Fascinating article in today's paper.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/?hpid=bottomnav

Either there is no God, or else He/She/It is so ineffable that we can never know Its true nature.  In any case, it seems to be a mistake to assume God has human-like qualities.

I take this question very seriously. That is why I questioned
Juditha about her alleged communication from Mother Teresa.
If Mother Teresa cannot get a communication from God, who can?
The issue was serious enough so I did not want to accept any mere
alleged communication. It would take something much stronger than a
mere supposed thing, to deal with this question. It would take the
kind of evidence that Bruce sometimes get, or like we occasionally
do get, where information is verifiable.

Much of religious material is delusional in nature. The
characteristics assigned to God by religion are mostly invented by
humans, and don't match reality. The physical universe is harsh and
pitiless and does not run on love, but rather on indifference. Love
only occurs in a few areas, involving family loyalties among the
higher animals.

God is not parental, does not do what a parent does. The heavenly
hosts are hypocritical, teaching love and helpfulness, but not giving
help except in the rarest cases and only to a few privileged people.
God is miserly. Most people get no help, and suffering continues.
There is no justice in who gets help and who does not, it is
arbitrary. There is almost no communication that seems to come from
a higher level, and the communications we do get are usually partly
questionable. Also, no god corrects the mistakes in religion. Humans
must do that, and have historically forced corrections onto
religion.

I just plain do not like delusions, and there is an issue of
delusion involved here, in the life of Mother Teresa.

I sometimes wonder of what we think are acts of God, speaking of
helpful things, are actually performed by groups of higher level
spirits. And that the setup of the physical universe is on a
different base, not like that. Heavens seem to have been built
largely by humans and human values. The physical universe seems to
come from somewhere else, and not created like the heavens.

The imagined God is largely not there, as Mother Teresa found out.

This thread should be merged with my other Mother Teresa thread - same story.

For those who think God and the universe are cruel and unmerciful, I see a separation of them done by their thoughts.  The truth is that we are part of the whole, and while there is no white haired man on a throne handing out judgements, the bigger picture is more difficult to see.  

More on this later.....


Matthew

Boris-

You said

I sometimes wonder of what we think are acts of God, speaking of
helpful things, are actually performed by groups of higher level
spirits. And that the setup of the physical universe is on a
different base, not like that. Heavens seem to have been built
largely by humans and human values. The physical universe seems to
come from somewhere else, and not created like the heavens.

I have thought this same thing for quite a while.  We, as humans, can only conceive of a supreme being in human terms.  We ascribe qualities to God that tend to mirror our own human qualities and characteristics.  We have no other way of understanding God.  That's why so many things in the Bible that are attributed to God strike some of us as being cruel and petty and vindictive.  After all, that's how we see other fellow humans.  The Old Testament especially is like this.

I personally think there is some sort of creator, but having said that, I don't know much of anything else.  Regarding what you said, the question is, why didn't the helpers come to Mother Teresa's aid and comfort?  Why was she left in such anguish and torment?

R

Can't know what the reality is as all experience is personal and inferential, but as Matthew says there's plenty of explanations around in the spiritual traditions which show how it is that the suffering that is existence in this reality is the result of our egotistically creating that reality, and in doing so losing connection with God.

There's plenty that happens in life too which if we are open to seeing it demonstrates that suffering is a major means of our awakening....

rondele wrote on Sep 5^th, 2007 at 11:44am:

Fascinating article in today's paper. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/?hpid=bottomnav Either there is no God, or else He/She/It is so ineffable that we can never know Its true nature.  In any case, it seems to be a mistake to assume God has human-like qualities.

It may be a mistake, or not. Each person has a buddha nature, which is their perfect potential, contained inside of them. That is the God in them. We can put many words around this buddha nature which sound pretty, but to me it seems to be so fundamental and pure that it cannot be explained. It must be experienced.

This is the part of our nature that is nearest to God, is closest to what we consider God.

So, yes, we tend to see God in our own image sometimes. That is not necessarily wrong, in my opinion.

And Mother Teresa did some great things. But she was human, after all. If she was so heartbroken at times, it is good that she had a friend to share her troubles with.

But, if she was in touch with her "buddha nature" she would not have been discouraged for long. She would have felt the presence of God inside of her own heart.

Many people lose touch with this when they are pulled into the public spotlight, or into positions of power. It is difficult to "hang onto yourself" in such circumstances.

Whether she could hear God or not, she was connected to the Source all along. I suspect she knew that. And I suspect she knew of her own deficiencies, as we all do, when we pay attention. Was she listening to that part of herself, and just couldn't correct them? We all have weaknesses.

love, blink :)   by the way, I cannot open that link, Rondele, so I have no idea what it says...

Hi Boris Got any proof that it was an alleged comunnication i had with mother Teresa,if you got any queries,take it up with spirit.How come you know so much about mother teresa,was you there at the time,dont put me down darlin for what i beleive in,which is that  God does exist and spirit do come to me.Jealousy gets you nowhere.

When you got proof that you know more than me ,then i might just take notice of you. And another thing ,get real God does not  cause suffering,God takes us away from suffering,hence the word"Death"or havent you heard of that word,hence"End of suffering,love in the spirit world",need i say more.

Love and God bless   Love juditha

Blink

Try going to www.washingtonpost.com  and on left side, under Opinions, click on article by Michael Gerson on Mother Teresa.

R

Thank you, Rondele. I did have to register, but I have now read the article, which is certainly moving.

My thoughts are that this is all a matter of Mother Teresa's perceptions. She was depressed. When a person is depressed they see things differently, obviously. They feel abandoned.

Feeling sorry for oneself because one does not hear a "voice" anymore is different from being depressed, which she obviously was at times. They say that few escape life without an episode of significant depression.

