51. Jesus! What do you think of all these stigmata?

January 27, 2018 Open Religion, Sticky Thoughts No Comments

“I have it in the palm of my hand… I used to have not the least sign of a wound. Then the lord Jesus came to me and blessed me with these signs of His own passion. Now I have the same signs as He had after being nailed on the cross.”

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What should one think of this?

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Of course there are the real fakes. Let’s spend one more sentence on them. They are real fakes, consciously using what is dearest to many people, by which they get some personal gain and -but they couldn’t care less- my deepest possible disrespect.

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Then there are the people who unconsciously hurt themselves. Yes. Much is possible in this domain. People do the weirdest things and either don’t realize at the time itself or immediately forget. It happens as part of some kinds of neurosis or psychosis. It also happens as part of a specific type of epilepsy. In a specific and well documented case of epilepsy for example, a person even regularly took the train to another city, went for a walk, came back and didn’t know that he had left his house…

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Then there is the case of hypnosis, this singular domain in which so much happens and so little is known about. Important to us now is that in perfectly scientifically controlled experiments, a person under hypnosis can get a burn lesion, the size of a coin, by getting this coin -having skin-temperature- on his skin for 15 minutes with the suggestion that it is really very hot. So this might in principle also be an explanation of the appearance of stigmata, if at least one is willing to tolerate some extrapolation.

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Then there is of course the idea that ‘God’ may indeed bring the stigmatic lesions to a number of chosen ones in a direct way. Of this, nothing more can be said. Either you believe it, or you don’t.

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Or?

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One more thing: apparently, in the course of centuries Jesus has brought these stigmata to the ‘chosen ones’ according to the prevalent, but changing theory of how he himself was nailed at the cross: through the palms or through the wrists. It makes me think that Jesus likes to read scientific literature very much.

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Actually, it is so obvious that Jesus/God doesn’t care to bring stigmata to this world. From His viewpoint, they are good for nothing. As ‘signs’, there are so much deeper and indeed God-worthy ways. Stigmata are so clearly at the level of down here, not up there.

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And even, even in the case that it would be, then why on earth (and beyond) would He make any difference at all between the ‘mechanism’ of their appearance? Let someone take a nail and put it through his palm, or let him be a superb example of mind-body connection, or let it appear through abracadabra. Really, why would He care?

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As long as the stigmatized person doesn’t seek personal gain, to me he is a ‘chosen one’. The rest is petty human-level trying to make sense as seems fit to the sense-maker and to no one else.

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Things don’t need to come from ‘Heaven’. ‘Heaven’ is already here.

At least and at last, this is what Jesus Himself came to tell us…

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