Some New Age thought speaks of pure unconditional love (PUL), yet is slow to acknowledge a loving God as the uncaused cause of it.  It seems that to acknowledge this, would somehow tie in to religious beliefs, and many come here to explore consciousness without the confines of the rules of a specific religion.  

What is distinctly strange about this, and unsatisfying, is that some then talk of God and heaven in almost clinical terms as "Source," or the "all that is," or very often we get the cryptic saying "there is no God, because we are all God, and don't know it."  

Of course, it is all a matter of belief systems, and you pay your money, you make your choice (so to speak).  I come from the background of the New Agers, although I was brought up in the Jewish faith.  Yet in New Age thought, I found it very unsatisfying to speak of "the universe"or "Source," and not feel the connection to God and heaven.

For me, the study of consciousness in the physical and spiritual planes is proof of a loving, intelligence that permeates all of creation.  It is not, as some Western scientists will say, a bleak random occurrence of nature that we pretend to have consciousness, but are deluding ourselves.  I have long since proved to myself, the independence of conscious thought from the physical plane.  I have seen the ability of intent to effect probabilities in our "real world" and make things change.  

Yet on a personal level, God, and heaven have been somewhat absent from my experience, as I marvelled at individual physical and nonphysical human consciousness.  Reading Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell again, I began to rethink things.  Why factor God out of the equation?  Why not see God and Heaven as an intelligent, and loving presence?

In the loving world where there is a God, there is a vibrant force of souls and light beings.  PUL has meaning here, and it is understood that the more people act out of love for God and other people, the closer they come in their spiritual evolution.

Some religious beliefs speak of the illusion of the physical world, and enlightenment being the release from all worldly attachments, including ego.  Individuality is seen often as a worldly attachment too, that is an illusion because in this worldview (buddhism), we are all one and create the illusion of individuality.  Yet if in the end individuality is given up too, it seems that we merge with a universal consciousness, and in that sense cease to be.  It appears nihilistic, and foreign to many Westerners, myself included (sorry Vajra).

In a loving universe with a God, I see a spiritual progression that is centered on love.  I see a release of worldly/physical things (our bodies upon death), yet a persistence of us as individual lights of consciousness as part of the whole.  God is not an individual on a throne, but a true presence radiating the love and intelligence throughout the planes of consciousness in the afterlife and the physical world.  

As I seek to explore my owen consciousness, I am more eager to experience God and Heaven.  I think that PUL only has meaning when extended throughout all consciousness.  As such, it has meaning when we express PUL to others, and they to us.  And if God is the source of PUL, we should acknowledge this too.   The unity between all of us can still be present in this model, yet our individual perception of consciousness persists as well.  

Matthew

Hi Doc, it's good for me to see you post again. you said: The unity between all of us can still be present in this model, yet our individual perception of consciousness persists as well.  
____

this topic is not far off from Ian's "what is it that survives exactly?"

I'm in agreement with you basically but I did a slightly different take on it a few years back.
I agree "all that is" the force, Atman and Monad are interesting concepts as Godhead, but these are still conceptualizations rather than experiencing what God is.

so easy to get bogged down in language and religious terms. Is why here, the emphasis is on sharing experiences, yet these are personal and we resort to conceptualization once more in relating experience.
I have simplified everything  ::) to say God is Love. case not open to debate as far as I'm concerned.

From doing retrievals, and seeing individuals gravitate to their family, their loved ones on the other side, and these as well gravitating to take care of their own, it is clear that love is eternal and not the love of the objects and wealth this world offers, which some of us get identified with so easily.

but here's my personal story for what it's worth. I wanted to know if it was just a dog eat dog world, or could it perhaps be based on, of all things, Love?
I just wasn't sure, I thought perhaps I was just a naive person after all. My question was, is it or is it not a benevolent universe?

Or, did I just wish that it was a benevolent universe? And why do bad things happen to people with only good intentions? in other words, was a new ager supposed to bring heaven to Earth?

I had had some spirit helper visitations a few times by then. helpers who helped me get thru some tough times. then I read Bruce's books about helpers, guides out there, I knew the power of prayer also, but frequently enough, didn't know what to pray for. Or treat for, as they would say in the Church of Religious Science, which really, was not talking about Love, nor God, but Science of prayer.

So I started thinking about getting a guide. and I asked for one of those helpers to help me figure out if the universe was benevolent. (based on Love) I did receive several dream visitations then from a helper who was helping me with a practical matter as well.
while I was out there with him, I asked him what he got from helping other people like me, who are physical? Some gratitude passed over to him then. He said that was his payment. He enjoyed helping people.  He did teach me one thing, that the church had taught me as well.
He said "you have to be very specific when you ask for something." If you leave out one detail about what you want, what you get is a feeling you got short changed, when it was your own fault you didn't think it completely through before asking.

then the rest of this experience had to do with taking self responsibility, when it comes to what is appearing as bad luck, we have a choice whether we react within our fear rationale, or whether we say, oh oh, I'm going to find out why this happened to me, as I am in charge of what gets outpictured here.

it appears, just one tiny character flaw, such as a twinge of impatience, can create a whole scenario of like a snowball effect..unless we can recognize that flaw and correct it on the spot.

I know I'm not explaining how I came to the conclusion that it is a benevolent universe which wishes to assist my progress rather than hinder it.  it's a do unto others as you wish done to yourself premise and teach only love, for that is what you are premise.

works for me. thanks, alysia

Hi Doc, Alysia. Please pardon the length again. My own view on that whole situation (which can't claim to be more than an ever shifting gut feeling and a bit of personal insight and experience built on views drawn from a variety of mostly eastern traditions) is that there are several problems that make it an incredibly multidimensional and complicated subject - one that's full of misunderstandings and over attachment to particular views.

There isn't to my mind necessarily any conflict between those two perspectives as to the nature of God as the topic name seems to suggest.

Problems I think tend arise because we often conceive our views from a wholly personal or individual and dualistic/relativistic (conventional time/space reality) viewpoint, and secondly (largely as a result of that) we struggle to conceive the enormity of what God may be. We tend to have a deeply ingrained urge to relate to a human-like deity, and this conceptualisation often unconsciously limits our thinking.

First some background:

God defies description and does not manifest overtly - to the point where those who choose denial are not normally confronted in life (or in the afterlife) by anything that forces an early change in their view. There are convincing books out there purporting to prove that God does not exist, a view held by much of our scientific establishment.

Yet there are others who purport to see God in everybody and everything, every day of their lives - and to see his hand in every aspect of the way that everything works.

What do those in the latter camp see, and what can be said about God? Thoughts that come to mind include:

We and our cosmos exist, apparently manifested within a much greater absolute reality - this implies a first cause or source.

Our reality (as Alysia has said) seems to run on love, to be filled with basic goodness. Many of us would say that while from one view the world is based on a dog eat dog reality, that from another it proves simultaneously to be loving and accommodating towards all that choose to express love. Increased suffering seems especially to be the result of selfish choices, we can dimly discern karma or some similar set of rules in play that suggest that love is always the optimum choice in life.

Quite apart from the considerable practical incentive this delivers to living through love, all beings seem as well (despite detours) to contain a will to goodness, towards living through love and from the highest principles. Words like Grace, or Spirit (both said to be extended from God) are used to describe the source of this guidance, the still small voice.

Modern physics is coming to the view held by the traditions for millennia to the effect that energy, matter (form) and  mind/intention are the interchangeable ingredients of our ourselves as we manifest in life, and of reality.

Higher states of consciousness and the associated 'knowings' really bring the whole affair from intellectual speculation to real life. The presence of mind and God in everything becomes something that is intuitively known and experienced.

God seems to be capable of manifesting in an infinite number of ways, but moving up through the non physical levels of consciousness listed by Alysia in the other thread on the body we move out of the physical and into multiple dimensions of reality in habited initially by those in the afterlife, but ultimately by higher and higher levels of being.

Eventually we reach (that's as far it seems as we can experience from this life) a timeless non relative but love filled unity, what the seers have called Source, and what physicists might call the grid or the zero point field that manifests everything we can conceive.

It's no wonder that some choose to simplify the whole affair by describing God as being what he manifests - by saying that God is love.

The story in respect of ourselves is a similar one. It suggests the truth of the view that when we shed the obscuration and delusion associated with our tendency to (out of ego, selfishness or the belief that we are limited individuals) try to live without love that our essence is God - that God is in us.

We for example find that while we initially perceive ourselves to be individual minds rooted in a physical body and existence, that with opening and experience we discover that we are actually a part of our non-physical disc or collective based on multiple past and future lives. Experience suggests that here's no reason to think that this integration does not continue beyond this level ad infinitum to God.

Mind seems to be the essential basis of all, but mind we discover can be experienced as everything from the intellect of the typical individual of solely physical worldly orientation, to the opening of heart or intuition leading to the wider experiencing touched on above, through successive levels of integration also as above, to unity or God. Many of the seers suggest that ultimately there is only one mind which is God.

Now back to the subject issue:

The essential point I'd suggest in all of this (whether talking of God or of beings - us and those others in all parts and at all levels of existence) is that while at a given moment in time you can per the examples above describe some of the ways we or God manifests, that the reality is that He/She/IT/We/?? is/are simultaneously all of these.

So God could be said to simultaneously be everything from the apparently personal still small voice in the inner ear of the individual, to the life that glows in everything in the world and in the afterlife (which mind you is probably a human influenced creation), to the collective mind of the cosmos, to  the source of everything in the cosmos, to perhaps even some sort of unimaginable being existing in some absolute and timeless realm we can't conceive of because our minds are limited to using only those concepts we are familiar with.

We are likewise arguably everything from the apparently limited physical human we start out thinking we are, through all of the above levels of existence to God.

We're conditioned to see separation everywhere, but the reality seems to be that this is a mind made distinction. That in the end everything is interconnected, and ultimately One.

I think it's possible to resolve what seem to be problems and differences in the ways the different traditions view the topic given the above - bearing in mind though that this is only a view, and that individuals within the various traditions may fasten (actually against the higher teaching of the tradition they belong to) on to particular more limited and less holistic perspectives.

Many of the problems arise from our tendency to interpret for example a statement to the effect that God is 'X' as exclusive - as implying or more typically asserting not only what is said, but also that this is ALL or THE TOTALITY or the only possible manifestation of what He/She/It/?? is. This isn't necessarily what the speaker means - it's often just a conditioned assumption we make about what they intended born of the 'is/isn't' arguments of childhood - where out of our egoistic attempts to dominate by being the one to define what is 'right' we attempt to exclude all other views except that we've identified ourselves with.

Even when the speaker is trying to force a single  he/she sees it 'right' viewpoint on us we don't have to buy the implicit exclusion of all others - even if we do take on board some of what is said as a part of a bigger view of reality.

The truth is that a single statement or position can only describe a single (or maybe a few) facet(s) of any given reality. Any attempt to force otherwise amounts to a choice for a selective and very narrow perception of the situation - an attempt to exclude the total reality in favour of just the facet that happens to appeal to our personal agenda. (this actually is the basis of the oft talked about delusion caused by holding an egocentric view - by being stuck in a reality tunnel)

So for example the view that God can relate personally and in a loving manner does not exclude all of the other potential dimensions of His existence as above. Nor does referring to God as 'all that is' or as 'Source' exclude the possibility that he/she is also a personal and loving God at our personal level.

