God is an interesting concept. Without it, we cannot pretend that we are separate from all other beings and things, we cannot play at giving up our wills in order to let His will be done, and we would have no straight man against whom to pit a devil.

Child, it is all a vast game of hide and seek. What makes you think that your will and the will of god are not already one and the same? The will of a child to laugh, a tree to send out its leaves and roots, a bird to fly and a fish to swim all come from the very same source.

All of your lives, you spend your time and energy building and reinforcing beliefs about god, reality, and yourselves. Then you play the games of fighting over whose god is the REAL god, whose truth is the best...

Sit a while and talk with me. What you seek is already in your hands. It is in the vast mirror that is life, always looking back at you. You are the Goddess known as Samantha. You are typing my words on the Sacred Itself, gazing at the Holy Screen with the Eyes of Spirit. All who read the Sacred Words spoken here are themselves Gods and Goddesses, receiving their versions of this Divine Message, ALL of which are Truth.

Do you understand what we are trying to tell you? There is no devil - only the fear born of ignorance that keeps you thinking that dichotomies and dualities are objectively real. There is no god-out-there. There is no one to save you, because there is no reason to be saved. All that you see, all that you can ever imagine, and infinity beyond that, is all part of the Dance. You and all-that-is are no more and no less than the Spinning, Dancing Body of Spirit, of the Infinite. All can know themselves as the Sacred that they are if they take a moment to be still, a moment to really give their full attention to the grand beauty of the living worlds around them, mirrored in the eyes that express the infinite beauty of the living worlds within. We are all travelers together. We all play the roles of teachers, students, lovers, friends and adversaries. Underneath and before it all is the Reality out of which we come, into which we all return and from which we will eternally spring.

So, this one believes in Allah, that one believes in Christ, the other one believes in nothing at all... And they are all right. Accept this and your world may yet find its way through the illusion.

You are the message. Each and every one of you is the Path, the Message. How you live your lives, how you respond to the infinite choices and events that make up living, how you treat each other and yourselves... these are the Ways in which you speak your Truths, regardless of the words you use.

Sometimes people are pleased to say that god demands this or that sacrifice, this or that set of absolute rules, this or that Way of believing in him. Our truths are that the Sacred is best expressed and known by each Being following the Truth that is her/him. For instance: The Truth of an artist is expressed differently than the Truth of an engineer. Which expression is the correct one? Both. The artist gives voice to the Sacred by reveling in her art, while the engineer builds bridges, buildings and starships that reflect the Sacred. Worlds are destroyed when people forget that everything they do, they do as gods. They then see themselves as separate from the worlds around them and take what is not needed. The artist then reflects the fear and the engineer builds bombs. Your choice. In the end, no sacrifice can make you clean and sacred in the eyes of god and no one can save you from your lack of vision.

You are the message. Your lives are the only Holy Books that count, since it is your actions that express your true beliefs. You are the Path. How are you walking today? Is your life communicating what your laughing, loving Spirit knows, or are you communicating your fear, your anxiety, your sense of separateness?

A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity. Cleverness is not a substitute for true character.

Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.

Inherent capacities cannot be exceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into the material memory mold.

Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it.

Difficulties may challenge mediocrity and defeat the fearful, but they only stimulate the true children of God.

To enjoy privilege without abuse, to have liberty without license, to possess power and steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement--these are the marks of enlightenment.

Blind and unforeseen accidents do not occur in the cosmos. Neither does God assist the being who refuses to act upon his light of truth.

Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort.

Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in charm.

Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the recognition of the Infinite.

The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day's work--do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God's.

The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.

Stars are best discerned from the lonely isolation of experiential depths, not from the illuminated and ecstatic mountain tops.

Whet the appetites of your associates for truth; give advice only when it is asked for.

Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the attempt of the barren soul to appear rich.

You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity.(note: this is not a rule.)

Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.

Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet's nest.

Anxiety must be abandoned. The disappointments hardest to bear are those which never come.

Only a poet can discern poetry in the commonplace prose of routine existence.

The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.

The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

Death adds nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual endowment, but it does add to the experiential status, the consciousness of survival.

