I asked a sientist how I am able to move my limbs on command,They say that its something spiritual doing this.They have been trying to rig a robot arm to help people have spineal cord engeries,so they can move there limbs,They talk about the goast in the machine,body,that is how I am able to do this.I wounder,could my spirit be doing this for me?.George

In fact George, this is something what's beyond the field of natural science. The basic problem is the connection of thoughts/will to physical observable processes. A typical scientist's answer is, thoughts in truth are physiological processes. But this is not properly scientific based, because no one can tell how physiological processes cause mind phaenomena, it are two categories which cannot be connected by a simple material cause and effect relation (like with billiard balls), because such a relation can only be stated to connect two physical occurances.

Spooky

Hi George-
I think that you've pointed out one of the best reasons for belief in a reality that is not totally explicable in material terms. The "official" explanation is that we are nothng but biological machines that compute according to stimulus-response principles. That seems to be adequate until we get into interesting questions like what is a thought, or how we actually move something in response to a thought.

The best that we can do on the basis of available evidence is to say that reality has to make sense in terms of physics and chemistry, the orthodox view. But reality also must make sense with respect to the feelings and thoughts we have, and more than that, there must be some way in which all of this can arise from nothing at all. That places three seemingly incompatible requirements on any explanation.

My personal opinion is that everything is ultimately nothing but a collection of thoughts in the Mind of God. Because we all share an essential God-nature, we all share the collective thought we call the world, as well as thoughts that physicists and neurologists have about it, and also the thoughts that each of us has about the way that we see it from our individual location. Interestingly, in deep meditation, this seems to be the actual truth. In that case, your arm is only a dream, and you are dreaming that it moves. That takes care of that idea.

What it doesn't take care of is negative feelings, unless you happen to view karma as the cause of "bad dreams". I recall a limerick-

There was a faith healer named Beale
Who said, "Although pain isn't real,
When I sit on a pin,
And the point punctures in,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."  
:-)
dave
My personal belief is that our reality i

That's a great limerick, Dave!

Only a month ago, a medical doctor said to my husband "We've decided that pain is not such a good thing, so I'll write you out a prescription for a pain killer."
Hooray!

Bets

the "new age" view of things is that our bodies are like a television set.  though you can't see t.v. waves in the air, nonetheleless your t.v. set can receive them and display shows on the t.v.

the idea is our thoughts may come from "the beyond" (our soul) and our body receives them, translating them into our bodies.   this basically has to be true if you believe in the new age reincarnation idea, because reincarnation holds our souls accountable for our thoughts and actions - therefore our soul must have an effect on our biological body, because if our biological body alone is responsible for all our thoughts and actions, then we couldn't be held responsible for our actions, nor could we improve them..  of course your biological body has its own set of thoughts and drives, and it is the soul's job to contend with them, tame them, transform them into something more heavenly..

interesting responses on this thread BTW

Yes seeker, this theory you told of has some practical use for our daily life, but looking closer it's not something even to call theory. No problem is solved by it. For example, when there are two "worlds", how is it possible that one can influence the other? And, is the mind world just the same as the physical world, only made of finer stuff? Are there more of it ad infinitum? And as well, the question of the so called "free will" just occurs again, now in the spirit world. So indeed, this is superficial. The only thing that makes sense to me is one world, one kind of matter, with areas in it that at some point start to breath and state they're an individual  :) . Different types of curls with different abilities of interaction with their surrounding.

Spooky

So the TV set receives waves that pass from some distant Source and arrive here, interact with one another, and finally display an image of the "real world" on the display screen of the mind. And when we go to examine how this works it seems that everything is made up of the same waves - and we can't find the solid parts because they were part of the images too. Thus, as Spooky says, it's just one big something doing its thing to itself. (Incidently, if you get into wave mechanics, you'll find a lot of theory is based on this idea.)

d