So then why all the caution about the G word in some traditions?

You mentioned Doc the tendency of New Age and for that matter eastern (Buddhist?) teaching to not talk overtly of God. This (it's said) has it's origins in many cases in an attempt to avoid other problems. The Buddha it's said for example saw that the prevailing Vedic religions of his time had become bogged down in the worship of a multiplicity of gods, this as a result of people's tendency to anthromorphise or make beings out of what were actually meant to be characterisations of aspects of mind for use in teaching.

They in many cases then proceeded to relate to these along the lines of the old testament - as jealous and vindictive entities needing to be worshipped and placated with sacrifices and so on.

This obsession with assigning human like characteristics to gods in his view made impossible the sort of insights that were necessary on the path of personal transformation that he taught. It wasn't that he denied the existence of God, it seems to have been more that he felt that people would progress better if their prejudices on the subject (which he felt was almost beyond meaningful discussion anyway) were not triggered, and they just got on with the knitting at the level of their lives - with meditation, and with better understanding a more expansive view of reality, and how it actually works through love.

With the aim that they would eventually come to see the error of their self centred thinking, and so drop the whole package of egoistic beliefs that are the cause of suffering.

There's of course been lots of other religions that have gone in the opposite direction, and in so doing have caused terrible suffering. While it clearly doesn't seem to have originated as this, Christianity (and other of the religions emanating from the Middle East ) was for example structured around what is essentially an anthromorphised (packaged to be like a human) God with vengeful and jealous tendencies which had to be appeased. (the priesthood has of course positioned itself as the only ones that can do this for their members)

So I guess what I'm saying is that the key to resolving many of the apparent contradictions across traditions is to stay open and expansive in how we interpret what we read.

There's lots we'll rightly decide to reject because it's simply not compatible with a love based view, but there's lots that fits and that can be so helpful in opening up our view if we can avoid the mindset which unconsciously excludes as a result of our getting hung up on narrow beliefs, or on terminology, or even on intellectual precision.

I doubt that in the end God is too worried about what he's called, or how he's seen unless it's blocking our development - it's unlikely that even at best we can do more than touch on occasional aspects of truth on this topic...

Hi DocM and members,

I would like to commend your attention to the following link which contains numerous explanations and clarifications on points frequently discussed here and which you have brought up for discussion in your original post of this thread. I simply refer to a source I feel is authentic, eloquent, and readily accessible relative to these issues, one that has been extremely helpful to my own ongoing search.

This link below will hopefully connect to a discussion that touches and elaborates on some of these issues. I will recommend also perusing the entire table of contents of this particular volume, as well as other books listed to see if any topics suit your specific interests as there is much useful material freely available there.

As pertains to your discussion I would further especially recommend pages 242-249 within the chapter linked below.

As always, I hope this will be helpful, and I have a feeling that you will find more than a few useful passages.

http://sriaurobindoashram.info/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-01%20Works%20of%20Sri%20Aurobindo/-01%20English/-22_Letters%20on%20Yoga_Volume-22-23-24/-11_Planes%20and%20Parts%20of%20The%20Being.htm


Here is an excerpt from the middle of that range of pages -  Quote:
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"...It is by this primitive divisional principle that the Mind is enabled to regard, for example, the Impersonal as the Truth, the Personal as only a mask or the personal Divine as the greatest Truth and impersonality as only an aspect; it is so too that all the conflicting philosophies and religions arise, each exalting one aspect or potentiality of Truth presented to Mind as the whole sufficient explanation of things or exalting one of the Divine's Godheads above all others as the true God than whom there can be no other or none so high or higher. This divisional principle pursues man's mental knowledge everywhere and even when he thinks he has arrived at the final unity, it is only a constructed unity, based on an Aspect. It is so that the scientist seeks to found the unity of knowledge on some original physical aspect of things, Energy or Matter, Electricity or Ether, or the Mayavadin thinks he has arrived at the absolute Adwaita by cutting existence into two, calling the upper side Brahman and the lower side Maya. It is the reason why mental knowledge can never arrive at a final solution of anything, for the aspects of Existence as distributed by overmind are numberless and one can go on multiplying philosophies and religions for ever.

In the overmind itself there is not this confusion, for the overmind knows the One as the support, essence, fundamental power of all things, but in the dynamic play proper to it it lays emphasis on its divisional power of multiplicity and seeks to give each power or Aspect its full chance to manifest, relying on the underlying Oneness to prevent disharmony or conflict. Each Godhead, as it were, creates his own world, but without conflict with others; each Aspect, each Idea, each Force of things can be felt in its full separate energy or splendour and work out its values, but this does not create a disharmony, because the overmind has the sense of the Infinite and in the true (not spatial) Infinite many concording infinities are possible. This peculiar security of overmind is however not transferable to the lesser planes of consciousness which it supports and governs, because as one descends in the scale the stress on division and multiplicity increases and in the Mind the underlying oneness becomes vague, abstract, indeterminate and indeterminable and the only apparent

p 244

concreteness is that of the phenomenal which is by its nature a form and representation – the self-view of the One has already begun to disappear. Mind acts by representations and constructions, by the separation and weaving together of its constructed data; it can make a synthetic construction and see it as the whole, but when it looks for the reality of things, it takes refuge in abstractions – it has not the concrete vision, experience, contact sought by the mystic and the spiritual seeker. To know Self and Reality directly or truly, it has to be silent and reflect some light of these things or undergo self-exceeding and transformation, and this is only possible either by a higher Light descending into it or by its ascent, the taking up or immergence of it into a higher Light of existence. In Matter, descending below Mind, we arrive at the acme of fragmentation and division; the One, though secretly there, is lost to knowledge and we get the fullness of the Ignorance, even a fundamental Inconscience out of which the universe has to evolve consciousness and knowledge. ..."

(on Nirvana)"...6. It is not possible to situate Nirvana as a world or plane, for the Nirvana push is to a withdrawal from world and world-values; it is therefore a state of consciousness or rather of super-consciousness without habitation or level. There is more than one kind of Nirvana (extinction or dissolution) possible. Man being a mental being in a body, manomaya purusa, makes this attempt at retreat from the cosmos through the spiritualised

p 245


mind, he cannot do otherwise and it is this that gives it the appearance of an extinction or dissolution, laya, nirvāna; for extinction of the mind and all that depends on it including the separative ego in something Beyond is the natural way, almost the indispensable way for such a withdrawal. In a more affirmative yoga seeking transcendence but not withdrawal there would not be this indispensability, for there would be the way already alluded to of self-exceeding or transformation of the mental being. But it is possible also to pass to that through a certain experience of Nirvana, an absolute silence of mind and cessation of activities, constructions,  representations, which can be so complete that not only to the silent mind but also to the passive senses the whole world is emptied of its solidity and reality and things appear only as unsubstantial forms without any real habitations or else floating in Something that is a nameless infinite: this infinite or else something still beyond is That which alone is real; an absolute calm, peace, liberation would be the resulting state. Action would continue, but no initiation or participation in it by the silent liberated consciousness; a nameless power would do all until there began the descent from above which would transform the consciousness, making its silence and freedom a basis for a luminous knowledge, action, Ananda. But such a passage would be rare; ordinarily a silence of the mind, a liberation of the consciousness, a renunciation of its belief in the final value or truth of the mind's imperfect representations or constructions would be enough for the higher working to be possible...."



- Sri Aurobindo, From "Letters On Yoga"* Part I, Section V, "Planes and the Parts of the Being", pgs 243-246
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*Note: "Letters On Yoga" is comprised of excerpts from letters answering questions of students. This accounts for the occasional fragmentation of continuity in the text.


-u

Going by what I've experienced, what has been communicated to me, and sources that make the most sense, things are set up so that in the end we all experience a state of love and oneness with each other and God.  Love would never allow for a nihilistic viewpoint to be true no matter how intellectually stimulating such a viewpoint might seem.

Sometimes the truth of the matter is communicated to me in a really simple way. One time I was meditating and trying to open up to love. I allowed a nihilistic way of viewing things to creep into my mind. Suddenly I found myself as part of a joyfull circle of loving friends, we danced around while holding hands.

One time I was given the message while thinking of the goal we are trying to achieve: "Lots of beauty and lots of fun."

The messages I've received suggest that God does in fact exist as a being who oversees his creation which we help out with in various ways. Waves couldn't do their thing within an ocean if the ocean didn't exist.

Matt,

During Howard Storm's NDE, he asks Jesus about the angels' preferred name for "God."  Jesus replies that "the One" is the most apt designation.  This means neither that God is "All That Is" not that God is a supreme Being among countless other beings.  Rather, it seems to mean that God is the ground of all Being.--the only sensible answer to the otherwise meaningless question, "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?"  This understanding is most compatible with the best etymological understanding of the Old Testament name "Yahweh"--"the One who causes to be."    

The God of the Old And New Testament is paradoxically both transpersonal and personal--tranpersonal in the dual sense that God's "thoughts" and "ways" are infinitely "higher" than our thoughts and ways (Isaiah 55:8-9) and personal in the sense that God's essence is PUL.  The Bible stresses God's transpersonal aspect in other ways.  For example, in the early stages of the Hebrew faith, God twice refuses a request for His name (Genesis 32:29; Judges 13:18) and at the Burning Bush God evades Moses' request for His name by substituting the phrase "Tell them I am who I am [or, more accurately: "I will be whatever I will be"] has sent you (Exodus 3:14).  God's evasion is designed to counteract the ancient Hebrew need to grasp His essence in terms of a clarifying name.  The oft repeated Hebrew principle "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7)" can be paraphrased: "The beginning of wisdom is reverential awe in the face of an ultimately unknowable God."  

The Bible recognizes that this notion stands in tension with the personalizing claim that God is love.  But such personalizations merely designate God insofar and only insofar as God can be experienced.  In other words, God is experientially personal as PUL, but is not metaphysically PUL, apart from the obvious earthly and postmortem benefits of choosig to serve and spread God's love in our world.  

When the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as "the Word" (Greek: "Logos"--John 1:1, 14), "Logos" literally means "the rational self-expression of God" as opposed to God in His unknowability.  By allowing us to experience a rational self-expression of Him, God in no way minimizes His mystery.  

I like the way early church father, Irenaus, explains the meaning of Christ's incarnation: "God became man, so that man might become God."  In the same vein, Peter claims that we are all "destined to participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)." The purpose of Heaven and its various stages or levels is to facilitiate this restoration of union in some mystical sense.  In this way, God is always in process throughout and beyond time and expands His horizons just as we do as we progress. In my view, this is the best summary statement of the purpose of existence in its most ultimate sense.

Don

So Doc...

Who or what is this "loving god" that you speak of?  Is he a guy in the sky? We all know better than that.

The "all that is" theory is a result of our awakening to higher aspects of our reality through nonphysical explorations of various kinds. It is very accurate. I believe your bias against the nature of the source consciousness results from both your religious background and your lack of nonphysical explorations.

Love does not need to be taken out of the equation now that "god" is depersonalized. After all, god is not a person! However, the love that permeates the higher realms is all too real and can be experienced. This love is the true essence of "god", which is simply the energy of consciousness in its purest form. This consciousness IS all that is, and IS god.