The destiny of eternity is determined moment by moment by the achievements of the day by day living. The acts of today are the destiny of tomorrow.

Greatness lies not so much in possessing strength as in making a wise and divine use of such strength.

Knowledge is possessed only by sharing; it is safeguarded by wisdom and socialized by love.

Progress demands development of individuality; mediocrity seeks perpetuation in standardization. Only wisdom knows the truth of individuality.

The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained.

The Teacher is ever present to the Student who surrenders control and Ego to ask for help.

these are some interesting quotes, Joesus. Are they yours or someone elses? I ask because some of them don't sound like your general style. Do you really believe in all of them?

Trying www.urantiabook.org/newbook/ppr048_7.html

!

I just read the subject and the susequent remarks and I just had say something...
this is without a doubt some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. I mean really.
Man, if ya would've made a sitcom out this discourse ya coulda made a fortune.

I find the whole debate of whether there is or isn't a devil, whether or not God does exist; one of the funniest episodes of the showing of human ignorance ever devised.

Hey check it out,
Just because you believed the lie, doesn't make it true.


Until...

The point is that belief in a God serves a purpose.
It must do, because the vast majority of human beings on the planet have a Faith of one sort or another. 'Whose purpose?' is another question!

I think the important issue is the question of whether Faith is doing more harm than good overall (to either individuals or society as a whole).

These are just my views, and I fully respect the views of any other individual, though I may not agree with them.
I do believe we are each entitled to use our own abilities to consider as Truth, that which makes us feel 'comfortable' (but not at the expense of other individuals).

And, I don't think it is a laughing matter.

you've all gone mad! where's the nearest asylum? i need to take some mad language courses so that i can understand this crap. maybe i'll stay there. it would probably be safer.......

here are a few quotes from the asylum:

there is no god
when you are dead you are dead
still frightened?
be a man (or woman) and face it
be a grown up for your children
tell them how wonderfully interesting the universe is
tell them they find it interesting because evolution made them that way for survival purposes
no one is average; it is all of the summed and divided by, that gives this rare 'average' person
therefore you are OK not to feel bad when your marks are below average
everyone is special
even special people die
when you are dead you are dead
now its getting repetitive

ps stop paying salaries to priests. it should be a vocation, not a vacation. people are hungery out here!

Why?

I don't think feelings can be trusted. You basicly can't formulate any truths about reality (except some basic moral rules like don't hurt others) from your own experience. It is always a personal movie. I think the almost religious attitude towards their experiences that many new agers exhibit is seen in many trippers as well. But it still is just their solipsistic experience even though its' origin (the temporal lobes) make it feel universal.

Anything beyond that is, as far as I can see, speculation.

The following contains the same principle contained in the Golden Rule:
I agree! Nameste is Sanskrit for: The g-d in me beholds the g-d in you. And so I say, "Nameste!"

Conscious experience is a reality, and being a part of that reality, we are in good positions to make statements about the nature of reality.

we all experience reality in diffrent ways, thats why mayonaise said you cant formulate truths, which I agree with. Each person (as lucid should know from NLP) has diffrent ways of interpreting things based on a wide array of diffrent variables, from eye sight to beliefs and values these all affect how one experiences reality and thus since no one reality is more valid than another each intepretation of the truth and of reality is both equal and valid. So if one person says a dog is pink and the other blonde, neither are right or wrong, thats my two cents ^.=

what I'm saying is that consciousness is the ground of reality; it is the thing-in-itself.

hmm intresting idea lucid, so by this do you mean consciousness is awareness of reality or consciousness is simply the interaction with a reality?

IMHO, consciousness has a lot to do with HOW I choose to relate to reality. I do have options. Agreed?

that consciousness is reality

LD, So if people say "I'm Jesus, follow me and you shall be saved", that is true and the reality? I don't think I understood how your answer related to mine.

I didn't say that whatever people say is the truth. I said that consciousness is reality, it is the ground of being. Conscious experience cannot be invalidated, because it has its own existence. You can interpret other people's conscious experiences as involving delusions or misguided thoughts, but the conscious experience possesses reality precisely because it exists. That is why consciousness is reality, independent of how you choose to interpret the assumptions involved with other people's conscious experience.

