Are Angels Intelligent Beings?

Astral and paranormal experiences, dreams and visions.
Wyrmfang
Posts: 775
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 10:22 pm
Location: Espoo

Re: Are Angels Intelligent Beings?

Post by Wyrmfang »

Nefastos wrote:Right you are. By "modern culture" I meant the majority of people, the world view we'd bump the most if starting discussion with randomly chosen persons. It certainly seems that physical existence is the reality & incentive for the majority of people, and those practically interested in Kantian philosophy are perhaps as rare as occultists.
I would still say that the major philosophies dominant in each time are the diamond representatives of the common thinking of that time. As I said, also for example positivism still has a great impact, but in my mind it can be seen dominant only in the field of economics and technology. If we take a random person, I would say he/she more likely recognizes that "matter won´t make him/her happy" but usually does not live very consciously his/her deepest ideals.
Nefastos wrote:
By this, I do not mean we should, or even could, feel contempt. Occultists are at least as delusional & crazy as profane people. But the problem in the profane (wholly secular) way of life is in that how it can't give right & uplifting answers to the most important questions, as do both esotericism and the Kantian imperative (to a certain degree).
It seems to me that secular thinking can give people the answers as well (and if there is to be unity behind all religions, atheism must of course be included also), but the main difference between an occultist* and a "profane" person is in the degree of the intensity and comprehensiveness of one´s existential process.

*Occultist in our terms. Most of those who call themselves occultists are in our point of view "profane" as well in their lack of any comprehensive direction in their thinking & life in practice.
Fomalhaut
Posts: 169
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:16 pm

Re: Are Angels Intelligent Beings?

Post by Fomalhaut »

Some approach from Qur'an:
According to Muslim scholar Ansar Al-'Adl, many interpretations of the verse originate from alleged Judeo-Christian sources that came to be recorded in some works of Quranic exegesis, called Tafsir. Numerous tales have been transmitted about these verses, yet all center around the same basic story:

The angels [who, in Islamic theology, do not possess free will and cannot sin] had become astonished at the acts of disobedience committed by the human beings on earth. They began to curse the humans, and could not understand how they could be so sinful. Allah informed the angels that they would have also sinned and more than humans do if they were in the position of human beings. So the angels elected Harut and Marut from amongst themselves and God gave them human attributes and sent them to earth after commanding them to avoid wine, idolatry, fornication and murder. Harut and Marut eventually succumbed to their human lusts and fell into all of these sins. Consequently, God punished them for their transgressions.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, noted translator of the Qur'an into English, asserts that the source of this story may be the Jewish Midrash:

Among the Jewish traditions in the Midrash was a story of two angels who asked Allah's permission to come down to earth but succumbed to temptation, and were hung up by their feet at Babylon for punishment. Such stories about sinning angels who were cast down to punishment were believed in by the early Christians, also (see II Peter 2:4, and Epistle of Jude, verse 6).
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."
— C.G. Jung
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