Why do you think you can best feel and express love when you are acting the most accordingly to your true self? Because when you act according to your inner most being, when you are being yourself to the fullest, you can best express your own true energy, which is love... the energy of all that is.  

In certain nonphysical levels I have experienced, there is an innate understanding that the love I feel at these times is the experience of my true self, and is the same energy of all things in existence, and it is all connected, and this is a most joyous realization. The energy of love is the true essence of our being. This essence, the pure energy of our consciousness, is being expressed in all ways possible, including through us.

It can be seen easily when compared to our higher selves.  We are a greater energy individualized and almost filtered into this physical dimension so we, as our higher aspects, can have the most various of experiences in this level of reality.  But where does the energy from our higher selves come from? This greater energy that is our higher selves can be traced "up" even "higher", until there is but one source. On this level, the energy(pure consciousness) is manifested in an infinite number of ways, so it can experience itself to the fullest, for it is all there is to experience. I don't know what part of this idea/realization isn't amazing.
 

I Am Dude wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 1:34pm:

So Doc... Who or what is this "loving god" that you speak of?  Is he a guy in the sky? We all know better than that. The "all that is" theory is a result of our awakening to higher aspects of our reality through nonphysical explorations of various kinds. It is very accurate. I believe your bias against the nature of the source consciousness results from both your religious background and your lack of nonphysical explorations. Love does not need to be taken out of the equation now that "god" is depersonalized. After all, god is not a person! However, the love that permeates the higher realms is all too real and can be experienced. This love is the true essence of "god", which is simply the energy of consciousness in its purest form. This consciousness IS all that is, and IS god. Why do you think you can best feel and express love when you are acting the most accordingly to your true self? Because when you act according to your inner most being, when you are being yourself to the fullest, you can best express your own true energy, which is love... the energy of all that is.   In certain nonphysical levels I have experienced, there is an innate understanding that the love I feel at these times is the experience of my true self, and is the same energy of all things in existence, and it is all connected, and this is a most joyous realization. The energy of love is the true essence of our being. This essence, the pure energy of our consciousness, is being expressed in all ways possible, including through us. It can be seen easily when compared to our higher selves.  We are a greater energy individualized and almost filtered into this physical dimension so we, as our higher aspects, can have the most various of experiences in this level of reality.  But where does the energy from our higher selves come from? This greater energy that is our higher selves can be traced "up" even "higher", until there is but one source. On this level, the energy(pure consciousness) is manifested in an infinite number of ways, so it can experience itself to the fullest, for it is all there is to experience. I don't know what part of this idea/realization isn't amazing.

This is what I believe too!!

peace n' love

Hi DocM and OutOfBodyDude,

If I may take a stab at this....

All quotes = OOBDude
Quote:

Who or what is this "loving god" that you speak of?  Is he a guy in the sky? We all know better than that.

He could be, and He could also be you. If 'we' all know this, then what is known has been personalized.


Quote:

The "all that is" theory is a result of our awakening to higher aspects of our reality through nonphysical explorations of various kinds. It is very accurate. I believe your bias against the nature of the source consciousness results from both your religious background and your lack of nonphysical explorations.

No doubt this is accurate and hopefully becoming moreso.
I have read Doc's posts and believe he does not have the bias you suggest, but rather simply poses some philosophical questions based on his experience which is necessarily different than yours, which you also suggest. In addition, i am sure Doc has plenty of experience during meditation, sleep and in-between lives, which as defined by your own current experience and form, may or may not be as pertinent to his current life needs in the evolution of his soul, or, he is receiving what he needs through those and/or other means.

It may be a further point to offer (and this could be another entire discussion) that an active facility in various aspects of kundalini does not necessarily confer spirituality in the strict sense.



Quote:

Love does not need to be taken out of the equation now that "god" is depersonalized. After all, god is not a person! However, the love that permeates the higher realms is all too real and can be experienced. This love is the true essence of "god", which is simply the energy of consciousness in its purest form. This consciousness IS all that is, and IS god.

Yes, and God does not need to be taken out of the equation now that "love" is de-personalized. Who said God is not a person? Krishna didn't, Christ didn't, Ramakrishana didn't. The love that permeates the higher realms is also within, or else it could not be experienced by any individual. This essence, this energy, this substance of all that is in its purest form - since it is 'all that is' - also exists in a personal form, in a becoming, in non-physical, and in a few cases historically has manifested on the physical plane as such.

Even non-physically, God has appeared as a 'personality' to various Masters, perhaps simply because it is a compassionate presentation to humans, who attached very much to form need to have an 'object' to appraoch. It is considered extremely difficult, almost impossible to achieve God-realization through the formless absolute. There are also accounts of realized Masters 'switching roles' with a personalized God - first being the Lover, then being the Beloved, also as Friend, Father, and also as Mother.



Quote:

Why do you think you can best feel and express love when you are acting the most accordingly to your true self? Because when you act according to your inner most being, when you are being yourself to the fullest, you can best express your own true energy, which is love... the energy of all that is.

Again - therefore according to what you say - they are not mutually exclusive. God can be, and is both personal and impersonal. You may have a preference or a necessity (are those really different?) at any given 'moment' which the personal or impersonal God may compassionately accommodate, but the momentary experience of one does not negate the other.



Quote:

In certain nonphysical levels I have experienced, there is an innate understanding that the love I feel at these times is the experience of my true self, and is the same energy of all things in existence, and it is all connected, and this is a most joyous realization. The feeling of love is the true essence of our being. This essence, the pure energy of our consciousness, is being expressed in all ways possible, including through us.

 

It is no doubt true, OOBDude. You are becoming God. God is manifesting the infinite though you, a finite individual. Sometimes these 'impersonal' experiences are given to persons to show an aspect of divinity they need to address/acquire in their individual quest. As you say, there is and can be nothing in the person, the quest, the aspect, that is not God - so why limit the illimitable, which has the possibility to manifest through the finite - including a personality, including as a personality?

Either that, or for now at this moment, you are just not a 'bhakta'.
Or are you?   :-?


- u

Hi Dude,

Its good to have both you and Don on the same thread, for you don't seem to believe in God (correct me if I'm wrong), but you do believe in a source for all things. Don is a biblical scholar who does believe in God.

I have done quite a bit of meditation and exploration, and have had many significant experiences with the nonphysical (most documented here on Bruce's website).  I can point you to other explorers, like Swedenborg, who go into detail about the nature of nonphysical planes, and our relationship with God.   No, he is not an anthropomorphic Superman on a throne - we do all know that.  Yet in many encounters with deceased human beings, the existence of God and his presence has been well documented.  This is not a foreign entity we are meant to worship, but the good and love that flows from God as the source.  If you haven't read Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, it is worth a read - especially since this guy wrote it some 300+ years ago, before the spiritualist movement, Blavatsky or the rise of mediums.  It is written in a distinctly non-coformist and logical manner.  

I have many other sources that document the existence of God, even Robert Monroe, yet rational people like you and I explore, and it is a common thing to decide that there is a nameless, faceless "source" that we are all a part of.  The problem I have with your view point is the feeling that the intelligence and love of the divine is contingent upon the existence of an intelligent and loving God as the source, not an unthinking omnipotent source.

I have used the power of intent during meditation to feel part of everything, and in that state of mind, I have applied intent in what can only be called a mystical way (or magic of old).  To my surprise, my intent then came to pass.  It is this state where I connect to my subconscious mind and apply intent that I have found we can "make things happen."  This is where shamans and magicians have connected to over the centuries.  Yet, this is different than the structure of consciousness in the afterlife.  

Yes, we all have the ability to access our interconnectedness to the universe, and it is a powerful mystical connection.  But separate from this either God, as a creator exists or he does not.  I believe he does, though I have not been graced by a direct contact like Howard Storm was in his NDE (this is worth a read too).  

How are we to put TMI's experiences, Bruce's, and many on this board's together?  Groups of loved ones waiting for those who have passed over......helpers....angels (discarnate humans)....heavenly societies and activities, all centered around PUL.  Yet some, believe we are all God already and concoct terms like a "higher self" or "oversoul" or "disc" to explain the greater vistas of love and unity.  These terms lose the relationshp and meaning of love in the end.  I believe Bruce once described physical life as a probe that returned back to its creative disc.  

This is one belief system.  Higher selves and Discs are some ways of interpreting OOBEs and glimpses of consciousness.  Many others have experienced interactions with deceased loved ones that suggest that there is truly a God, a core of love and intelligence that flows into all planes of consciousness.  But not, as a characterless all that is.

If the religious connotations about God turn you off, that's ok, you can explore and keep your mind open to the possibility of God without the trappings of religious dogma.  God does NOT however, need to be depersonalized.  It is your belief system that does the depersonalization (or not).  

In Swedenborg's extensive conversations with those who passed over, he learned that none entered higher realms of consciousness unless they understood that love of God and love of one's fellow man were the keys to spritual progression.  Of note, he found that word for word christians could not enter heaven (consciousness realm) if they believed that God the father, the son and the holy spirit were separate - for God was a unity.  This thought was seen as blasphemous by many in the 1700s, but Swedenborg called it like he saw it.  

My favorite quote from ES about those who see a divinity in all there is but not God is this:

"Finally, those who profess to believe in an invisible Divine, which they call the soul of the universe ( Ens universi), from which all things originated, and who reject all belief in the Lord, find out that they believe in no God; since this invisible Divine is to them a property of nature in her first principles, which cannot be an object of faith and love, because it is not an object of thought [1.2]. "

Matthew

quote Doc left from ES:
In Swedenborg's extensive conversations with those who passed over, he learned that none entered higher realms of consciousness unless they understood that love of God and love of one's fellow man were the keys to spritual progression.  Of note, he found that word for word christians could not enter heaven (consciousness realm) if they believed that God the father, the son and the holy spirit were separate - for God was a unity.
_____
and:

"Finally, those who profess to believe in an invisible Divine, which they call the soul of the universe ( Ens universi), from which all things originated, and who reject all belief in the Lord, find out that they believe in no God; since this invisible Divine is to them a property of nature in her first principles, which cannot be an object of faith and love, because it is not an object of thought [1.2].
______

my comments is that my interest in ES is wetted, yet I find more modern use of language an easier read for me, of the same comments: such as folks who believe in "an invisible Divine, and folks that believe in a "Lord" at first is a matter of hashing semantics about, isn't it? like, to say, you say potatoes, I say pa-tah-tos.

yet heres another way to look at that quote: A man cannot add one cubic inch unto himself by taking up thought. (have to chew on that for  a couple centuries, but you get the point it is necessary to get love in all things that can be gotten, to support ES, you won't gain a portal into heaven unless you do. My supposition is heaven is here now. manifested through each who choose to be a portal for it.

It's really hard to love an invisible divine.
personally, from early on, I didn't want to live here, do a life.
I thought everybody talked to a personal God. I didn't think I was different in that regard until here lately, I get folks now and then saying there are not two voices in the head.
I always had two voices in the head, with one voice I asked questions, the other voice, I assumed was my personal God, it answered.

this is not different to me, to see the image of a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on the other. the devil is representative of the ego, which does believe it is not with God, not one with God.

continuing, we do need something personal to guide us in many situations we get into, such as illness, death, losing a job, etc.
At those times, this invisible Divine can only be projected as some sort of karma, or divine order going on which doesn't get a hoot's nanny for you personally. maybe some live like that.

once I got old enough I claimed as my own an ascended master to look up to. JC. God as Man, man as God. then if I should do that, I would have to consider what he said which sounded true, and test it out. He said, I believe these are his actual words, "It is the Father in me which doeth the works."