It is clear enough to any of us that a person who does not feel connected to "God" can do good in the world anyway. But the idea that suffering to that extent is "necessary" in some way does not ring true to me.

She walked and talked with the suffering, and with others who were enamoured of her work. Could she have simply been "in" the world too much to hear any voices anymore?

Again, this article goes back to the idea of the "nobility" of suffering. I don't really see any nobility in suffering, but I do see nobility in attempting to survive it, and in attempting to help others.

love, blink :)

Roger,

Keep in mind that Mother Teresa experienced several ecststic (PUL) visions and auditory instructions from Jesus as part of her intitial call to minister to "the poorest of the poor."  Once she began her work with the poor, her mystical experiences ceased and she longed to have her spiritual batteries recharged by more ecstatic encounters with Christ.  Who wouldn't?  Her ensuing depression was in part an emotional crash from the rapture of those divine communications and the contrast with the depressing obstacle-filled task of confronting the apparently futile plight of the starving and deathly ill masses in Calcutta.  

I have experienced the same depression immediately after my most momentous experiences of union with God.  In my view, this inevitable emotional let-down is a defining characteristic of genuine mystical union with God.  The contrast with ordinary conscious states is just too dramatic to process comfortably.  So when Mother Teresa expresses her doubts, she is merely providing an honest expression of her recurring but transient depression.  Most of the time, people who were in contact with her perceived her as joyful and radiant.  Paradoxically, it is possible to be both joyful and depressed in the same phase.  Her depressed states were a function of the profound empathy of which saints are uniquely capable.  

Let's review how her ministry began after her sense of a divine call.  In her first exploratory days, she wandered all day in the hot sun, looking for a suitable place to serve as her headquarters.  When her efforts proved futile, she was afflicted by heat exhaustion and a growing frustration over the question of why God had not rewarded her tireless efforts.  Then she saw a woman dying on the sidewalk just outside a local hospital.  Though Teresa was diminutive, she struggled to carry the woman inside the hospital, only to be turned away because the woman lacked money.  Teresa stayed with the woman for several hours until she died on the sidewalk.  This horrific experience stiffened Teresa's resolve.  But she lacked financial backing.  So for a long time, she and her students simply swallowed their pride and went door-to-door begging for food.  They then distributed these rations to the starving and the dying.  She would eventually raise the funds needed to provide food and shelter for millions.  But her progress was very slow and any deeply empathetic soul would be depressed by the feelings of helplessness and the futility of her initial struggles.  

Some of the greatest saints have had depressive personalities for analogous reasons.  A Notre Dame psychologist once confessed that modern secular psychology is ill-equipped to get a handle on the higher states of consciousness of saints.  It has long been noted that the melancholic personality is generally far more spiritiually insightful than the so-called "healthy" personality.  

Long before the recent rash of articles on Teresa, I preached a sermon on "The Gift of Depression," and analyzed Teresa's depressive states as tools for her spiritual breakthroughs.  I then compared her growth curve with that of other saints who had experiecned a similar emotional roller coaster ride, a ride that stiffened their resolve to make a difference in countless lives.  My text was Psalm 88 which offers no hope and serves as an eloquent ancient description of the state of clinical depression.  The psalm was included in the Bible to make the point that such depression is an important phase of the journey of saints to deep empathy with those who suffer.

Don    

Oh, Juditha, I love you so much that I do not want this to come
between us. I will rethink this. I realize that for you, the
feeling that comes with these communications from spirit is enough,
that they are real for you, and have been authenticated for you by
your experience. I do not presume to know more than you about this.
The burden of proof of a reading is upon the person giving it, but
the burden of proof is also upon the person criticising the
reading, and I have nothing that would demonstrate that this
reading could not be real.  (And I am certainly not jealous)

I will try it the other way around: maybe the reading is real,  and
maybe what I think is missing will turn up in time. This area is
full of odd things that may not seem to fit together at times.

I want very much to believe in you, and to think that through you I
may get access to the unseen, and some answers to my questions.
I have noticed, for instance, that you are getting some backup on
your idea about holes in the sun, which seemed odd to me.
Perhaps you will come up with answers as to why Mother Teresa
received no word. But that remains bothersome for me.

You have become part of my learning experience, in this way: I
regard difference of opinion among people that you are close to is
an area that needs special attention and thought. I have some
strong bonds with Moslem girls, and I have to learn how to converse
with them. It is part of a learning process that if more people
learn, it will tend to bring peace to the world.

I want to give you more encouragement in what you are doing, and I
wish you success.

Much love,
Boris

Berserk wrote: "Her ensuing depression was in part an emotional crash from the rapture of those divine communications and the contrast with the depressing obstacle-filled task of confronting the apparently futile plight..."

 I have read about similar depressions of people who had a "surrounded by light and love/ God" NDE. Some were suicidal.

Spooky

Sounds to me like an echo from St John of the Cross' book, The Dark Night of the Soul.

However, I can't help but chuckle at Boris' suggestion that religion is largely a self inflicted delusion. I think Marx and Engels said something like that in the Communist Manifesto - "Religion is the opium of the people"  (or maybe it was in Marx's Das Kapital) - and the same statement was used by Mao as his excuse for "liberating" the Tibetan people from the putative tyranny of Buddhist monks.

Personally, I suspect the Mother Theresa, now beatified, simply got worn down a bit. As they say, "When you're up to your arse in alligators, it's hard to remember that the original idea was to drain the swamp."

d

I'd like to add this from another pslam, #22:

"They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death."

While Christians, understandably, tie this to the Crucification, I see it also as another description of depression.

It seems that with depression there's a polarity. Viewed as suffering, it can be suicidal. Viewed as a gift, it can what Don points out, a means of spiritual insight.