So you expanded on me but didnt' disagree with me am I right? Because if you disagree then I'm interested to understand what you're thinking. Otherwise what you say seems kind of a truism to me.

if you have to ask, you don't understand. But there is time for that.

Consciousness as ground of being runs counter to materialistic ways of thinking about reality, and as such, is no truism.

The first line sounds like bit uppity to me... but that may just be a judgment.

You said my example of someone experiencing he is Jesus and then telling everybody to do as he says was not to the point. Yet, it would seem that nobody who says that is a lunati but is speaking the reality and should therefore not be medicated. If there's something wrong with my logic, please show me where.

That was just one example. I'm sure you can extrapolate from there to ufos or any of the myriad of psychic experiences.

As you can probably tell, I'm open to learning. So why not give a hand?

If on the other hand there are limits to the paradigm of "consciousness as ground of being", such that are not in violation of scientific evidence, then I think we can agree with that but I would like to hear your specific applications of it (e.g. does this relate to spirituality somehow, maybe...)

Ah now I see what your getting at..

Max, could you please explain it to me too?

I agree with that, but I am also a materialist.

Good for you, Rick! Does this mean that you are also a material being having a mental and spiritual experience?

As for me, I think of myself as a spiritual being who is having a mental and material experience, in the now.

Well mayonaise what lucid's main point is that conciousness is reality, while your reality might not be the same or in contradiction with others, your conciousness is your reality, how you interact and interpret things concioussly is what defines your reality. Their is no real way to be connected to reality without being conciouss so all of the reality you interact with and know is because you are conciouss. In a sense your reality exists within your conciouss, almost like a sub reality from the reality we interact with. I dono if you will get it after that explanation but it might help :/

reality/input - senses - concioussness - your reality

So by being conciouss you have your own private reality because you see things diffrently, whether slightly or greatly than other people do. So in a sense we all have our own variation of reality. So thus within your mind exists a reality instead of externally like how we normally view it.. Without concioussness essentially this reality would not exist thats why lucid is saying concioussness is the base of reality because we base our private realities off of our concioussness..

Okay so to sum up, materials existance is very frivilous, i could see a ball as red and you could see it as covered in blood. Materialism is essentially interpreted as a thing created by concioussness, within your reality. So whatever you aquire is more so just a part of your mental reality rather than actually existing outside of your mind. So if you see a sunset, it is actually just something created by your mind to appear as a sunset, the sunset in itself does not exist only the reality you see within your mind of the sunset. So lucids point is that nothing can actually ever be considered true (if you look more deeply into my truth is a opinion statement you come to the same conclusion) and thus the only things you do know is what you see in your private reality. So holding on to material goods can be considered frivilous because they do not actually exist in the way you believe them to exist. So if you have a gold coin that coin is not nessecarily gold nor a coin it is only interpreted as gold coin in your mind...


Note: lucid, NLP rocks man lol i just finished reading about filters and sensory prefrences.. Also if you have any points to add lucid feel free to do so

Thanks Max.

I love it when people like Rick and Lindsay come around who usually talk in a way that even someone who's not enrolled in philosophy can understand them.

I wonder why lucid didn't just say to me "What You See Is What You Get"or something.

Anyway, saying that there are multiple universes and google knows what else, doesn't solve the Jesus-problem I presented. But maybe I have to ponder this because I'm a newborn spirit and old spirits can just listen to their inner carrols...?!

it's interesting how we interact with each other and the lapses of effective communication that can lead to misunderstanding. As an exercise, try imagining what it would be like if you were to hold a conversation with your self of 5, 10, 20 years ago or more; ask yourself if and how your younger self would misinterpret what you are trying to explain to them because they have not yet experienced what is necessary for the understanding. All of our understanding is rooted in our experience. If you seek to understand, you must seek to diversify and increase the contrasts of your experiences.

That's right.

But I get enough of headaches from trying to understand others as it is, so I don't think I can take on any more exercise :-)

"If you seek to understand, you must seek to diversify and increaes the contrasts your experiences."