So even our JC does not give credit to his ego, as man, for the works that were done. He gives credit to the Father, the creator.

In today's society, I think we are rejecting Father as Creator as a being, because we are not able to see God and Man as the one and the same thing.

However, if you read ES once more, "The Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit are a unity.

I say then, we are the Son. We are the sonship. Yet if we are that, the unity of the three, we are experiencing being in a holographic way, as degrees of God.
I say I am the Son because I feel at one with Christ, because he was a man also. I have need of relating personally. Yet I have need of understanding how things work also.

heres where I am on that to date: just to share.

Ultra reminds me of this state of consciousness in his post;

It was said JC reached full enlightenment and came into direct God communication, by attaining the 4rth level of pure non-dualism;

here's a description of that briefly:

The mind that is the maker of the illusion chooses completely against itself in favor of God.

that is to say, love God, whatever that is for you, with all your heart, your soul, your mind. it means surrendering the ego, the personality, with it's desires, to God.

It would appear, Ian, in thinking about your post regarding what exactly is it that survives death, it would appear, our desire body can exist for a time, as a shell of your former self, experiencing the fullfillment of desire, but that our true self is already fullfilled in all measure by oneness with god, and it is this desire body which eventually disintegrates on the astral, which supports a holographic dimension to consciousness.

that is not to say we should not have desires. just that we may want to live life fully and be satisfied in those desires BEFORE we die, so that we can ascend directly to a higher plateau without having to shuck off those unfullfilled desires, cluttering up the astral realms..as everyone has one. According to my grandmother, she shucked off some of her more contrary personality traits upon death as well.

So what survives is what you were in the beginning before incarnation, plus, you get to keep only what you have given away, is a statement of brotherly love proportion, that we generate that in both dimensions of necessity, and through lessons gained here.
"

 Lately i've been coming to the realization that to debate things, especially like about the nature of God, is often pretty pointless.  Even if you have the more accurate and helpful viewpoint, how often does debating or over long windingly explaining why you believe, or really self assuredly "this is the case or not the case", actually change another person's viewpoints?  

 Ok, with that said, i don't see anything wrong with self expression, sharing your viewpoint, etc.    I guess it's the motivation involved.  If you go into it with, "i will try to make them believe this, "or i know better and should tell them" motivation, it's probably not coming from your own higher or true self.

 Btw, i believe in both a loving, individualized and self aware Creator and at the same time, the Onenesss, All that Is, impersonal PUL or what not.  I believe we are all God, and yet God is still yet even more than the sum of the parts of the Whole.  

  Do i expect, or want you to believe me?   Could i change your mind in any case?  Do i have proof or even evidence of any position's accuracy, let alone my own?  

Probably not.   I have come to believe the best (most effective) teaching is done primarily by and through example--especially when it comes to this spiritual stuff.  Perhaps a tougher act to follow, but probably more ultimatley rewarding than spending time writing super long posts, or what not to convince people of something.   Perhaps i am guilty to some extent in this post, of what i am trying to point out.   Quite possible since i still contain both Light and unlight.  

:) My thought Justin prior to yours was to post 'ha! - that subject has unsurprisingly got us into a right tailspin'.

Which perhaps demonstrates why so many traditions avoid getting into debate on it, or becoming too specific on it.

It's clear that it's one that's best not approached from the point of view of belief. How can a firm belief (actually a closed view that assigns mind made specific limits) be applied to what's pretty clearly infinite, unknowable and far beyond our capacity and our space/time based sense making?

The best we can perhaps hope to manage is a series of perceptions (which with time need to evolve and develop) of facets of God as manifested in our reality from our prejudiced viewpoint.

Open ended generalisations like 'the One', 'God is Love' and so on (which we won't be able to intellectually close, but which by conveying the understanding that both ourselves and our reality are suffused by love or basic goodness help us in bringing love into our daily lives) start to make a lot of sense.

If we get hung up on the topic and attempt to bottom it in any way - perhaps naively because we think we're capable of it, but more likely because we seek personal advantage through creation of a mind made version of God that suits our other beliefs, or makes ourselves seem expert, or perhaps just to scratches the ego itch to lock down a closed view or certainty on everything - then it's not just pointless, but as suggested in the latter part of the post above (on why some traditions don't go into this space) actually a barrier to opening, to the spiritual progress of the 'believer'.

'Believer' is not a positive description as used here. This urge to closure (to belief in conceptual constructs, to wanting to tie up topics as nice neat mental bundles of what we mistakenly think are 'knowns'  - with their 'sacred cow' or 'never to be seriously questioned again, only to be used as facts to be  built from' status denoted by a big red metaphorical ribbon around them) is a very insidious, often subtle but pervasive tendency in pretty much all of us.

If there is merit in discussion of this sort, then it may be that our series of perceptions (if big enough to jolt us into surrender and opening - into realising the sheer enormity of the topic) will engender enough awe to cause us to realise the futility of attempting to close the debate.

The resulting space even may improve our ability to connect with reality - it may enable further spiritual insight that helps us to drop other unhelpful beliefs.

But to pull this off ( to truly experience it, to not just see it as one possible intellectually figured out pov) requires insight, great lightness of touch, and ability to transcend the urges of the ego - which actually is the source of our discomfort and unease with the open and inclusive descriptions of God which is the topic of this thread.

The risk, and probably the greater likelihood for most of us is that if we seek to engage on this topic we'll get sucked into the closing described above...

Doc, you said in your original post here:

"In the loving world where there is a God, there is a vibrant force of souls and light beings."

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

I find that when I am observant of this, and in a position of gratitude for this, there are no other questions. Existence is simply one big wonderful amazing answer.

love, blink

:)
Hi Blink. Experience and awareness (and not thought and conceptual theorising) seem indeed to be what matter most, what by enabling Spirit keeps us grounded and minimises untrue perception.

The only reason for the existence of ourselves and the world is the journey from separation in this fear inspired but ultimately mind made pseudo reality of selective perception back to God.

The God debate matters only inasmuch as it helps or hinders the  movement to true seeing, to a reality based view, to truth and hence to love.

Our concern is surely that within our span of interaction, that which influences this.

The rest is an interesting, but unfortunately compulsive distraction...

Hi Alysia, please pardon the slow response. To  '...it would appear, our desire body can exist for a time, as a shell of your former self, experiencing the fullfillment of desire, but that our true self is already fullfilled in all measure by oneness with god, and it is this desire body which eventually disintegrates on the astral, which supports a holographic dimension to consciousness.'

The above links to this too - what you say could be interpreted as saying that the ego (the mind body, or mind created sense of self and reality) is impermanent. That while it drives most of our behaviour and perception in life (at least until we transcend it and start to 'see' reality - in accordance with God's creation), and it survives for a period in the afterlife, that it is ultimately shed whether we are reborn, or whether we move on to the next level.

The the unit of analysis (in life, as in the afterlife) in all of this is something rather more complicated than our mind created conventional and personal sense of self...

Hi guys, I am in alignment with Justin's comments. moving onto Ian's latest post, I see posting here as an experience, rather than an intellectual assignment.

I don't see the complexity of shedding belief systems and/or desire bodies really. I might be able to share a little more, but only based on my personal experiences as it relates to what I've learned so far by being a participant here, and utilizing Bruce's exercise when we examine our respective belief systems. It is not necessary to examine a belief system unless you have within a conflicting belief system.
A conflicted person does not have peace of mind.

It is because we can become "split" between two thought systems and make no forward progress if the mind is pulled in two directions.
thus we have fear and love, opposites, attempting to occupy the same place; one must choose, which it shall be, in order to have peace of mind.

I guess that's the simple explanation, but if we want, we do this, make it very complicated. what I originally thought about this thread topic is that, the board is smoothly going along, serving it's function as a place to perhaps pick up something about our afterlife areas.
Sooner or later, as in cycles, we enter a phase, like a rough patch. then it gets smooth again. I'm thinking in terms of group dynamics, as we all effect the group consciousness in some way.

what I was trying to sum up, we "invent" problems. I've caught myself doing this, even in my own little world, more so in the past then now, but I would worry needlessly about something, and blow it up into a much bigger problem than I needed to.
yes, I know too, I have been called a drama queen. that hurt! however, it was true, only then by recognizing I blow things up, can I change myself to be more realistic.

this brings me to Ian's question concerning what survives death. Neither do I have the answer for anybody about that. I make conjectures on that, based on obes of a personal nature, and nonsharable except in the most limited descriptions.

however, what I've noticed about belief systems, is we all carry about a self image of ourselves, which during interaction with others, who are indeed your own special mirrors to yourself, gets slaughtered.
dying to a belief system, which is a self image one carries, is very much like the process of an actual death, as you had supposed it was you, this self image, and we do cherish our self images, we wish to be protecting of this self image.

then as we go along in life, the self image changes, slowly sometimes, other times it gets smashed by events, loss of a job, marriage partner, a death..the more prominent things that happen in a life, are associated with how we see ourselves in relationship to the world at large.  what I'm trying to do is draw a relationship between what death is; as an experience we do, whether leaving the physical vehicle, or simply experiencing a loved one's leave taking from physical locale.

I would say the new consciousness to arrive on Earth, slowly marching on, is the awareness we have this ability to create a self image of individuality, yet know that it is the other's who make this very circumstance possible, to be an individual. we are dependent on each other, especially those who oppose us, in this sense.
so I would say to take notice how often self image does die here, and so it would not surprise me it would also be dying in the afterlife, if the self image were not real and true, of the higher Self, of what is eternally true.

I would have to end with Justin's remark that God is all of us, yet more than the sum of the total.

lol. this makes an excellent exit stage left point.
thank you Blink, for saying in two sentences what somebody else says in book length (who me? :D  the same thing.

Quote:

why limit the illimitable, which has the possibility to manifest through the finite - including a personality, including as a personality?

But Ultra, I clearly stated that "god" manifests itself in all ways possible. If you have read my past posts you will know I often state that we are god just as much as the source consciousness because it is all the same energy, the same consciousness manifested in different ways. My point is that "god" IS "all that is". "God" is energy... intelligent, self-conscious energy.

Quote:

the existence of God and his presence has been well documented

Yes, I have felt this presence before, as I have described in my first post.  I have felt the energy of the source, which is felt as an orgasmic feeling of love and joy.  This in no way disproves the existence of the source consciousness, or the "all that is", and it certainly doesn't prove the "loving god".  Which, by the way, you haven't even really defined what it is.  Perhaps you know this.  If you admit that god is an energy and the source of all things, then you basically agree with me.  I will show you why next.


Quote:

The problem I have with your view point is the feeling that the intelligence and love of the divine is contingent upon the existence of an intelligent and loving God as the source, not an unthinking omnipotent source..