It's also been said that suffering is relative, that is, each person experiences theirs as the greatest they know, so we cannot say that we suffer more than others (or they more than us). Since it is relative, it can be seen as an illusion; a choice of perspective: is it death or a gift?

Rob

Thanks, Don.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people." - Karl Marx      about 1844


No, Dave I am not one of those who rejected religion, as  part of
their philosophical statement. I am ready to introduce to science,
the parts of religion that turned out to be true.

To lend some balance I can point out one part of religion that
turned out to be true, and that is The "Book of Life", described in
the Bible, in which the record of a person's life is written.  The
Near Death Experiences have reported that a record of a person's
life is kept in incredible detail. Every little thing is there,
things we hardly remember.

Also, life after death, and heaven and hell also turned out to be
true. Also, angels, and miracles are still reported today.
I am very conscious of these things.

The reason that I  make so much noise about negative aspects of
life on Earth like disease and natural disasters, is that religions
and mystic people completely refuse to recognize their existence
when constructing a paradigm. They are oblivious and just seem to
say, oh these things don't count. They cannot explain these things
in their version of the world, yet go on acting as if they had
everything worked out. To me this is very annoying. To me diseases,
pests, parasites, and disasters are very important evidence as to how
Earth is designed and operates. To leave them out of the total
paradigm is to form an essentially incorrect and delusional idea of
the principles of operation of this planet.

On this planet anything is allowed to happen, good or evil, and
every creature, good or awful, is allowed to exist if it can
survive. This is not the pretend benevolent god at work.
Conventional religion has never described this as it actually is.

Hi Boris I love you to and sorry about the jealousy bit,out of order on my part,i also learn from you as well and one good thing about this site,we can all be honest with each other because of the love we all share.

Gods love be with you day by day.

God bless   Love juditha

Berserk2 wrote on Sep 5^th, 2007 at 7:24pm:

Roger, Keep in mind that Mother Teresa experienced several ecststic (PUL) visions and auditory instructions from Jesus as part of her intitial call to minister to "the poorest of the poor."  Once she began her work with the poor, her mystical experiences ceased and she longed to have her spiritual batteries recharged by more ecstatic encounters with Christ.  Who wouldn't?  Her ensuing depression was in part an emotional crash from the rapture of those divine communications and the contrast with the depressing obstacle-filled task of confronting the apparently futile plight of the starving and deathly ill masses in Calcutta.   I have experienced the same depression immediately after my most momentous experiences of union with God.  In my view, this inevitable emotional let-down is a defining characteristic of genuine mystical union with God.  The contrast with ordinary conscious states is just too dramatic to process comfortably.  So when Mother Teresa expresses her doubts, she is merely providing an honest expression of her recurring but transient depression.  Most of the time, people who were in contact with her perceived her as joyful and radiant.  Paradoxically, it is possible to be both joyful and depressed in the same phase.  Her depressed states were a function of the profound empathy of which saints are uniquely capable.   Let's review how her ministry began after her sense of a divine call.  In her first exploratory days, she wandered all day in the hot sun, looking for a suitable place to serve as her headquarters.  When her efforts proved futile, she was afflicted by heat exhaustion and a growing frustration over the question of why God had not rewarded her tireless efforts.  Then she saw a woman dying on the sidewalk just outside a local hospital.  Though Teresa was diminutive, she struggled to carry the woman inside the hospital, only to be turned away because the woman lacked money.  Teresa stayed with the woman for several hours until she died on the sidewalk.  This horrific experience stiffened Teresa's resolve.  But she lacked financial backing.  So for a long time, she and her students simply swallowed their pride and went door-to-door begging for food.  They then distributed these rations to the starving and the dying.  She would eventually raise the funds needed to provide food and shelter for millions.  But her progress was very slow and any deeply empathetic soul would be depressed by the feelings of helplessness and the futility of her initial struggles.   Some of the greatest saints have had depressive personalities for analogous reasons.  A Notre Dame psychologist once confessed that modern secular psychology is ill-equipped to get a handle on the higher states of consciousness of saints.  It has long been noted that the melancholic personality is generally far more spiritiually insightful than the so-called "healthy" personality.   Long before the recent rash of articles on Teresa, I preached a sermon on "The Gift of Depression," and analyzed Teresa's depressive states as tools for her spiritual breakthroughs.  I then compared her growth curve with that of other saints who had experiecned a similar emotional roller coaster ride, a ride that stiffened their resolve to make a difference in countless lives.  My text was Psalm 88 which offers no hope and serves as an eloquent ancient description of the state of clinical depression.  The psalm was included in the Bible to make the point that such depression is an important phase of the journey of saints to deep empathy with those who suffer. Don

If you want a true interpretation of the Old Testament in the christian bible, go to your local
jewish rabbi...It is their holy books...They(christian-old testament, jewish sacred books) use it for their own devious means.....The new testament is theirs! The Old testament belongs to the
Jewish Religion....DON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Darth.... May both sides of the force be with you. ps. Don.You
can't handle the Jews not accepting jesus christ as your saviour! After all he was just  a make believe
messiah to start with!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!A fabricated god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thanks to Constantine
and the dramatists in the Greek quarter of Rome in those past days!!!!!!!!!!.
:P

Hi Boris - it's a hard road, but hang in there.  There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Not sure how it is that confirming a basically unattractive message can somehow amount to help  :), but the perception that especially mystical or esoteric traditions don't recognise the suffering that life in this existence is is probably a result of the happy happy message preached by  few of the more populist varieties of religion.

I'm no expert and Buddhism is my greatest familiarity but in essence most of the spiritual traditions  argue something along the following lines. Pardon the sloppy and matter of fact terminology - it's rushed, and it mixes all sorts of usages of words which may be a bit confusing:

1. This reality that we seem to exist in (cosmos, Samsara in Buddhist terminology, the reality that contains this whole cycle of life death, afterlife, re-birth and so on but not the absolute or true reality) seems on first appearance to be ordered on the dog eat dog principle.