This seems to partly echo the ground of being-paradigm. Another extreme example: if you become a neo-nazi, a taliban or a suicide bomber, will you gain knowledge? If you do, what kind of knowledge and what use that knowledge is in this world? How would you compare the usefulness of that knowledge to knowledge gained in an environment where all parties act as guided by enlightened self-interest?

To me, "mental" means everything of the mind, both conscious and unconscious. I don't know how to distinguish what is called "spiritual" from the general mental. What do you mean by it? I consider emotions to be part of the mental.

Consciousness is the basis of the real because, as is mentioned below by Maximus242, it's the only way we can know anything. However, everyone must eventually concede that consciousness is the result of brain function, and brains are material. Therefore, consciousness is both the ground of being and is material in origin.

heh although that is a possibility rick dont forget that it could also be claimed that the materialisitic brain is a creation of the conciouss brain..

Mayonaise as far as how Lucid talks, sometimes I am guilty of the same thing. You get used to talking to people in a certain way about a subject because normally you can say a simple phrase and it can give understanding to a entire theology of thought. You will get better at understanding the philosophical ramblings of the various people on this site lol, and until then their will be plenty of people willing to explain it to you. In other words mayonaise philosophy was never intended for the general public because the general public isnt intrested in philosophy they are intrested in their lives, family and sociological standing. So instead philosophy has formed into its own language, for example if a ordinary joe reads a quote from anyone from Gandi to Einstine they will only focus on the words, a philosopher will see the words and then goes beyond it into the thought and meaning behind the words, this requires practice but no one is perfect and it does take time to do. So this is why Lucid and many others speak in this language, it isnt an attempt to confuse you but rather it is simply how one often conveys a complex philosophy, but behind the phrase lies the philosophy.. A good example might be Truth is an opinon, it has so many levels the deeper you go into it, simply checking out the quotes section and looking deeply into quotes will help you to understand the messages being conveyed in the topics much better

By the way shawn that is a good idea for a excercise, I tried it a bit and realized how greatly I have changed and how much my mind has opened..

hmm in a way "I think, theirfore I am" could easily be applied to the "Councioussness is the base of reality" and even paired along with "truth is an opinion" with of course exception that I think applies to the self where the counciouss applies to the environment and the truth is more defining the environment, but never the less they are closesly related

So consciousness isn't the result of brain function and it's really a case of mind over matter?

I am reminded of the story about the actor who drank Arnold Schwarzenegger under the table by paying a waitress 500 dollars to water his drinks (but not Arnold's). Apparently, all the self-discipline that Arnold could summon was no match for that material, alcohol, in his brain.

Well Rick you make a good point however you will need more than that to prove materialism, the effects of alchohol can easily be achieved also by using any substance, water liquid or even a simple hand gesture. Through psychological influences this effect can be acheived through anything at all.. For a more detailed description of how this works the possiblities are endless; behaivioural therapy, NLP, hypnosis, assosiation, archtypes, trauma, shock therapy, adaptation, subliminal messaging. Honestly I could go on all day with how to achieve its effects, now why dont we try something Rick. Think about when you are dreaming, if you see a beautiful women then you do you not get sexually excited? If you go into water does it not feel cold (if it is cold water)? Even dreams have rules to them that define it into a reality, the diffrence is sometimes these rules are not the same as your "reality". If you are flying in clouds you travel at a certain speed, if you move then you undergo an array of actions. This reality also has rules, a strong drink will mentally affect someone, just like cold water feels cold..

I have sometimes had dreams where I could breathe and talk under water. Mostly dreams just tell me what I already know: my hopes and fears. I'll trade you three of my mental gold coins for one of your material ones.

haha good one, only one problem my material gold coin is the same as your mental ones.

also doesnt reality tell you about your hopes and fears too? you are faced with challenges everyday and they tell you more about yourself as a person, prehaps all forms of reality are infact insightful in one way or another..

Yes, a conscious mind that exists within, and interacts with, the physical world.

What causes 'observations'?
What gives rise to consciousness?