You got me all wrong, Doc.  How can the most aware consciousness of all, the source consciousness, not think??????? I have never stated that.  I have stated, however, that "god" is intelligent, AND not only loving, BUT IS WHAT LOVE IS!!!  The feeling of love is the experiencing of the source energy within you. The All That Is Consciousness loves its creations just like we love our creations (children) here on earth, or just like our higher selves love each and every one of its(our) aspects.  


Quote:

But not, as a characterless all that is.

I do not believe the source consciousness to be characterless.. in fact,  it is the most charcter-full consciousness which exists, because it IS everything, and therefore IS infinite variations of every possible "character", or personality.  What I am saying is that it is not just ONE CHARACTER.  I believe that while "god" does have a consciousness all of its own, at a level we are not on, it also contains, it is, the consciousness of all things in existence, and therefore is one character AND all characters.

Swedenborg, while a great explorer, would most certainly have different interpretations of his experiences had he done his exploring in more recent times.  His experience of the presence of the "Lord" could very well be the same experience I had when I have felt the presence of the source energy within me (and everywhere).  The difference is that the Lord is an invented character from a book. He translated his experience through his belief system and those of the times. The energy I felt within me (and everywhere), however, is not a character from a book.  It was real, it was me, and it was everything, and the intuitive knowledge I possessed during these expeirences proved (to me) that this was the energy of the source, and that I was one with the source, for I was this energy. No heaven and hell, no Lord to slow my progress or cause troublesome translations and interpretations, just pure knowledge of my being and the being of the source and our unity.  

I Am Dude wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 1:40pm:

Quote: why limit the illimitable, which has the possibility to manifest through the finite - including a personality, including as a personality? But Ultra, I clearly stated that "god" manifests itself in all ways possible. If you have read my past posts you will know I often state that we are god just as much as the source consciousness because it is all the same energy, the same consciousness manifested in different ways. My point is that "god" IS "all that is". "God" is energy... intelligent, self-conscious energy.

Hi Out Of BodyDude,

My apologies for the misreading.
I hastily and mistakenly thought that you were denying the possibility of a personal 'anthropomorphic' God.


So what you are saying is that:  

Just because God can be experienced and 'defined' as impersonal/formless, does not mean that this aspect of divinity excludes the love factor?

If so, that seems to be a truthful statement, at least to me.

In light of this, I actually considered deleting my previous post due to my misunderstanding of yours, but with so much water already under the bridge, that might detrimentally alter the flow and context of the discussion, so it remains....

Carry on!

- u  

Doc said: "Yet some, believe we are all God already and concoct terms like a "higher self" or "oversoul" or "disc" to explain the greater vistas of love and unity.  These terms lose the relationshp and meaning of love in the end.  I believe Bruce once described physical life as a probe that returned back to its creative disc."

Recoverer responds: Believing in the higher self/oversoul/disk viewpoint doesn't mean that one doesn't believe in God.  Moen and Monroe spoke of a creator who exists at a higher level than disks. I believe in higher levels of being beyond disk level.  To say we are a part of God and live as if we are a part of God aren't quite the same thing. I figure when we live according to our higher selves we live as if we are a part of God. There are so many parts including the part that got the process of existence/life going, that our heads shouldn't get too big even when we get around to existing at higher self level. I figure that a being who exists at higher self level is way too humble to not understand about its origins and to be grateful accordingly.  

Something else to add:

I've noticed that sources of information can contradict each other at times even though they are honest and sincere about what they are doing.  The degree of differences is sometimes quite more than simply an interpreter problem.   When beings from the spirit World pass on information, they always take the audience factor into consideration.

Therefore, somebody like Emanuel Swedenborg might've been provided with information that people from his time period would've found helpful. If he spoke of things such as disks people would say What the heck?"  Groups of souls abiding as one would make more sense.

If I remember right, Bruce had his disk vision before he read about Robert Monroe's I-there.  Therefore, a misguided interpreter probably wasn't responsible for what he saw. Joachim Wolf had a vision back during the time period of World War II, and this vision allowed him to see that reality is organized in a manner that goes along with a higher self that incarnates probes viewpoint.  Robert Monroe was surprised to find out about his I-there.  When such information was presented to me it was presented in various ways that didn't seem to be a matter of what my interpreter was figuring out.

Dude said:  Swedenborg, while a great explorer, would most certainly have different interpretations of his experiences had he done his exploring in more recent times.  His experience of the presence of the "Lord" could very well be the same experience I had when I have felt the presence of the source energy within me (and everywhere).  The difference is that the Lord is an invented character from a book. He translated his experience through his belief system and those of the times. The energy I felt within me (and everywhere), however, is not a character from a book.  It was real, it was me, and it was everything, and the intuitive knowledge I possessed during these expeirences proved (to me) that this was the energy of the source, and that I was one with the source, for I was this energy. No heaven and hell, no Lord to slow my progress or cause troublesome translations and interpretations, just pure knowledge of my being and the being of the source and our unity.  

Recoverer says: Why did your hero Jane Roberts Seth provide "supposed" details about Jesus if he is just an invented character from a book?  Why didn't Jane just say that Jesus didn't exist, rather than make false statements about Jesus?

The manner in which experiences and messages have occurred for me, clearly did so in a manner that shows that the person of Jesus did exist, and his spirit still plays a key role in divine reality.  

I guess I could read some of those books that provide logical explanations for why Jesus the person didn't exist. The thing is, I know that lots of things can be made to sound logical even if they don't represent the truth. It is a matter of how effective the deliverer of such a message is at limiting a person's perspective so he or she will only consider the perspective being offered.  Trial attorneys are weary of having College Professors as jury members, because they know that due to their experience they are skilled at getting people to think in the manner they think.  I'll skip the logical arguments and go for what my experiences tell me.

Recoverer

I was not speaking of Jesus.  I was speaking of Jesus' "Father," the god portrayed by Christianity.  What I am trying to say is that chances are, Swedenborg had a false idea of what "god" really is due to his religious beliefs, and therefore most likely interpreted his experience of the source consciousness as the experience of his "Lord".  

Ok Dude.

Going by what I've read Emanuel pretty much had a Protestant view and believed that God, Christ and the holy spirit are one in a literal sense. Or in other words, he believed that the trinity viewpoint is wrong.



I Am Dude wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 5:16pm:

Recoverer I was not speaking of Jesus.  I was speaking of Jesus' "Father," the god portrayed by Christianity.  What I am trying to say is that chances are, Swedenborg had a false idea of what "god" really is due to his religious beliefs, and therefore most likely interpreted his experience of the source consciousness as the experience of his "Lord".

Hello Dear Forum,

With help from Bruce I am online again yaaahaaaa!!


Doc said

Quote:

What is distinctly strange about this, and unsatisfying, is that some then talk of God and heaven in almost clinical terms as "Source," or the "all that is," or very often we get the cryptic saying "there is no God, because we are all God, and don't know it

I agree with Mattew about the clinical reference to god as a sort of principle simply a mindless "Source"is most unsatisfactory.I also do not like called god spirit

Why the heck does the word "GOD" not suffice? Nearly every one you meet will know exactly what you mean if you are bold enought to use it.

Glad to be back with the clan

Regards

Alan

Alan, you've been gone? :-? Next you're going to tell me that Kathy has been gone. ;) :D

I bet you God finds it a bit amusing at times when he listens in on these conversations.

Alan McDougall wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 5:46pm:

Hello Dear Forum, With help from Bruce I am online again yaaahaaaa!! Doc said Quote: What is distinctly strange about this, and unsatisfying, is that some then talk of God and heaven in almost clinical terms as "Source," or the "all that is," or very often we get the cryptic saying "there is no God, because we are all God, and don't know it I agree with Mattew about the clinical reference to god as a sort of principle simply a mindless "Source"is most unsatisfactory.I also do not like called god spirit Why the heck does the word "GOD" not suffice? Nearly every one you meet will know exactly what you mean if you are bold enought to use it. Glad to be back with the clan Regards Alan

 Good questions Alan.  I can give you my perspective of why i sometimes like to refer to God as the more impersonal title of "Source".  

 Simply because so many people, for so long, have imo over personalized and over humanized God, especially so by those who call God, God exclusively.   I like balance, and so for me, to sometimes call God, Source, helps to bring a balance to it all, or at least it makes me feel a little better ;-)  

  But yeah, in the end one name is as good as any other name really.  I like God also because it is dog spelled backwards.

Justin


Quote:

Good questions Alan.  I can give you my perspective of why i sometimes like to refer to God as the more impersonal title of "Source".   Simply because so many people, for so long, have imo over personalized and over humanized God, especially so by those who call God, God exclusively.   I like balance, and so for me, to sometimes call God, Source, helps to bring a balance to it all, or at least it makes me feel a little better

I also get your point, some people want to create God in their own image, instead of the reverse, sort making the Infinite finite.

Regards

Alan

Some more on God as I peceive him,


Gods attributes to different people of all walks of life and all religious persuasions, perceive his characteristics in countless different ways

I see god as the absolute awareness capable of both the grand macro creations such as our universe and also knowing and caring deeply for the micro things such as the desires of our hearts. God desires, (in my humble view) to reconnect with all life in one eternal union. However, we retain our unique awareness.  "Like intelligent terminals linked to a cosmic internet"

Regards

Alan

Quote:

God desires, (in my humble view) to reconnect with all life in one eternal union.

I BELIEVE....

God cannot reconnect with life because god was never disconnected to begin with.  God IS everything.  God IS all life, God IS all consciousness.  

Some people are under the notion that our goal is to reconnect with the Source Consciousness, to merge back into it. However, we must remember that we are never separate from it! We can only be under the ILLUSION that we are separate from it! Source IS us and we ARE Source.

Our goal is simply to be MORE of ourselves, to be MORE of who we REALLY are in our daily experience.  And because we ARE Source Consciousness, then therefore we must live more according to our innermost Source Consciousness. Doing this means loving ourselves unconditionally while loving everyone and everything else equally, and living according to our inner most joys and passions.

Outofbodydude,

Nice to catch you back in your body again (Only kidding)


Quote:

God cannot reconnect with life because god was never disconnected to begin with.  God IS everything.  God IS all life, God IS all consciousness.

Respectfully I cannot see it in that way. We are separate awareness’s created by God sent on a  infinite journey of discovery, through countless lives dimensions realms of realties like raindrop from the evaporation of the GREAT OCEAN THAT IS GOD.


Finally becoming what you said "self-aware atoms" or molecules within the "Cosmic All we call God"

Respectfully

Alan

I do not believe we are separate.  We are simply the source consciousness individually and uniquely focused in a physical reality, and when we shift focus from our physical reality to higher levels of reality, we will then be source consciousness focused in those particular realities.

I do not believe we will become "self-aware atoms" within the Source Consciousness, for the same reason God cannot reconnect with all life.  Because this is already the case!  These self aware atoms are simply the consciousness of the Source itself, and being how we are the Source Consciousness focused in different realities contained within All That Is, then therefore we ARE these "self-aware atoms", we ARE the Source Consciousness.

This conversation gets to the heart of the topic.  The argument that we are all God is persuasive, logical and consistent in knowing there is a unity of all things.  Yet something is missing.  Many have likened human existence to the equivalent of individual waves on the ocean that is God, or droplets of water.  On the one hand you can't seem to separate the two.