2. It's the creation of the ego or collective mind (?) of all the beings (including humanity) that find themselves living in it. Not of God.

3. It's that way because having dreamed/dropped down to a state of consciousness that separated them from God (like in a dream - we lose awareness of other realities) we started to believe in the reality of individuality, started to behave out of self interest instead of love, and in doing so out of ignorance created a reality that functions on that basis.

4. Luckily we have retained (or can't avoid since it's a part of us?) a connection with God/higher mind - via soul/Grace/being a part of God/higher mind.

5. This connection sets up a fundamental tension in all our lives between the urge to live egotistically, or be driven by the delusion of self interest; and the urge to higher consciousness/to live out of love. God/grace or whatever is always there to help us, but free will means we have to reach out.

6. Higher awareness strengthens the God consciousness, while reduced awareness causes us to slide more deeply into the dog eat dog mentality, into efforts towards self/ego aggrandisment, and the suffering it causes for all of us. (how can a world full of individuals all convinced that the only thing that matters is their narrow personal interest be anything except a dog fight?)

7. The spiritual path is basically about raising awareness (it happens naturally out of among other things the reverses of life, but meditative practice/prayer/study/self exploration  leads to faster changes in 'knowns' and speeds it up) so that eventually we become realised, or wholly conscious of God. We see existence from a different (no longer personal) vantage point, and so live through love. By coming to see past the dream that is this reality we become able to transcend it, or to return to the original union with God.

8. This entails our having transitioned to become something else - as a a result of coming to see the truth of love we we no longer see ourselves as ''self', and become and unable to act selfishly. It can be gradual, or it can be a flash of inspiration but essentially we tumble to the fact that the self and the reality it created was essentially not real - we come to see that love is the power which actually runs the world, that our perception that it is dog eat dog is only a selective one. (most who act lovingly find things falling out for the better in ways they could from the perspective of their everyday conditioning never have imagined) We transcend the conventional reality, and it ceases to cause us pain.

9. The problem with all of this is the ego that we have built and which created this reality in the first place - it's insatiably insecure. (since it keeps on trying to maintain the illusion that it's our true self, and that it runs the show) So it likes to chase after cars, men/women, big homes, money, power, whatever to make itself feel better. Others are more subtle and focus on being holier than thou, more knowledgeable than thou, a greater victim than thou or whatever. The short term transitory or often sneaky pleasures of this life.

And the more it succeeds in getting these the easier it is for it to maintain the delusion that it doesn't need God. It probably explains too why trouble, illness, death and the like in our lives tend to drive rapid spiritual opening - they pop the bubble the ego has frantically been trying to build.

10. The tough bit follows from the ego being the conventional personality through which most of us live. We mistakenly decide that it is 'me'. (although higher experience pretty quickly pokes a few holes in that delusion, and starts to show that self is something rather more fundamental) Meaning that in order for us to progress on the path or back to God and away from individuality the ego must progressively die. Every little step of awakening, every little illusion that gets dropped amounts to a little death, and as such is very raw and painful.

11. It hurts like hell if it goes fast. Which is why periods of true opening and experience are always followed pain. This is the true meaning of the 'dark night of the soul'. Didn't Jesus reportedly say something about the need 'to die that ye may live'?? It's not for nothing that there's an old adage that you basically need to have an urge to self destruction to be attracted to the spiritual path. The good news is that we seem to be provided with the means to cope too.

It's not in one way a particularly attractive view of things (it's going to hurt if you go up, but it's going to hurt a lot more if you slip back down), but it does have it's redeeming features. For example it provide a framework from within which it's possible to make sense of the suffering and pain that life delivers.  ;) Not to mention that a taste of the old PUL somehow makes it all not so bad, although as we've talked the reception comes and goes depending on what's going on in your life at the time. (mental intensity/fear/feeling uppity and the like  - the screams of the ego - tend to cause interference) ....

A few verses on this very topic:

Yearning
We walk
Deluded and alone
Yet drawn by spirit
Self burns in light’s clear flame
Towards emptiness
Impending doom
An end
And yet
Awakening

Or:

Care worn,
Love lorn,
Lost,
Yet not.

All wise,
Big heart,
Awake,
Not yet.

Still caught,
‘Tween views,
Torn,
Raw heart.

or

The light
Creeps in
This multicoloured dawn
Brings joy
With pain

Love..

Thanks for the accurate quotation, Boris. - I should recall that, since I was steeped in dialectic in my Sociology MA studies - I had the only Marxist advisor on campus. I had turned backwards to Georg Hegel for my MA thesis, tossed in Cantor's math and the evolving "tri-lectic" system of Pitirim Sorkin - and after writing it all up, he told me to scrap it and start with something else, which took six months more. (Dialectics are not to be nmessed with, I suppose.)  It took 8 more years to finish the original thing, but I was able to present it for a doctorate.

Anyway, I still like the idea that religion, at least the Go To Church on Sunday variety. tends to be 90% fire escape and 10% faith in the unknown, all of which is somehow wrapped up in magical thinking. I recall the Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine -  named "The Magic Christian" -  in which, after a snort of "damnable ... hemp" the characters discovered, "The Magic Christian is unstable."

However, a combination of indeterminacy and  thermodynamics seems to keep everything combining, so that we have universal expansion, and combinations settle into lower entropy states according to their increasing stability. This seems to be the driving force behind the mechanical process we call "karma", and also the reason that we tend to settle into ever more stable relationships with reality.

