But it gets worse than that, because if we accept the principle set forth by those that have out-of-body-experiences (based on their experiences)—that in “extra-physical” realms thoughts directly and immediately effect the reality one experiences—then we now have two problems. Not only do people interpret their experiences through the filter of their ideology, but when accessing “extra-physical” realms, because thoughts immediately effect the reality one experiences, the beliefs themselves can have a distorting effect on the experience. So someone may see “Jesus” because they expect to see Jesus, or “the Buddha” because they expect to see the Buddha. It may also be that a consciousness they encounter, benevolent or malevolent, may intentionally take on one of these forms.
In Buddhism they talk about Upaya—expedient means. They would say that the Bodhisattvas interact with people on the level and in the context that those individuals can understand. They might say, for example, that Jesus was a Bodhisattva, but that since the people he was talking to had no concept of that, he used the context they did have to teach and help them. It is pretty much how Buddhists explain every other religion—as opposed to the Christian method of calling other religions either delusional or pacts with devils.
But anyway, if an entity is benevolent, it's entirely possible that it would take on a familiar form in order to help someone in a way they can accept and recognize. Likewise, a malevolent spirit might take on the form of an accepted spiritual figure because it knows it can manipulate people that way. As you work more with spiritual matters you learn to be able to distinguish things by how their energy feels (something that cannot be hidden) rather than how it just appears on the surface. But an inquiring and parsimonious mind would also seem useful in being able to shatter illusions in a realm where thoughts have an immediate effect on the reality one experiences.
Or, as Sam Harris explains it:
“I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you regularly feel rapture or bliss while in prayer. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out, however, that billions of other human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences—but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the sheer beauty of nature. There is no question that it is possible for us to have profoundly transformative experiences. And there is no question that it is possible for us to misinterpret these experiences and to further delude ourselves about the nature of the universe.”
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_4
[My friend says that having been healed, it was his turn to fulfill his half of the bargain. He asserts that Jesus came to earth to 1) teach humanity the proper way to live, 2) reveal God's true nature, and 3) take on humanity's penalty. He asserts that we all deserve to be separated from God forever, but that Jesus is able to redeem us from this status.]
I believe in a God without limits. In saying that, I don't mean that such a being exists, necessarily. Rather, it is a value assertion: that I side with life and being. I often feel rapture or bliss at the wonderful interconnectedness of life. That being said, however, the God you describe seems small and strange. “Deserve” is a human concept born out of human limitation, as is “penalty.” Because a given society has limited resources, it ranks individuals—it has to decide who “deserves” this or that. God has no limitation, thus the concept of deserve makes no sense from the point of view of God. Likewise, a penalty is something human beings impose to keep order. We feel threatened by things, and so we punish. Hobbes does a wonderful job explaining this:
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