On the other hand, we have our unique perception, with its current limitations.  We have our faults and frailties; we aspire toward PUL, yet do not show it all the time.  And we Do know that God is the source of PUL.  We recognize God as the source as Don describes it, of love and existence.  Yet because we are infused by God, and part of the all that is, that does not make us God himself, realized and aware.  We may merge at some point and feel a part of the whole, yet in that state we perceive as a unique point of perception - this is the paradox.  We are like leaves on the vine, but it is an empty boast to declare that we are the plant itself.

There is something distinctly empty in knowingly calling ourselves God and he/she us.  More than any logical argument can define, we intuitively feel and know that there is more to it than that.  

Why do we hear that there is love, reverence and awe of God from conversations with deceased human beings and other higher beings?  Afterall, if we are God to begin with, is this not narcissistic and redundant?  It is NOT just religious dogma that lends credence and evidence to this view.  You can find that an atheist like Howard Storm, will describe this awe and reverence for God after being gravely ill, finding his consciousness in a hellish plane, and then being saved by what can only be described as heavenly grace by God.  Storm did feel a part of everything as did Mellen Benedict in his NDE.  Yet they were aware, at that time that they were at the same time not God, even in that state of unity and grace.  This is the key point.

It is a paradox not meant to be settled, but felt universally by all who have experienced it.  And it is this direct experience of unity but individuality at the same time, that causes the enlightened soul to be in awe of and worship the God as the source of all PUL.

Matthew

What would God use other than his own being to create everything?  Does something other than his own being exist?

Quote:

Yet because we are infused by God, and part of the all that is, that does not make us God himself, realized and aware.

Hi Matthew,

I think your above quote hits the big nail on the head.

Of course "we are God". What else could we be?
But like you suggest, this is not a fully realized Reality for most people - only a mental concept and the basis for further work.

Just because on the mental plane a seeker may recognize and be observant of the concept or belief of 'God in all, All in God, All as God', etc. does not mean that this potential has been realized comprehensively within all components of the individual being. I think only the most naive, confused, or misinformed New-Agers and Born Agains actually believe this to be true - at least this has been my experience with different seekers. The human beings who have struggled/been blessed up to the point in evolution where they now do acknowledge a truly universal God Principle, whether personal or impersonal -- for the wise or fortunate ones, there is a clear recognition that this is only a new starting point from which to begin engaging and invoking that possibility through some conscious dedicated practice towards those ends, thereby making those ends inevitable. God-becoming yes, but certainly not that they are fully realized as God the Absolute simply by virtue of the belief in that. To have that kind of intensity, consistency and purity of faith/belief in action is possible no doubt but to acheive that, it takes some very assiduous practice, perhaps for many lives.

To be sure it is a monumental task, but one for which those who have accomplished it before have made available many different 'road maps', as well as the inspiration to travel. Right now the world is being inundated by a flood of information and inspiration in all forms and levels to facilitate this progress. Even this website is part of a greater and more accelerated availability of access. Whether a person approaches this quest of God-realization through God with or without form, personal or impersonal, or one one day and the other another day - or further defined in terms of even more specific attributes is a matter that is up to any one individual soul and their own free will and preference. Since God is all, God will allow and support any choice that moves the seeker forward and also patiently allows for those choices that don't - it is all part of the process of self-discovery/realization.  

Additional note:
If you read "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna" ( www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/gospel/gospel.htm ), which I would highly recommend as a great spiritual classic, you will observe that Ramakrishna used to amuse himself by asking his devotees to debate the issue of God with/without form. It was amusing to him because not only did he delight in his devotee's individualities and capacities, but also because he himself concretely experienced God as both, and readily discussed it. Ramakrishna was significant among other things, because he deliberately set out to, and did realize God through all the major religions to show that each was viable as a way to approach 'the goal' - even wearing the traditional garb of one or another as part of the process. People absolutely thought he was mad at the time. Your thread inspired me to re-read some of this book over the last couple of days so I am grateful for the inspiration because it is quite moving - I get transported with each reading. It is like being there.

- u

recoverer wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 6:01pm:

Alan, you've been gone? :-? Next you're going to tell me that Kathy has been gone. ;) :D I bet you God finds it a bit amusing at times when he listens in on these conversations.

Albert,
If this means I’m missed, it’s nice to know someone cares. Thank you. RL has been keeping me busy and I’ve been reading Tom Campbell’s trilogy, “My Big TOE” (TOE = Theory of Everything) which I have found to be fascinating.

Matthew, you always start the most interesting discussions! I don’t want to turn my post into a review of Campbell’s book, but I think you, Alan and others might be interested in his point of view as a physicist. I don’t know if you read the thread Dave started a few months ago where we were discussing God as primordial consciousness and potential, but it fit right in with Campbell’s TOE as well as the discussion on your thread here. Here’s his website: http://www.my-big-toe.com He has a series of videos on U-tube http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CE5EA05F1F683940 of a lecture he gave and some interesting topics on his discussion board, plus several articles on the website.

I too, have on occasion found it a bit disconcerting to speak of God without speaking of Love. And that probably has more to do with ego than anything. I guess we are emotional creatures that recognize our purpose in life is to grow in love and understanding. From our limited point of view it is sometimes difficult for me to leave God and the love I feel out of that scenario. However, because of all the various experiences we’ve each had, along with our personal interpretations of them we are individuated consciousnesses and we all have different (individuated) ways of speaking as well as different ways of approaching the subject of God. I don’t think one way is necessarily better than another… just different… individuated.

When someone says “our source” or any other label for God I don’t think it means that I cannot read the label and not feel love because my emotions are just that… mine. I choose what I feel or don’t feel with my intention. In any circumstance I can choose how to direct my intent, which does affect both others and myself so I try to see it with love to the best of my ability.

I think your last post sums it up nicely. We’re part of the whole as well the whole, except we’re not fully conscious of the whole. Will we be at some point? Perhaps. I’d like to think so anyway.

Kathy

  Who here is completely and always fully consciously at one with God?

  Are you?  

 Then how do any of us (at least those who answer no to the question), really think we can know what God is or isn't in the most accurate and full manner, let alone go on and on about what God is and isn't, pontificate, and/or debate about same?  Is it anything more than mental masturbation?

 Sure, most or all of us probably get glimpses of what the reality is.  Many mention PUL or the equivalent, and from my own little glimpses i would agree.   I would say that's an important aspect of what God is, but there's probably a lot more...certainly more than i know now.

 Re: supposedly enlightened teachers.   I don't think fully enlightened teachers, who are completely at one with God, go around writing long discourses about what God is or isn't, such teachers don't pontificate like that, they seem much more concerned with being an example of God than telling others verbally or writing a lot about it.   Many people can talk a good philosophical talk about the nature of the Divine, but doesn't mean they are fully consciously at one with same.

 Classic example is Yeshua and his life.   He didn't seem to talk all that much about what God is or isn't, though he does mention love here and there, but more so he just lived a Godly, loving, life and that's how he became at one with God and that's how he truly taught others about what God really is.  Writing endless paragraphs and words about the supposed nature of the Divine as compared to living it and being an example of it, seems both impractical and can be a strong indication of one who likes to talk for the sake of and because they like to hear him or herself talk.

 Unfortunately, it seems many teachers were and are like that, and deluded about their true Soul development and accuracy of perceptions.   Unfortunately, recognizing completely and fully enlightened teachers is a bit like knowing what God truly is or isn't, when oneself isn't fully at One with same.    It's doesn't seem impossible to recognize a person who is truly at one with God, but it sure seems harder to discriminate in a fully accurate manner those who talk a good talk, say they are, but who really aren't.


 Or perhaps better summed up in, "the blind (or partial sighted) as ever, leading the blind (or partial sighted)."

Justin,

You seem to have a problem with this thread, which I do understand; you are entitled to point out that we are discussing the unknowable.  Me, personally, I simply stay off threads which I find to be offensive, boring or as you mentioned "mental masturbation."  To each his own.

Yet the question of man's relationship to God has been talked of and debated for countless years.  While the ultimate answer won't be settled in this forum, it remains useful in the sense that we are basing our actions in life on how we define our relationship with God and each other.  Two biblical commandments, the love of God and love of our neighbors seem to be very important in both the old and new testament.

The question behind this thread is simple.  There are those who connect with the universe in an impersonal way, and who state quite authoritatively that they are God and he/she them.  They need not worship God because that is in the realm of religious dogma.  They mentally "get" that there is a unity between our individual consciousness and God, so they believe that they are divine but just don't quite know it yet.

On the other side of the coin, there is the notion of God as the source of life and love, to be revered as the unity we are part of - including a loving intelligence bigger than our individual selves.  You may have heard born again christians speak of a personal relationship with Jesus (Yeshua).  This is what I am speaking of.  I think the difference between an impersonal universe where we think of ourselves as "God in hiding," is a cold, potentially unloving (or narcissistic) place when compared to an existence in which God is acknowledged as a loving entity separate from our individuality.  This was the paradox I spoke of.

Where is the purpose of the afterlife, helpers, light beings, and guides we hear about from TMI and our own journeys, if not found in relationship to a loving, intelligent God?

Matthew

Quote:

The question behind this thread is simple.  There are those who connect with the universe in an impersonal way, and who state quite authoritatively that they are God and he/she them.

 

My connection with the universe, my connection with all consciousness seemingly apart from myself, is anything but impersonal.  It is personal in the strongest sense, for I understand, or at least am beginning to understand, my personal unity with All That Is.  I spoke of impersonalization simply to stress the idea that "god"/All That Is is NOT a person, or even a slightly human-personality-type consciousness. This human-personality-type of consciousness is contained within All That Is, but All That Is is unimaginably more than simply a personality.    


Quote:

They need not worship God because that is in the realm of religious dogma.

Our existence is not about worshiping God. It is about being our own Gods. It is about being to the fullest extent who we truely are. And because we are essentially Source Consciousness manifested in our own unique way, it is about achieving a state of mind most resonated with Source Consciousness. This means having unconditional love for ourselves and others, and living according to our highest joy.


Quote:

They mentally "get" that there is a unity between our individual consciousness and God, so they believe that they are divine but just don't quite know it yet.

The irony in this statement is that this understanding of unity actually brings about the state of knowing that we are divine. I know for a fact that I am divine in the sense that you mean, just as every other consciousness, human or other, is divine. I have seen my divinity manifest in far to many ways to deny it.


Quote:

On the other side of the coin, there is the notion of God as the source of life and love, to be revered as the unity we are part of - including a loving intelligence bigger than our individual selves.  You may have heard born again christians speak of a personal relationship with Jesus (Yeshua).  This is what I am speaking of.  I think the difference between an impersonal universe where we think of ourselves as "God in hiding," is a cold, potentially unloving (or narcissistic) place when compared to an existence in which God is acknowledged as a loving entity separate from our individuality.  This was the paradox I spoke of. Where is the purpose of the afterlife, helpers, light beings, and guides we hear about from TMI and our own journeys, if not found in relationship to a loving, intelligent God?

