Ever hear of the lost weekend? Lennon was off on a drinking binge, he slept with several different women, including May Pang who was some sort of secretary or something to them. Most of this is in his biography and is fairly common knowledge.
For a start, comparison of John Lennon and Jesus is meaningless. Jesus is a Divine being, JL just an ordinary human. Also, in one sense no doubt you are right to say all is one - but that's not our experience here in this world. To compare parts of the body with human individuals is a very inexact metaphor. If I experience something, it doesn't mean everyone will. I, and JL and everyone else experience ourselves as individual beings. To knock John because of his use of drugs is equally mistaken. Without the drugs, we'd probably never have had his best work. He was another limited and flawed individual like the rest of us. But this also raises questions about the nature of art. If we were all perfectly enlightened etc, would there, could there be any art? It seems that much of the content of Lennon's songs for example come out of his experiences of suffering and loss - that is, the stuff that isn't LSD inspired. It is only because there is this human element in his work that makes it great.
All I was trying to say was that lennon was no more enlightened than me or any other ordinary human being. He had the same frailties and flws that we do. Calling ihm the Jesus of the 20th century, therefore makes very little sense. It seems a big step down from Christ to Lennon. Yes, his songs came from hurt, drugs, desire and pain. Which is why I would much rather listen to songs written by Swami Brahmananda or Goswami Tulsidas or Surdas or Tyagaraja. Their poetry and their music is rooted in divinity and therefore carries a lot more joy with it. The same goes for the art of Michaelangelo, the poems of St. Francis of Assisi... Like I said earlier, art does not end with enlightenment, it is when it achieves the fulness of its beauty.
I agree it is a hell of a step down from lennon to Christ on one level - on another, not such a big step. I'm not at all sure though about 'enlightenment' producing the greatest art. Michaelangelo is a bad example, as he was not a particularly 'righteous' type, and if we look at the example of Mozart, whose musical genius is unparralleled in history, he was likewise not particularly spiritual or enlightened. I think art and spirituality are very different things, and even the greatest artists aren't neccesarily that spiritual.
Many people of different cultural backgrounds believe that there are some 'special' beings - Incarnations, avatars - that's the sense in which I meant what I said. In ordinary people, I think it's only the soul which is divine.
Like they are part of God (sorta like my Gfriend) and have the power and knowledge of God? You know what sucks? Not getting any special powers yet. Hopefully for my 30th bday. I just assumed everything is divine, but that may not be semantically correct. By divine, I mean : of, relating to, or proceeding directly from God (courtesy m-w.com).
How do we get so caught up in semantics? This is an endlesss spiral of wordplay, nobody gains anything form it.
As far as language goes, the issue of the nature of reality is already complex enough as it is without anything we have to say about it confusing the matter. So when you begin to talk about it, I feel you ought to choose your words wisely or not say anything about it at all. Otherwise you're just saying "Who gives a shit? I'm not doing this to actually figure anything out. I just want to jerk myself off."
Actually. looking back over the last few posts, I don't think this is a semantic thing at all. Unless we say all language is just semantics, in which case we should pack in all discussion, since it can't ever be anything else.