john lennon on god

I used to be a very non-religious person and some things happened and among those things was hearing this quote. and it might explain alot. take it or leave it.


I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

-John Lennon

 

you saying you kinda religious now?

 

Exactly.

 

no, not really "religious", just alot more open than before. Before I was a strickt kinda science person, but I've come to learn alot more new things. hard to explain

 

That's a cool quote! George Harrison said something nice about God too: As GOD is unlimited HE has many Names.

 

George always had wonderful things to say about Him [as many names as you will]

 

I like that one

 

I didn't so much like the 1970 Lennon lyric, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I'll say it again. God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

A bad hair day I guess. Well, it was 1970 and he was pretty lost.

Akasha

 

the in the mid 70's he was born agin and acctaully took sean to church and stuff, the yoko dragged him bak inot more occult [ouiji tarot and stuff]

 

Off-topic: I always picture Jesus as John Lennon...

 

God CAN be a concept by which you measure your pain, and for a lot of people it is. Maybe he was just trying to draw attention to it I like Lennon's quote, although I also think there is a God separate from us ads well as in all of us. I also don't think God is a man, It's beyond that! Gender is something people assigned to God.

 

Really? Me too...

 

that JL wrote a song about God?

"God is a concept,
By which we can measure,
Our pain,
I'll say it again,
God is a concept,
By which we can measure,
Our pain,
I don't believe in magic,
I don't believe in I-ching,
I don't believe in bible,
I don't believe in tarot,
I don't believe in Hitler,
I don't believe in Jesus,
I don't believe in Kennedy,
I don't believe in Buddha,
I don't believe in mantra,
I don't believe in Gita,
I don't believe in yoga,
I don't believe in kings,
I don't believe in Elvis,
I don't believe in Zimmerman,
I don't believe in Beatles,
I just believe in me,
Yoko and me,
And that's reality.
The dream is over,
What can I say?
The dream is over,
Yesterday,
I was dreamweaver,
But now I'm reborn,
I was the walrus,
But now I'm John,
And so dear friends,
You just have to carry on,
The dream is over. "

I don't think I've had the pleasure of actually hearing this song , but from the lyrics it appears as tho' he eventually got fed up and disgusted with all of the magical things that were supposed to exist throughout our world, and decided to start believeing and worshipping the few precious things in his life that he could put his hands on.
It was like he always had everything he wanted and spent most of his life trying to share his message with the rest of the world... instead of being selfish.
then one day he woke up and realized that his dream for the rest of the world was over,
and he had to take care of the only two people in his own little world.

Do you think it means that he gave up on effectively changing the way the world was, or was he smart enough to realize the there was nothing else that he could do?

 

People may have different opinions, but I was around then and know the context. It was one of his first songs after the Beatles split up. And musically there's a BIG STOP after "I don't believe in Beatles". He was re-asssessing what next? Over a decade of his life which was non-stop and with the Beatles was suddenly over.

 

. . . JL had a vision in which be felt he was channeling Jesus . . . the “I am the Eggman/I am the Walrus” verse relates to the Vedic text – ”I am the Atman/I am the Brahmin” – in which the individual soul finds its way to the world soul and the Universe – John was at that moment at one with the Universe, the Brahmin Mind (then it crumbled) – It is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am at one with the Father” – hippie lore has it that the Third Promise of Fatima “when the Man in White returns from the Mountain he will be killed” is a reference to the assassination of John Lennon. Jesus said “You are God,”(John 10:34) if you experience and speak the soul of God – in that, John was avatar. Einstein teaches us that space/time is an illusion to humans – Jesus was not then and John now – but each an aspect of Universal Time (time as one moment, this moment) - Google Parthalon Flyingsnake Decoursy and an essay comes up on John’s shaman journey into the earth in Strawberry Fields (like the Norse shaman Santa going down the chimney) and his shaman journey into the sky in Lucy in the Sky (like the Norse shaman Santa flying with magical animals) – it is classic shaman’s passage – into the eath and then into the sky . . . if you dreamed of John consider it a vital experience of the Unconscious . . .