(I differ from the Big Bang Gangers by postulating that "reality" is epiphenomenal on a potential state space, as opposed to "real and extended stuff". The physics seems to work pretty well with Vedic and Buddhistic traditions.)

d

wrote on Sep 5^th, 2007 at 4:20pm:

Can't know what the reality is as all experience is personal and inferential, but as Matthew says there's plenty of explanations around in the spiritual traditions which show how it is that the suffering that is existence in this reality is the result of our egotistically creating that reality, and in doing so losing connection with God. There's plenty that happens in life too which if we are open to seeing it demonstrates that suffering is a major means of our awakening....

I am open to the idea that there is a meaning behind everything and we are welcomed home by loving spirits when we die and all looks clearer in perspective - our learnings and successes and failures etc (and yes sometimes, or perhaps always, suffering provides learning, but sometimes you do wonder if this payoff is enough for pain and disruption caused) - but sometimes I also can;t help but think that the universe as a whole doesn;t seem to "run on love". I mean even in nature, or especially so, there is not that much evidence of it - it is a battle to survive for many animals, and a literally dog eat dog existance. Some one said once that if you think the world is all about love , or is at least weighted towards the positive, then compare the pleasure of an animal eating another one alive with the feeling of the animal being eaten.. Anyway, that's just me looking on the negative side i guess.. but the question of undeserved suffering is one that has been endlessly debated and no doubt will continue to be

As for Mother Theresa, who can say, but maybe the rigid doctrines and unquestioning obedience Catholicism requires don;t help you connect to a satisfying spirituality? I read someone once saying that the really spiritual characters in rigid religions like catholicism and Islam are the excpetions - the sufis and mystics etc who manage not to focus much on the doctrine despite the previaling culture of the religion, and focus on love and feelings of oneenss with God etc

Hi Orlando. It really is the perennial question, isn't it? How can a loving God create such a world of suffering?

Agree on Mother T's likely situation, but it's really tough to get a handle on. The theory as above is one thing, and experience is another - it's not until one starts to gain some experience that it starts to feel it might be more than just a nice idea. Yet it really does seem often (not always) to be the case that counterintuitive loving acts bring happiness into our lives, while selfish grasping  after stuff brings both externally and internally induced suffering.

I often think it's like two worlds merge to create the reality we experience - a world led by love, and a world driven by rule of the fittest. Like both are present simultaneously, and blend into each other to form a continuum between these poles. The dualistic nature of our minds causes us to think in terms of one one polarity or the other (love or aggression), but people's actions probably reflect varying degrees of awakening and mix both so they are spread right along the continuum.

Factor in free will and we can choose (choose is maybe not the word - it's more like we experience a reality which reflects what we are at our current state of awakening) to live by and experience an animalistic world driven by aggression, or we can choose to live through love and experience it as led by love, or anywhere in between.

Meaning that for some the world is experienced as filled with love, for others it's not and for most it's a mix.

I guess it kind of make sense if we think in terms of overlapping and enmeshed realities created by minds which view existence from differing points on the continuum. Some might argue that the animalistic bit is our (and other being's) creation, and the loving bit that reaches in to it that of God.

Some argue however that painful as it may be that whatever we experience is exactly what we need to wake us up. God is still ultimately in charge, and while we are allowed our little bubble of separation that viewed from the absolute it all in the end adds up, that we all make it back to God.

:) There's times when you post Dave that I feel a mental pygmy...

Vajra-
Oh yes - I know the feeling - like when I read poetry that you've written.

As my father used to put it, "You're as much of a poet, as a sheep is a go-at." (Bad pun, sorry.)  :P

d

Darth Benedict wrote on Sep 6^th, 2007 at 3:54am:

If you want a true interpretation of the Old Testament in the christian bible, go to your local jewish rabbi...It is their holy books...They(christian-old testament, jewish sacred books) use it for their own devious means :P

I think you have a point. I once compared the versions of some parts of the Old Testament often used as prophecies of Jesus with the same parts in a Jewish Bible, and found that the Jewish translations were less likely to "sound like Jesus" - for example the bit in  pslam 22 where Christian Bibles have "they pierced my hands and feet", in the Jewish version they had "like lions they maul my hands and feet". That's just one example that I remember from a number.

wrote on Sep 6^th, 2007 at 6:44am:

1. This reality that we seem to exist in (cosmos, Samsara in Buddhist terminology, the reality that contains this whole cycle of life death, afterlife, re-birth and so on but not the absolute or true reality) seems on first appearance to be ordered on the dog eat dog principle. 2. It's the creation of the ego or collective mind (?) of all the beings (including humanity) that find themselves living in it. Not of God...

This has a certain kind of  logic and appeal to it , but then aagin how does it square with what science/history tells us about the ancient history of our planet? We do not know of any time when there was a "golden age" and beings all lived in peace and harmony with each other until we messed things up with the wrong attitudes etc - ? PS I just realised how what you said has an affinity with the Christian idea of a "fall" - not a good or bad thing, just noting

wrote on Sep 6^th, 2007 at 6:02pm:

I often think it's like two worlds merge to create the reality we experience - a world led by love, and a world driven by rule of the fittest. Like both are present simultaneously, and blend into each other to form a continuum between these poles. The dualistic nature of our minds causes us to think in terms of one one polarity or the other (love or aggression), but people's actions probably reflect varying degrees of awakening and mix both so they are spread right along the continuum.

That's an interesting idea. Of course there ARE love and truth and beauty etc in the world and human nature, as well as the bad stuff. Thank goodness..

I also would like to give my approval to vajra's paragraph about
the merging of 2 different worlds.

I have hammered away for years about the huge difference in
principle of operation between heaven, and the physical universe,
and the refusal of conventional religion to recognize this,
thinking they are all part of the same thing somehow, which I find
to be impossible, in terms of the basic principles involved.

But I have also noted in my other posts, the fact that I can see my
aura, that I think of as being part of the other world, the unseen
world, (except I happen to be able to see it).

