2 Abraham, The First Man Aware Of His Awareness
although once it is given an objective reality it gains some of the attributes of the other gods. Abraham seems to have been at peace with the coexistence in God of the supernatural powers of gods (as conceived by so many tribes on earth) and of the human attributes which Abraham could reach in himself by awareness of his awareness. The passage of the sacrifice of Isaac leaves us with more room for speculation than the bargaining passage mentioned above. But it gives us a chance to see how the Bible treats the new and difficult problem of the dialogue of Abraham’s consciousness with some of its contents. The transcendental God can order a man to prove the strength of his belief in the personal God by obeying and give up what has been built as perhaps the most signifcant event of his life: that he had a son from his true wife and tell no one about this sacrifice. So no one could interfere with this test of his belief, not his dear and wise Sarah, nor the other elders of the tribe. The God of Abraham was his singular inner property not to be shared with anyone. God spoke to others through Abraham, but Abraham could not objectify his grasp of Him except when talking to himself. So no one could have a representation of God and only Abraham as the social authority of the tribe (which had an existence before him and therefore had already established many rules of communication and of transmission of command, from top to bottom to obtain action by the tribe) could be permitted to keep to himself his intuitions and relate to Him in his own ways and to the members of the tribe in traditional ways. So tribal life would continue at the same time as Abraham was reaching more and more of his God-awareness by living with himself. For our purpose of understanding how a religion is born, what makes it what it is, and what it is not (which is easier than what it is, in this case, because there have been all sorts of religious manifestations in that region where Abraham was born and led his people) we can pursue his overwhelming experience of being wiht one’s awareness of one’s awareness, without any other instruments of study than those found in awareness itself and mainly as a new experience. We all know the impact of an overwhelming experience such as a calamity that befalls on us. Unable to understand what it might be, how
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