 

Hi Flyingsnake,

Lennon's Eggman / Walrus as Atman and Brahman is interesting! But I like to know where info comes from. Do you have a reference or source for that you could cite? Thanks if so.

By the way, a tiny point. Do you mean Brahman, not Brahmin? Brahman is the One, the highest aspect of God in Hinduism so that sounds right; a Brahmin is one of the highest (elite) caste which I don't think JL would have identified with...

Akasha7

 

It is in the text. The I am the Eggman tune starts with the phrase “I am he.” It is the essence of Eastern thinking in the Vedic texts and the Upandishads. I am he, or this is that. Shimnon Malin’s recent book Nature Loves to Hide: Quantum Physics and Reality, a Western Perspective offers an explanation from science: He writes, “Erwin Schroedinger had the experience of finding the soul of the univere within himself, as his own ultimate identity. He expressed his finding as follows: Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you – and all other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in the sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat twam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, I am above and below, I am this whole world’.” Malin writes that Wolfgang Pauli, when asked if he believed in a personal God, responded with an answer that suggests a mandala:“May I rephrase your question? I myself should prefer the following formulation: Can you, or anyone else, reach the central order of things or events, whose existence seems beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another human being? I am using the term “soul” quite deliberately so as not to be misunderstood. If you put your question like that, I would say yes.” . . . and the other meaning Brahma, as in the pervading soul of the Universe . . . the essence of being and intelligence . . .

 

Ah, yes. From memory the lyrics: "I am He, as you are me" (and something else I haven't caught follows). Thanks.

BTW to nit-pick again, the pervading One is Brahman. Without the "n", Brahma is the "Father" or masculine aspect of what then becomes the Hindu trinity. Brahman is 'above' and beyond all that. Brahma, Brahmin, Brahman - all different things.

 

[font=&quot] . . . I find it interesting and I would say enlightened that young people here, ages 13 and 17, experience John as Jesus . . . perhaps it is that John is the Aquarian – the Second Face of Christ in the ascending Platonic Age of Aquarius . . . (Aquarius technically began thereabouts on January 1, 2001) . . . there were references to The Gospel of Thomas in the White Album: “ . . . when the inside is out the outside is in . . .” a reference to the turning of the Ages . . . and the song “Imagine” appears to refer to both the Gospel of Thomas (Elaine Pagels book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, p. 49, Random House 2003, states that in Thomas’s account, Jesus challenges those who mistake the kingdom of God for an otherworldly place or a future event: Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, Look, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will get there before you . . .” In other words, Imagine there’s no heaven.) and to Tolstoi’s late works on pacifism and religious life (Tolstoi advocated abandoning identification with a particular prophet as one would abandon nationalism. In one of his last writings on the subject Tolstoy clearly states his opinion: “Attributing a prophetic mission peculiar to certain beings such as Moses, Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Muhammad, Haha’u’llah as well as several others is one of the major causes of division and hatred between men.”) . . . people sometimes dream of the grand piano as a symbol of John, associated with the swansong, Imagine. Here is the quote from The Gospel of Thomas: [/font][font=&quot]“Jesus said to them:/When you make the two one,/and make the inside like the outside,/and the outside like the inside,/and the upper side like the under side,/and (in such a way) that you make the man/(with) the woman a single one,/in order that the man is not man and the/woman is not woman; when you make eyes in place of an eye,/and a hand in place of a hand,/and a foot in place of a foot,/an image in place of an image;/then you will go into [the kingdom].”[/font][font=&quot][/font]

 

Excellent discussion, hoiwever I would like to point out, flying snake, that of the experience of brahman it is said in bhagawad geeta and elsewhere that he who has seen it never returns (yat gatva na nivartante, tat dhama paramam mama). There is no chance of that experience crumbling. He may have been expressing the philosophical ideas, but I strongly doubt his experience of it at that point, because further down in his life he showed much anger, attachment and grief when the beatles split up. One who has realized brahman is first and foremost free of the bonds of this world (otherwise such realization is not possible in the first place) and is not under the sway of emotion.