The word "merge" is just what I needed. I am merged, so to speak,
through my aura, which exists in both worlds. I think of my aura as
being a representation of part of my soul, so my soul is the
merging connection. But I am not aware of the extent of my
connection, because of the strange rule of suppression of higher
level knowledge during an incarnation, which we discussed earlier.

This is about the theme of "connection to god" we keep hearing
about from mystical people. Odd realization: our connection to god
is deliberately suppressed during an incarnation. People are always
talking about how we "lost our connection to god" somewhere along
the line. There is all sorts of invented lore along that line, how
we were separated, or are rejoined, whatever. But now it hits me,
this loss of connection to god is built in, part of the rules of
reincarnation. Returnees from NDEs are told "you will forget all
this", when you wake up back on Earth. And they do forget.

This could seem to say that we are deliberately separated from God,
as part of the rules of the game. Like children forget their
previous lives somewhere around age 5 to 7.  Or if we are not
actually separated, at least we are deprived of knowledge of our
connection.   Like, we didn't drift away from God, or fall from God,  rather, God took himself away from us, as part of the game of reincarnation, for some as yet unknown reason.

This leaves me wondering if Mother Teresa's separation from God was
a part of this process, part of the way reincarnation works. Like
when we reincarnate, after a certain point, we are on our own,
normally remembering nothing. So maybe Mother Teresa was left on
here own, after a certain point. (This is only an odd speculation).

My next area of thinking, after accepting the word "merge", is what
is the overall merging situation in general? What about the 500
million years of life before the appearance of humans? Was there
little or no merging?  Or was there always some merging? Was the
physical world left alone to develop using its rules of survival,
as the only thing that mattered? Did the physical world have no
destination until entities with plans and designs appeared? Like
why 150 million years of dinosaurs? When did the higher world take
on its higher character? Did it evolve on a concurrent track, but
with a different character? Did the higher world develop as a
response to what happened in the physical world?

Etc, etc, etc.

Boris wrote on Sep 7^th, 2007 at 1:47am:

I also would like to give my approval to vajra's paragraph about the merging of 2 different worlds. I have hammered away for years about the huge difference in principle of operation between heaven, and the physical universe, and the refusal of conventional religion to recognize this, thinking they are all part of the same thing somehow, which I find to be impossible, in terms of the basic principles involved.c.

I don;t know I agree that this is what conventional religion does - i mean in Christianity the "world" has often been seen as something negative, fallen, imperfect etc, to be escpaed from to Heaven and/or renewed after the Final Judgment. its pleasures have been seen as fading and unsatisfying and just temptations away from the real life with God. Similarly thre was Plato's idea of Forms which suggested that everything here was imperfect, and also in Eastern religions thre is often the idea of the world just being an illusion or trap of somekind. I am not sure I would be so negative about it myself, although this world certainly has its down sides.

>>> and also in Eastern religions there is often the idea of the world just being an illusion or trap of somekind. I am not sure I would be so negative about it myself, although this world certainly has its down sides. <<<

------------------------------


We are talking "illusions" now, and what exactly is an illusion, but a form of reality, as far as I had been able to bottom line it for myself. A person whom finds the world to be a happy little package of goodies, because he/she has everything which is needed to be content with, lives in his/her illusional "reality", whileas someone living on the streets, has no money, no food and no bed to keep warm in this winter also lives in their illusional "reality". Both can "change their circumstance at "any given time" and change their illusion. No matter what it is, a human can change their reality or illusion.

I find our entire "world as we know it to be" is an illusion which we create based on energy which we give it, aka : it is our "reality". Once we come to terms with the fact that "both" of the words mean the same thing, then we have evolved to the next step of consiousness.

The world as we know it has its downside, absolutely agree, however without these "downsides", we would not be able to experience the "upsides" as we wouldnt know the difference thereof.

Its what we "constitute" with the knowledge of such experience, is what counts! Simple example: OIL: Since we in our incarnation have had an abundance of it to (mis)use, (the upside) we mainly, "the majority I mean to say" don`t understand what it really feels like not having it around. When it is completely gone, our generation will learn the lesson: ergo will tell the next generation of its experience, what it was like in the "old days"..lol... They however will have developed a complete new methode and some kids will probably say: "Awe great grandpa, that must have been terribly hard, or wow Papa Gramps, how awfull for all those people who heated there homes using such oil and suddenly had no more". Theres alot of examples one can use: Drinking water, minerals in our soil, war, waste, air pollution etc. Again: without these "downsides", we would not be able to experience the "upsides" as we wouldnt know the difference thereof. Understanding (meaning: have learned the lesson) means reacting upon it, in energy, thought, view of and taking action. Ex: ride with a buddy and seriously tell others why you do it, teach children about what your grandparents taught us (how many people really really take time with their kids, nieces, nephews, the kid next door, reaching out to the problems of kids all around the world... "teaching them what we know about the consequences of .....", ergo: Playstations, X-box and co. have become our generations teachers instead of us) :-?

When we collectively start to realise that we are ONE and understand our purpose, come to understand that this "collectively being one" can change "EVERYTHING" which you see today, if focused on the same "illusion/reality" then a major stage setting has been made according to Plan. WE just won`t do it like "Hilter and co." (as I read in another thread) did, we will do it using another high form of communication: LOVE! As we have learned the LESSON according to Plan. Take a sec and think about it, isnt that what 2012 is all about? Another major stage setting. Continueing that which Mother Teresa taught during her time of incarnation.

;)
Nanner

Don-

Thanks as usual for your input.

I'd like to frame this issue from the standpoint of the Golden Rule.  Jesus admonishes us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  My question:  Is God exempt from this Rule?

