like you. God places us in real physical bodies gave us five senses to negotiate life with. This concept of the body being some sort of an delusion of the spirit would make god a liar the bible clearly sys we will inherit exalted bodies when we die.
Do not try to convince my beloved parents are unreal illusion. Go and speak to survivors of the holocaust and ask them if the hideous appalling horror, pain, sorrow, desperation and ice-cold fear of the gas death were the result of some wrong perspective of reality. I reject this concept with the distain it deserves.
Alan
Guess it depends on what one defines as "real" and as illusion. My personal take is that the body is real enough while we are temporarily using it, but not objectively real in the long run... or rather its our perception and beliefs about the physical which are off, and thus "unreal".
What i define as real, is that which is eternal, such as spiritual Light.
The physical is a result of freewill, and Souls taking and existing in pure spiritual Light, and through unSource like choices, behavior, and creating, tempoarily manifesting and projecting what we call "physical". But the physical will not always exist, unlike pure spiritual light, hence to me, ultimately the physical is not real.
At the same time, i consider the physical body to be the Temple, and believe it should be treated with respect and harmonized with the mental and spiritual aspects of self...so that one can get beyond the illusionary perceptions, beliefs, and experiences of "physicality" which is just the dense, slow vibrating, and temporary part of the One Field of Consciousness. I believe the vibratory patterns of what we term and label physical, can be speeded up again to the pure Light vibratory state, that which we were created from originally. I believe Christ did this, and this is what caused the image of the Shroud of Turin to be formed, and is what is behind the Resurrection in the N.T. accounts. This is a limitless and infinite Consciousness (pure Light), which still exists in and can be perceived in a so called "physical" manner by those who are still limiting their own consciousness and awareness.
A "body" implies distinct location and thus implies limitation and that which is finite . Perhaps our true and original selves are infinite and totally "bodiless", except to truly exist in what the Bible termed the body of Christ (which is universal Oneness with each other and with the Creator)?
Can pure Light exist in a body, a centralized and limited location? No, all Light is blended into one another, and yet we can still somehow retain a unique and individual sense of self within that infinite Light.
So yes, ultimately speaking, the physical body and physicality and our current perceptions and beliefs about both, are unreal because they are temporal.
Since you already addressed Christ: Christ didn't have to be born of a woman to come into this world, He did so because he wanted to help us, and to most effectively help us, he had to play by the rules of this illusionary game and conform to the collective illusionary beliefs. He came to be a pure example and if he did not experience what we all experience, he would not have been much of an exemplar would he? Imagine if he came in fully formed as the adult Yeshua seemingly out of nowhere? How many people would really listen to his deeper message then? They would have just bow down and worshiped him as a God, which is the last thing he would have wanted. No, he said look at me, i came from what you came from and yet i have transcended this temporal, illusionary game and YOU CAN TOO.
Edgar Cayce's guides strongly hint that this Greater self, this Soul, Spirit Being/"Disc" did originally just manifest a fully formed physical image/projection (vehicle) originally to Retrieve his other selves, but found that this type of teaching didn't work to well for various reasons, some as cited above. So It decided to limit it's fully divine awareness and become part of the Earth life system pattern as well in a more direct manner.
His guides hint that Christ's original participation in the creation of matter was in error, and that being a cause in this whole issue, both as a Spirit Being, and later as a physically incarnate personality, he had to totally transcend that which he helped manifest in error. He, like so many of us, turned away from the Creator in the beginning, but was the first of those separating Children to fully return/merge with same again. In giving up his little self will, to the Will of the Creator and the Creative forces and in living his life wholly for the benefit of others, he transcended the illusion game completely. He now knows his original, limitless and infinite pure Light state of being, and yet still exists with that body image he was known for as "Jesus".
Really in some ways, its no biggy at all, since its really our true and original nature. When all of us finally fully realize and live that, then the physical will melt away. Until then, it serves a useful purpose, in the same way that suffering does... it reminds us of what we aren't and its an impetus to change ourselves back to that original state of being that the Creator imagined us in and as.