You seem to be creating two sides of a coin where in reality there is just one. While I acknowledge myself (and all other consciousness) to be essentially Source Consciousness, I also acknowledge the fact that the Source Consciousness exists at a level [probably infinitely] more aware than my present level of consciousness, and therefore is a greater consciousness than my own. The universe is personal at the highest level, for it is all a reflection of our own consciousness. We are not "god" in hiding, we only have the illusion that we are god in hiding. In reality, we are our own gods, connected intimately with an infinite number of other gods, which at the highest level are really one god having the experience of being separate gods. Of course, being limited in our present consciousness, we are not and cannot be at the level of the Source, we can only advance our present consciousness to levels more and more reflective of the Source Consciousness, our TRUE consciousness.

The purpose of these mediums of guidance is to help us be more of who we are, and in a sense to help us remember what we have temporarily forgotten in the physical.. to allow us to create the reality which is most reflective of our innermost selves... which is basically our purpose of existence.

Guess what? Everybody's right here! end of discussion.  :D

ok, I can babble on this subject for hours, but first let me apologize, as we are all just circling and circling.

I think for me, it's just the idea of being in group with you all & getting to learn about what you're reading, thinking, experiencing and being able to be here and relate, so it's partly social outlet. or maybe it's entirely sociable and once in awhile somebody benefits, and says so.

definition of god-realization: when you don't care whether you're realized or not..u stay off threads like this. and I will get off  :) soon as I'm done ;D

I'm in the I/There school of thought due to seeing myself "there".
I'm in the place Monroe was in the beginning. I also see movies in my head of my future, and then I watch my body live through those scenes with hardly any script changes allowed.
I do not use words like worship because they are no longer useful to describe contact with infinite wisdom and PUL. I am in that case absorbed by God and while surrendering there is no "me" to do the worshipping.

Instead, to use another word, I would say every man goes through painful experiences which act to set up a yearning to return to source, or God if you prefer. The yearning itself is a type of worship in a way, it is an energy in all us, sooner or later, which is a prayerful state of consciousness. Even at time, awe is there. it grows in momentum.

I am in a movie. like a probe, acting on stage. during an NDE, or similar type of experience, a temporary merge with God can be experienced. frequently, they are sent back to finish out the life; so we can assume physical incarnation serves a purpose beyond what we understand, even though that one, who has touched the hem of God so to speak, yearns to return. most the time these NDE's were just what was needed to change their inner life for the better, and were planned exactly so.

There will come a time we will all see how strongly we hold unto our belief systems, jealousy guarding them.


Belief systems, whatever you believe, has a rote on it. Each single belief is in truth connected to another set of beliefs.


the root system of most beliefs is that we are separate from God, therefore, we must have done something really bad. Our job towards enlightenment is basically, as I see it, help each other get home, and to see that we labor under the illusion we have rebelled against God and been casts out.

a belief system is different than perceptions.
as is interpretation different than a perception.

your perceptions will always follow your belief system. so change your beliefs, and your perceptions change accordingly.

all possibilities able to play out, once you begin to observe how your mind works.
for instance, when you believe something "new" your perceptions widen up to accept more possibilities for creating your reality, in ways that benefit others as well. Higher good prospects.

when I'm in prayerful thoughts, it is only "thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." I still find certain phrases of use to me, even in this new age, so I could say I'm worshipful of God, and I can also say I'm studying science of mind at the same time.
Religion has been twisted into something it was never meant to be. just look at all the holy wars down through history.
things need to change. we need to let the new age come in with a roar and go out like a lamb. the lion will indeed lie down with the lamb.
after I'm dead probably.  :)
Can anybody see ahead to the day with one world religion? that of brotherly love?
I can almost see it here sometimes...

I guess Alysia as you're I think saying (and as in the case of this topic) the 'true' world religion (or description of God) is perhaps less a matter of forcing all into agreeing one statement of a specific set of beliefs, than one of changing how we relate to each other  - so that we become  open enough to see all the differing ways that truth can be expressed. (actually pointed towards is probably more accurate  - there's something that's ultimately ineffable about it)

Even if we did manage to somehow work our way to some single statement of truth people would (given the limitations of language, cultural difefrences and conceptual thought) draw different (and not necessarily invalid) interpretations from it - truths of the sort we play with are inevitably multidimensional too.

As ever the answer perhaps lies not in trying to force our concepts on to the reality, or on to other individuals - but instead in changing our view. (view as in our perspective, the way we relate to stuff)

So that we become open enough to connect with the  truth expressed in the many differing forms that inevitably arise out of differing times, cultures and individuals.

We're so inclined to for all sorts of ego based reasons to demand what we perceive as agreement (which isn't actually possible given the interpretation issue), and to come armed with a variety of preconceptions that make it very hard for us to see the truth in other expressions.

That's not to say that there isn't stuff that's fairly clearly not truth. But to paraphrase a very old saying on the brood topic:  'don't mistake the pointing finger for the Moon'

Like the dog whose attention is taken by the hand throwing the stick rather than the stick which has just been thrown we can get hung up on language and expression - language which anyway is only a pointer to an inexpressible truth...

DocM wrote on Jul 16^th, 2008 at 1:36am:

Justin, You seem to have a problem with this thread, which I do understand; you are entitled to point out that we are discussing the unknowable.  Me, personally, I simply stay off threads which I find to be offensive, boring or as you mentioned "mental masturbation."  To each his own. Yet the question of man's relationship to God has been talked of and debated for countless years.  While the ultimate answer won't be settled in this forum, it remains useful in the sense that we are basing our actions in life on how we define our relationship with God and each other.  Two biblical commandments, the love of God and love of our neighbors seem to be very important in both the old and new testament. The question behind this thread is simple.  There are those who connect with the universe in an impersonal way, and who state quite authoritatively that they are God and he/she them.  They need not worship God because that is in the realm of religious dogma.  They mentally "get" that there is a unity between our individual consciousness and God, so they believe that they are divine but just don't quite know it yet. On the other side of the coin, there is the notion of God as the source of life and love, to be revered as the unity we are part of - including a loving intelligence bigger than our individual selves.  You may have heard born again christians speak of a personal relationship with Jesus (Yeshua).  This is what I am speaking of.  I think the difference between an impersonal universe where we think of ourselves as "God in hiding," is a cold, potentially unloving (or narcissistic) place when compared to an existence in which God is acknowledged as a loving entity separate from our individuality.  This was the paradox I spoke of. Where is the purpose of the afterlife, helpers, light beings, and guides we hear about from TMI and our own journeys, if not found in relationship to a loving, intelligent God? Matthew

 Hi Mathew,

 No i don't have a problem with the thread per se.  But what i do disagree with somewhat is the "no, God is this, not that, etc" that's been bandied around back and forth some on this thread.   I don't think it's wise to go there when self isn't fully consciously and always at One with what we are talking about to begin with.  ONLY those who are, truly know, and thus can "teach" others about same in the most accurate and helpful manner (and chances are they will do it less through verbal instruction, than living a pure life of service, love, and self sacrifice in relation to others).  

 I'm not saying that it's wrong to express one's belief about it, and some people on this thread are only doing that, i'm speaking more to the ones doing the above and they know who they are.  

Btw, on a personal level, i resonate and agree with much of what you wrote re: the nature of God.  You have expressed those views very eloquently for the most part.

  I'm just trying to inject some perspective into the thread.  Perhaps i have come off overly critical and harsh, i wasn't trying to do that, but i can see the possibility or likeliness of people taking it that way.  

 In any case, i've said all i can and should say on the topic, and i will  leave your thread.   Otherwise, i would just be inanely repeating myself, and probably like some of those teachers i've addressed, speaking to hear myself talk.    

Everyone will have at least a slightly different perspective of what "god" really is.  My goal on this thread is to clear up the misconceptions held by some here with regards to the "All That Is" perspective which I have.  The most important idea here is that each individual's belief in god should serve them to the fullest in their life.  If it doesn't, if their belief brings about negative emotions, such as fear, or if it skews their perspective of life so much that they do not live according to their highest joy and fullest creative potential, than the belief should be questioned for its validity and a new one found which serves them more positively.

All I can say is thank you God for my life.

P.S. to Kathy, yes, someone does care. :)

Recoverer,

You're Welcome!  ;D





(Just kidding!)

Alysia said:
Quote:

It is because we can become "split" between two thought systems and make no forward progress if the mind is pulled in two directions. thus we have fear and love, opposites, attempting to occupy the same place; one must choose, which it shall be, in order to have peace of mind.... ...what I was trying to sum up, we "invent" problems. I've caught myself doing this, even in my own little world, more so in the past then now, but I would worry needlessly about something, and blow it up into a much bigger problem than I needed to. yes, I know too, I have been called a drama queen. that hurt! however, it was true, only then by recognizing I blow things up, can I change myself to be more realistic... however, what I've noticed about belief systems, is we all carry about a self image of ourselves, which during interaction with others, who are indeed your own special mirrors to yourself, gets slaughtered. dying to a belief system, which is a self image one carries, is very much like the process of an actual death, as you had supposed it was you, this self image, and we do cherish our self images, we wish to be protecting of this self image. then as we go along in life, the self image changes, slowly sometimes, other times it gets smashed by events, loss of a job, marriage partner, a death..the more prominent things that happen in a life, are associated with how we see ourselves in relationship to the world at large.  what I'm trying to do is draw a relationship between what death is; as an experience we do, whether leaving the physical vehicle, or simply experiencing a loved one's leave taking from physical locale. I would say the new consciousness to arrive on Earth, slowly marching on, is the awareness we have this ability to create a self image of individuality, yet know that it is the other's who make this very circumstance possible, to be an individual. we are dependent on each other, especially those who oppose us, in this sense. so I would say to take notice how often self image does die here, and so it would not surprise me it would also be dying in the afterlife, if the self image were not real and true, of the higher Self, of what is eternally true.

Alysia also said:
Quote:

... I do not use words like worship because they are no longer useful to describe contact with infinite wisdom and PUL. I am in that case absorbed by God and while surrendering there is no "me" to do the worshipping. Instead, to use another word, I would say every man goes through painful experiences which act to set up a yearning to return to source, or God if you prefer. The yearning itself is a type of worship in a way, it is an energy in all us, sooner or later, which is a prayerful state of consciousness. Even at time, awe is there. it grows in momentum... ... so we can assume physical incarnation serves a purpose beyond what we understand, even though that one, who has touched the hem of God so to speak, yearns to return.... There will come a time we will all see how strongly we hold unto our belief systems, jealousy guarding them. Belief systems, whatever you believe, has a rote on it. Each single belief is in truth connected to another set of beliefs. the root system of most beliefs is that we are separate from God, therefore, we must have done something really bad. Our job towards enlightenment is basically, as I see it, help each other get home, and to see that we labor under the illusion we have rebelled against God and been casts out. a belief system is different than perceptions. as is interpretation different than a perception. your perceptions will always follow your belief system. so change your beliefs, and your perceptions change accordingly. all possibilities able to play out, once you begin to observe how your mind works. for instance, when you believe something "new" your perceptions widen up to accept more possibilities for creating your reality, in ways that benefit others as well. Higher good prospects. when I'm in prayerful thoughts, it is only "thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." I still find certain phrases of use to me, even in this new age, so I could say I'm worshipful of God...