A loving human parent would never encourage a child to pursue a certain path, and then when the child undertakes it in earnest, the parent suddenly turns away and becomes noncommunicative, cold and absent from the child's need for encouragement, essentially abandoning her in the time of her most urgent crisis.

In fact, a human parent would rightfully be scolded for treating a child in that fashion.  Yet for some reason we seem to be able to justify God's behavior in doing much the same thing.

Doesn't quite compute.

I agree with Roger,

Those who see a disconnect betwen heaven and the physical world, who see a cosmic indiffernece to our pain and suffering, and may believe that pain and suffering are meted out to us, are missing two points: the idea of free will, and the give and take of our conscious thought.

Free will is an absolute on the physical plane, and as such we are left to see the consequences of thought and action.  This is not abandonment, but rather the golden rule in action (do not do unto others.......).  Were a divine external will/force to intervene in the outcome of free will on earth, it would negate to some extent having free will in the first place.

The other issue, one that lurks under the surface of our lives is that our thought translates into our reality, right here, and right now in the real world.  As such, there is the famous law of attraction - we bring to our life situations not that which we desire on a whim, but that which is held to the subconscious as our deepest beliefs.   Be it success, failure, violence - it is a cause and effect reaction.  It takes some reading and much reflection on our own lives to really appreciate this.  When we realize its true, aside from our jaws dropping to the floor, we suddenly understand why love, and acting kindly is important (not just because your mom said it was).  

So many here and in life, rail against an unfair God or heaven, cursing them with their fate, when in reality, their beliefs, and thoughts have usually gotten them (whether they know it or not) into whatever unfortunate situation they find themselves in.  This is not true for earthquakes, nuclear bombs and large dispersals of energy - clearly there is some randomness in existing incarnate - and some things that are unfair and not planned.

It is only with a deep understanding of free will and our thoughts creating changes in our own lives that we can appreciate our existence, and our relationship to God and heaven.

Matthew

Matthew-

You say that free will is absolute on the physical plane, and also that if a divine external will were to intervene in the outcome of free will, it would negate having free will in the first place.

However, the article says:

"In September of 1946, then-Sister Teresa had heard a voice calling her to serve the poorest of the poor -- what she interpreted as the voice of Jesus...."

This raises an obvious question- did Teresa really hear a voice calling her to service, and was it Jesus or some other spiritual entity?  And if so, wouldn't that constitute an intervention in the outcome of free will??

Further, we read of countless other cases where a person is apparently being warned of some impending disaster, or being saved from injury or death.  Remember Don's story of the man in line at the ticket counter, waiting to buy a ticket on a flight, and being warned by some inner voice not to board that plane?  And he decided not to board, and the plane did in fact crash with no survivors.

So.....aren't there many cases where there is divine intervention in the outcome of free will?  

R

Hi Roger,

Personally, I think free will remains absolute in those instances.  MT may have decided to heed her visionary call - or she may have ascribed it to having a stomach flu, and not acted on it.  

Many on this board have intuition or guidance about certain happenings - yet - and this seems to me to be the key, the choice is still up to the person about what to do (or not).  I hit a deer by mistake while driving at twilight a few years back.  As I rounded a curve, I saw the tail of a deer enter the bushes on the left.  "where there is one, there are many" popped into my head, clear as day.  Suddenly from the right, a deer literally lept out unseen at the side of my car.  

Was that voice guidance?  Perhaps.  I didn't change my reaction quickly enough, however.  The animal managed to run away, but I felt it must have been severely injured, and was heartbroken.

My point is that some of us may be given the blessing of divine intervention, grace or guidance, but the free will system remains intact.  And we see the repercussions of our daily choices and actions, and we reap what we sow.  Free will - is still there with or without the guidance.


Doc

[Roger:] "Further, we read of countless other cases where a person is apparently being warned of some impending disaster, or being saved from injury or death.  Remember Don's story of the man in line at the ticket counter, waiting to buy a ticket on a flight, and being warned by some inner voice not to board that plane?  And he decided not to board, and the plane did in fact crash with no survivors."
____________________________________________

This Sunday my sermon title is "God's Selective Protection."  My biblical text is Acts 12:1-19, the account of how the apostles James was arrested and immediately executed by Herod Antipas.  Peter was arrested shortly thereafter, but his execution had to be postponed for several days until after Jewish Passover.  This delay gave a few days of grace for intercessory prayer.  Unlike James, Peter is miraculously delivered by an earthquake combined with an angelic apparition.  But when he arrives at Mary's house where the prayer meeting is proceeding, no one can believe the initial report that Peter is standing at the door.  James is executed too summarily for the church to convene such a prayer meeting in his behalf.  So the absence of an intercessory prayer meeting for James is not the church's fault.  Still, prayer seems to have made the decisive difference in Peter's deliverance.

I will be exploring similar modern cases in which one believer is divinely protected by a premonition, while others were permitted to die.  You cite the case of Methodist pastor E. Stanley Jones's  premonition in India to abandon the ticket line in the wake of the impending airplane crash that killed all the Hindu passengers.  Similar examples abound.  For example, there was a United Methodist church nearby the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, the scene of Tim McVeigh's bombing.  But several Methodists who would have been in the kill zone during the bomb's explosion were bizarrely protected by a series of coincidences.  For example, the pastor, Nick Harris, was going to tape 4 radio broadcasts at the time of the bombing.  But his sound engineer, Gus Alfonso, forgot to show up at 8:30 am.  Gus was always reliable and had never forgotten his commitment to be there before!  This amnesia, and other similar coincidences, kept several people away from the kill zone in the church sanctuary.  

