Interesting posts! Definitely learned more about Christianity from different people's viewpoints
I agree with Matt that these religions often have conceptual equivalents and I find these relationships fascinating; it's like having different people independently coming up with the same Truth.
Some additional tidbits to add that I've gathered here and there:
- heavens roughly correspond to lower and higher celestial realms, and hells roughly correspond to lower astral realms. And the human realm = purgatory
the physical realm where man's soul/spirit has the best karmic opportunity to either choose God and heaven, or choose the ego and hell. Apparently, the demarcation is consciousness level 200 / Courage where the levels of hells and levels of heavens meet. Level 200 also represents Service-to-Others (STO) 50%+ and Service-to-Self (STS) 50%-, for those familiar with channeled works using those terms.
- Jesus taught the way of unconditional love, Buddha taught the way of enlightenment (in levels of consciousness terms). Also kind of makes sense, given where the people they were teaching were geographically, temporally, and consciously located.
I think a key difference between Christianity and other religions is the issue of reincarnation; anybody have any ideas of reconciling this? I remember reading about a few verses where Jesus referred to certain people being reborn, thus supporting the notion of reincarnation. But then this also seems to contradict what most Christians believe. Maybe it's the Church's smart ploy to get people to become more committed to God and goodness in this lifetime, by leaving reincarnation on the backburner?