Classical (Newtonian Celestial Mechanics/Dynamics + Descartes' mechanized automatons) non-quantum physics somehow seems too simple to contain the richness of conscious experience. It is through taking things apart and studying the micrscopic constituents of matter, i.e. 'reductionism' that we have discovered a world which is far more mysterious than anything for which the classical mandate has prepared us.

The basic problem of quantum theory in the past is that there had been a gap between what the theory says about the world, and the experience we have of the world. Today many of those gaps are being bridged, through multi-modal thought processing where transitions (quantum jumps) and parallelable concepts are coceptually inputed, processed and analyzed instantaneously (@ the speed of light). Alot, of the theoretical concepts emerging out of the fronteirs of fundamental scientific thought are being overlapped and mapped onto the mechanisms within the cognitive functioning of the human brain.

....and only truth, by which here I mean the evidence of or sensorial aparati, which we obtain through experimentation and direct conscious observation, is sacred....truth depends for its existence on conscious states of mind (degrees of consciousness).

Consciousness is a type of perception, but is not a perception of the external world; rather it is an individual's perception of his own internal mental state. It is for each of us a private universe of our own, where we are in control, where we can play all sorts of imaginative games and can produce at will an apparently endless variety and combination of imagery.

To my consciousness, I have complete access, but seemingly, other people have access to it only through what I choose to reveal through mobilizations of various mechanisms and physical means.

heh yeah I agree Trip but dont forget people can not only change the outside reality from which you change it into your own reality but also the way you change the outside reality into your own..

mass and energy create curves and pockets in the fabric of space and time (creates a gravitational pull)!

....the sower of seeds

haha you know what think you are Trip, almost like a news reporter on science and philosophy, you give people a overview of diffrent subjects and then if they are intriqued they can go investigate further..

....yes, but like good ole Socrates, I do it with an underlying goal in mind (planting 'affective' triggers).


.....very astute and perceptive, but it involves so much more than science and philosophy.

mm yeah it does involve more than science and philosophy.. heh anyways I rely on you for specialized news as much as I do discovery so keep up the good work Trip!

By the way I play mind games all the time so if you intend to plant triggers in my mind then you will have more than the average joe to battle against

That's awesome, and just what kind of "joe" are you again? You're starting to sound like a woman!? Ha!

I do love chess!

Discovery----> Ha! Ha! ....not quite buddie!

....and I do not engage in mind games as it is rather pathetic and immature and exhumes to much energy (of which we all have limited supply) that can be utilized in a more appropriate and productive manner (in a humanist approach for the betterment of the human race).

Hey screw you im not a chick! lol

Discovery? yeah your not but it is so dummed down that I enjoy the raw material instead of listening to a subject being explained for a hour that I understand in the first 5 minutes.. sigh*

As far as mind games go they are not meant as immature acts but as methods used to strengthen ones own mind, often seen as a 'battle of the wits' mind games invoke tense psychological challenges forcing people to expand their mental prowess. Also as you already stated increased tension helps for self-actualization so mind games promote self-actualization

Rick, I take from what you write that you make no distinction between your being a self-aware human being, and/or an animal, or insect being who, supposedly, are capable of having mental experiences.

I certainly acknowledge that I am an animal-like being and that I have many of the qualities of my fellow creatures. I also acknowledge that animals , some more than others, seem to have minds, or psyches, and that they have the capacity to think. Because of this, I have a great deal of respect for all natural things, especially animal beings.

However, allow me to pose the following question, which I am sure has been asked by many others before me: If you and I were just animal beings would we be having this communication, this dialogue?

EXISTENTIAL BEING
I think of myself as an existential, a self-aware and conscious human being, or person. As a self-aware person I know that I know, and/or don't know. I remember and am influenced by the past. I am very aware of the present; and I think a lot about what the future holds.

This knowledge is not always comforting to me. I often wish that, like my 20 year old cat, who just died, I was free of what is called existential anxiety. Being human can have its drawbacks. It seems to me that being human is not quite the same as being an animal, or mental, being. For better, or for worse, I am a spiritual, or human, being.

Is this the reality that you engage in?