Similarly, Tom Hawthorne wanted his friend, Ken Harvey, to go to the Murrah building with him that fateful Tuesday morning.  Tom called Ken on Monday night and reminded him to be ready.  At 7:10 am the next morning, Ken called Tom and offered to do the driving.  Tom declined Ken's offer and reminded Ken that he would drive by at 8:30 am to pick him up.  Despite multiple reminders to pick Ken up, Tom was apparently afflicted with a divine amnesia and never kept his promise to pick Ken up.  Tom's body was recovered 5 days after the explosion at 9:02 am.  Even more than the prior case, this case suggests divine deliverance was provided for Ken, but not for Tom.  In this case, both men were devout Christians.  So this refutes any silly claim no Christians are left vulernable in analogous situations.  Several children in the Murrah's day care center also perished in the blast.

Also impressive to me is the case of lawyer, Tom Wise.  His father, Robert, began each day with an hour of prayer during which he prayed specifically that God would cover each of his children with divine protection.  Thirty seconds before the blast, Tom was standing by the window in front of the Murrah Building surveying the business district.  He felt prompted to move away, the bomb exploded, and the ceiling fell on his secretary.  

Of course, one can wonder why those who received no such prolonged prayer support were permitted to suffer.  In my view, God cannot be dismissed as an impersonal sadist; rather, there seem to be some poorly understand spiritual laws at work here that regulate God's ability to intervene in His creation.  But I find the evidence for some paranormal intervention compelling in some of these cases.

Roger, you rightly ask why cases like Leonard's visit from his dead son are not more common.  One can only speculate, but this mystery hardly refutes the credibility of such accounts.  In a future sermon, I will be laying out a comprehensive bibilcal rational for why such apparent inconsistencies seem to abound.

Even so, such fantastic ADCs, though rare, are not as rare as you might imagine.  Take a tangible touch from deceased loved ones as a case in point.  Today I officiated at a burial service for an elderly grandmother.  While alive, she had the habit of sharply poking her daughter Tomi in the chest to make a point.  At the grave, Tomi told me that yesterday she felt relentless sharp poking by an unseen hand in her chest, poking so hard that she took her blouse off to check for bruises!  Two weeks earlier a parishioner was awakened in the middle of the night by a hand carressing her cheek.  It was her recently dead sister's hand.  The sister was glowing in the dark and conveyed the joyful news that she was now happily adjusting to her new heavenly locale.  I'm almost surprised now if parishioners have no such ADCs to report!

Anyway, as you know, these issues involve complicated moral questions, but I thought I'd provide these experiences as good for thought.

Don

 

 

Apparently there are several kinds of intervention.  One kind would be that "inner voice" warning we sometimes get about impending danger.  Another kind, more dramatic, would be the manifestation of what I would call an angel for want of a more descriptive term.

The latter kind happened to me as a child.  It was witnessed by two other people (one of whom, unfortunately, was preparing to end my life).  The other was a childhood pal.  At the very instant of maximum danger to me, when I probably only had seconds to live, a woman in a car suddenly appeared out of nowhere along a stretch of a seldom used rural road.

She rolled down her window and asked if we were alright.  The man jumped off of me and ran to his car and sped away.  When my pal and I biked to our summer cottage to tell our parents, the police were called.  We were questioned mostly about the man, type of car he had, etc.  

But when we were asked about the lady, we realized we hadn't seen her drive up (which is understandable since we were under attack at the point), but amazingly we didn't see her drive away.  It was like she vanished along with her car.  That stretch of road was straight with no turnoffs or intersections, there was no way she could have driven off without one of us seeing her.  Thinking back, the entire time we were there, no cars had come by in either direction.  Even today it is not travelled that much.

So I accept the probability that my life was saved by an angel or helper or call it what you will.  That's a pretty big "intervention."

I'm not sure what is more puzzling....who or what saved my life or why was my life saved that day, the same day when I'm sure many other lives were lost that could also have been saved with the same type of intervention.

Roger,

Wonderful story - and it adds to this site (its what many want to hear, myself included).  Just a quick question, which may mean I'm kind of dense.  If it were in fact a real woman (incarnate) who came up the road and saved you, would it have been of any less cosmic importance or wonder to you or your life?  

Many of those who Swedenborg called angels were human beings, now deceased.  The idea that an angel must be inherently superior (in a cosmic sense)  to an incanated human being is what I am not sure that I believe.  

Doc

Doc-

I've often pondered your question.  Yes, it's possible it was just an amazing coincidence and it's possible that we were too upset and distracted to see her drive away.  

Nonetheless, she arrived at the precise moment.  30 seconds either way would not have helped me.  

Even if it was a real woman, her arrival at that instant was, in my opinion, the result of some sort of divine intervention.  

In the years that have passed, my wife and I now own the same cottage where I spent my summers as a kid, and even today, sometimes we drive down that road and I slow down when I get to the ditch where my friend and I were busy catching pollywogs the day I almost died.

R

Roger and Matthew,

The expression "guardian angel" is appropriate for cases of discarnate protectors such as young Roger's female rescuer.  In both Hebrew and Greek, the term "angel" merely means "messenger."  From my reading, it seems that these rescuers might sometimes be non-human and other times discarnate humans.  By the same token, it seems misguided to focus too much on the nature and reality of "Satan."  The term "Satan" merely means "adversary" and the malevolent being might be a discarnate human or a fallen angel.  

There are at least 5 more important "operational" questions for cases like these: (1) What principles or spiritual laws allow such entities to intervene in our lives?  (2) How much power do these beings have?  (3) How much variance in power do these beings have by virtue of their status (angel, demon, discarnate human)?  (4) Which of the malevolent beings can be held at bay by merely human resistance, experience of PUL, etc.?  (5) Which beings can only be handled through divine intervention (an exorcist, etc.)?  In mysterious realms like these, it pays to take an operational approach to what is transpiring.  It is a big mistake to formulate or embrace a metaphysical belief system first and then assess the credibility of paranormal interventions on the basis of their compatibility with one's preconceived belief system.

Don