Nine Stages of Divine VisionNine stages of life are formed by nine crises that shape our awareness and the way we envision and experience the divine in both our cultural and isolated lives. Out vision of the divine is determined by the unique forms and forces in each stage of our lives. The first stage is the unborn stage of the womb. The first part of the first stage is the unborn womb. Since the womb is almost perfect for our prenatal needs, there is an incomparable experience of Kinesthetic euphoria which is the ideal condition for the realization of bliss.
The womb provides for the need before it even suffers the need. The bliss is the idea that self-sufficient awareness that precedes desire and satisfaction, and still haunts after birth has broken the primal serenity. The second part of the first stage is the Lakshm and Vishnu within the comic serpent. The unborn bliss is the first taste of paradise, which we all seek to recover.
Each succeeding stage builds upon this infinite awareness adding its own images and forms to its evolving biological, social and psychological experience. Buddha and Jesus both include this idea in their teachings. The next stage is the baby stage of the divine mother. The first part of this stage is the Venus of Laussel. There are many images of her floating around that she is over 20,000 years old.
She ruled over human awareness. Her predecessors thought it was simple: just as the human mother creates human life, so the Great Mother of the creation creates all life: plants and animals. By her breasts she nourishes her whole creation. She is the universe.
The sun and moon are her eyes. The Milky Way are her breasts. And the earth is her body. Maybe she is still with us when we speak of Mother Nature. Mother Goddess is the first personification of the divine in human form. The second part of the second stage is the Madonna of Mercy.
This Divine Goddess can resolve our problems and be with us all the time. She can also satisfy our deepest needs and open us to the heavenly gate of eternal and immortal life. The youth stage of the divine father is the next stage. He is the supreme deity of the Romans, named Jupiter.
When man seizes the divine power for himself and expels the women from the dignity they hold for millennia as the divine mother. He is the god of thunder, lightning, and mountaintops. Next is the return of the prodigal. The vision of the divine father in a parable by Jesus Christ and in a painting by Rembrandt may be the most sublime revelation of god ever portrayed. The fathers forgiving love is expressed most when her forgives his son for betrayal. Tutankhamon and Ankesenamon is another part of a stage.
This royal couple ascended to one of the greatest empires in the ancient world. There was a bit of sadness when King Tut died in his 19th year and his widowed wife could not find someone to remarry. To reach the stage of the couple, each individual must achieve a gender identity of male or female. When kids first discover gender, they tend to see the human race as divided by gender. Yet when they fall in love they really fall in love with a dimension of one’s own lost self. In the Annunciation, there are classic forms of the young god and goddess about to consummate the sacred marriage.
Through the experience of the couple, they project an image of ecstasy between man and woman, which is the archetype for the union between the soul and God. The man and woman as lovers recover the bliss and ecstasy which the unborn lose in separation from the parents. Another stage is the parent of the divine child. The first part of this is the nativity. This represents the first time that the divine really needs the help and care of the worshippers.
At Christmas, the Christ child needs the love of Joseph and Mary, the gifts of the wise men, and the worship of the shepherds. God needs us just as much as we need him. Next is the Krishna on a swing. This is for the Hindu religion. One of the enviable qualities of the child is its ability to see divine with the dream eyes of childhood, which are gradually going to fade away due to adulthood.
The divine child completes the divine family which comprises the primal trinity of divine worship. After learning the nine different stages and writing about five of them. I have fully grasped and understood what the nine stages are all about. I have never really thought about the things mentioned in your book, until I read them.
This section of your book has made me look at religion from a whole different stand point.