Hi Alysia,

In your 2 previous posts (excerpted above) you seem to present somewhat consistent themes even though expressed differently, with additional related in a recent other thread I just read (Lucifer?) you spoke about:

The nature of worship and its equivalents, the yearning to return to Source and how that 'worship' may be determined by specific orientation leading toward resolution. The relationship, obligations and means between human and God in that activity.  Also perhaps a suggestion that the way we orient towards God is also how we condition ourselves to relate to other human beings(?). How orientation is founded upon belief system and subsequent self-perception/self-image, also how the mind works (and doesn't), and how those 2 things can limit and negatively condition our navigation of reality and approach to God. The need for re-invention/transformation etc. and how these things tie in with love/pul. Quite a bit of inter-related themes there.

I was thinking that I wanted to respond to your posts but didn't know how to, until my daily reading brought me to some passages from one of my favorite authors that at once seemed to touch on, reinforce and tie together many of the same themes you presented, with some connections explicit, some implicit.

- u


Quote:

Transformation Transformation is a house. It becomes a home only when there is peace, joy, harmony and love. Before that, the house is there—an amalgam of bricks, sand, wood and other material objects; but these things are useless and meaningless unless there is peace, love, joy and oneness inside the house. When these qualities or these capacities are visible, then the house becomes a home. Human life is totally meaningless unless there is love in it. It is a life, a creation of God, but this creation of God is of no avail unless and until there is love in it. When love fills life, then only life is meaningful and fruitful. The transformation of house into home is what we need, the transformation of life into love is what we need. The human mind we consider as the highest achievement on earth. But this mind is of no avail unless and until vastness becomes its other name. Unless and until the mind becomes synonymous with vastness, the mind is of no use. The mind always tries to maintain its superiority. It finds faults with others and suspects others. It gets pleasure only in exercising its individuality. Who needs that mind? But when vastness enters into the mind, the mind is illumined and fulfilled. The creation as such we do not need, for it is helpless, hopeless, useless. But when we see God inside the creation, what we see is not helplessness but hope. What we see is not uselessness but usefulness. What we see is not mere promise but a faultless assurance of the fulfilment of that promise. So inside the creation, if we can see the Creator, then only is the creation meaningful and fruitful. Otherwise, earthly creation is of no avail. (.....) We have set up a goal according to our own inner perception, and this goal we will reach. But just because we have set our goal according to our own inner image, we will not be satisfied; we will be frustrated. But at every moment when we pray, when we concentrate, when we meditate, when we contemplate, if we can keep in the forefront our soulful promise to our Beloved Supreme, and if we can keep our inner assurance, then we can and will fulfil this promise—that Him to please in His own way, we saw the light of day. Then only will our prayer, concentration, meditation and contemplation have true value, true meaning, true fulfilment. Life has to become love. Mind has to become vastness. Creation has to become God. Prayer and meditation have to embody self-assurance and remembrance of our promise to God. Then only satisfaction, complete satisfaction, everlasting satisfaction, will dawn. - Sri Chinmoy

same page Ultra, just different words of Chinmoy.

some brief comparisons to offer: the vastness of mind he's talking about is a feeling (to me) of spaciousness.
if I can wax poetically, there are times during meditation, where there was so much light energy, that it was as if it were a physical light, and my brain could not accomodate it, and so I felt very spacious person with  like, too small a head...hahaha!

the promise to God mentioned at the last, is comparable, to my way of thinking, we do incarnate here with certain intentions to fulfill, certain experiences we wish, certain talents we wish to develop more fully, and I'd say this promise is like those intentions, where back in earlier decades, I used to hear my peers often muttering "have to find myself." then they rush off to first get some tranquilizers!
if we start to remember and implement to do what we do, whatever that is, to do what it is we love doing, we start then to remember this promise or intention which leads to that satisfaction Chinmoy's talking about.

If I compare Chinmoy's thoughts to what I learned in ACIM, there's no discrepancy, in that Chinmoy says we find fault with others, which is the same thing as judging others, projecting guilt upon them so to get rid of guilt within our own self.
He is saying see God in others instead. ACIM is saying trust your brothers who are one with you, as a way to get to the forgiveness part and then to the eventual love part for one another.

Without love, he is saying the world is meaningless.
ACIM is saying the world is unreal unless there is love.

my opinion? JC and Chinmoy are pals.
thanks for reading me Ultra. it is a pleasure to chat.

Must say i like Chinmoy from what you've posted too Ultra.

There's even a possibility it's said that JC was influenced by similar (Vedic/Buddhist inspired) system of training 2000 years ago.

It's stuff like meditative experience that  starts to move all of this from being just conceptual to start becoming a bit more of a knowing.

Here's a Wikipedia profile of Chinmoy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Chinmoy

wrote on Jul 17^th, 2008 at 7:56pm:

There's even a possibility it's said that JC was influenced by similar (Vedic/Buddhist inspired) system of training 2000 years ago.

 I don't know how true it is or not, but Cayce's source said that he did travel in India and other places   He was partly instructed by an Essene leader/prophetess who had him travel specifically to Persia to learn astrology, and like all Initiates of the time, went to Egypt to be tested.

Apparently, he learned some things in these various lands, but mostly relied on inner intuition and living a life of service, compassion, kindness, etc. to others.
That latter especially, along with regular meditation, opens you up more to "truth" than anything else.   All of those various teachings, came to be through people less intune than he, so how necessary or helpful were they?   He was born at such a level, to not have needed these, though i'm not saying they weren't helpful to him at all.  

 Here is a particularly detailed reading regarding much of this, and i share this because i know you are familiar with and like some of Cayce's stuff.

"11. (Q) Please give facts about Jesus' education in Palestine, the schools He attended, how long, what He studied, and under what name He was registered.
(A) The periods of study in Palestine were only at the time of His sojourn in the temple, or in Jerusalem during those periods when He was quoted by Luke as being among the rabbi or teachers. His studies in Persia, India and Egypt covered much greater periods. He was always registered under the name Jeshua.

12. (Q) Please describe Jesus' education in India, schools attended - did He attend the Essene school in Jagannath taught by Lamaas, and did He study in Benares also under the Hindu teacher Udraka?
(A) He was there at least three years. Arcahia was the teacher.

13. (Q) Did He attend the schools in Jagannath -
(A) ALL were a portion of the teachings as combined from the Essene schools, but these were not the true Essene doctrine as practiced by the Jewish and semi-Jewish associations in Carmel.

14. (Q) Did He study in Benares also under the Hindu teacher Udraka?
(A) Rather that as indicated, - Arcahia.

15. (Q) Please describe Jesus' education in Egypt in Essene schools of Alexandria and Heliopolis, naming some of His outstanding teachers and subjects studied.
(A) Not in Alexandria, - rather in Heliopolis, for the period of attaining to the priesthood, or the taking of the examinations there - as did John. One was in one class, one in the other.

16. (Q) Please describe Jesus' contact with schools in Persia, and did He at Persepolis establish a method of entering the Silence as well as demonstrating healing power?
(A) Rather that was a portion of the activity in the "city in the hills and the plains." [Persian incarnation as Zend]

17. (Q) Name some of His outstanding teachers and subjects studied.
(A) Not as teachers, but as being EXAMINED by these; passing the tests there. These, as they have been since their establishing, were tests through which ones attained to that place of being accepted or rejected by the influences of the mystics as well as of the various groups or schools in other lands. For, as indicated oft through this channel, the unifying of the teachings of many lands was brought together in Egypt; for that was the center from which there was to be the radial activity of influence in the earth, - as indicated by the first establishing of those tests, or the recording of time as it has been, was and is to be - until the new cycle is begun.

18. (Q) Why does not the Bible tell of Jesus' education, or are there manuscripts now on earth that will give these missing details to be found soon?
(A) There are some that have been forged manuscripts. All of those that existed were destroyed, - that is, the originals - with the activities in Alexandria.

24. (Q) Did Jesus study under Apollo and other Greek philosophers, and was it through educational contacts that the Greeks later came to Him to beg Him to come to their country when the Jews cast Him out?
(A) We do not find such. Jesus, as Jesus, never appealed to the worldly-wise.

26. (Q) In one Reading we are told the Wise Men came from India, Egypt, and Gobi; in another Reading we are told the Wise Man who brought the incense came from Persia. Which is correct, and besides the Wise Men Achlar and Ashtueil, what were the names of the other two Wise Men?
(A) Both are correct. There was more than one visit of the Wise Men. One is a record of three Wise Men. There was the fourth, as well as the fifth, and then the second group. They came from Persia, India, Egypt, and also from Chaldea, Gobi, and what is NOW the Indo or Tao land.

32. (Q) Please describe Jesus' initiations in Egypt, telling if the Gospel reference to "three days and nights in the grave or tomb," possibly in the shape of a cross, indicate a special initiation.
(A) This is a portion of the initiation, - it is a part of the passage through that to which each soul is to attain in its development, as has the world through each period of their incarnation in the earth. As is supposed, the record of the earth through the passage through the tomb, or the pyramid, is that through which each entity, each soul, as an initiate must pass for the attaining to the releasing of same, - as indicated by the empty tomb, which has NEVER been filled, see? Only Jesus was able to break same, as it became that which indicated His fulfillment.

And there, as the initiate, He went out, - for the passing through the initiation, by fulfilling - as indicated in the baptism in the Jordan; not standing in it and being poured or sprinkled either! as He passed from that activity into the wilderness to meet that which had been His undoing in the beginning."  From Reading 2067-7


"21. (Q) Tell about Judy teaching Jesus, where and what subjects she taught him, and what subjects she planned to have him study abroad.
(A) The prophecies! Where? In her home. When? During those periods from his twelfth to his fifteenth-sixteenth year, when he went to Persia and then to India. In Persia, when his father died. In India when John first went to Egypt - where Jesus joined him and both became the initiates in the pyramid or temple there.

22. (Q) What subjects did Judy plan to have him study abroad?
(A) What you would today call astrology." From reading 2067-11

Forgot one.  Particularly pertinent to India, towards the end of the reading excerpts.  

" GC: You will please give at this time an outline of the life and activities of Jesus the Christ from the time of His birth until the beginning of His ministry in Palestine at approximately thirty years of age; giving birth place, training, travels, etc.

2. EC: As seen from the records that were kept then regarding the promises and their fulfillments in many lands, "Thou Bethlehem of Judah - the birth place of the Great Initiate, the Holy One, the Son of man, the Accepted One of the Father."

3. During those periods in accordance with those laws and rulings, in the household of the father.

4. Then in the care and ministry from the period of the visit to Jerusalem, in first India, then Persia, then Egypt; for "My son shall be called from Egypt."

5. Then a portion of the sojourn with the forerunner that was first proclaimed in the region about Jordan; and then the return to Capernaum, the city of the beginning of the ministry.

6. Then in Canaan and Galilee.

7. In the studies that were a portion of the preparation, these included first those that were the foundations of that given as law. Hence from law in the Great Initiate must come love, mercy, peace, that there may be the fulfilling wholly of that purpose to which, of which, He was called.

8. (Q) From what period and how long did He remain in India?
(A) From thirteen to sixteen. One year in travel and in Persia; the greater portion being in the Egyptian. In this, the greater part will be seen in the records that are set in the pyramids there; for HERE were the initiates taught.

9. (Q) Under whom did He study in India?
(A) Kshjiar [?]. [GD's note: 6/5/69 Dr. I. C. Sharma told me he thought the correct spelling of the teacher would be Kahanji.]

10. (Q) Under whom in Persia?
(A) Junner [?].

11. (Q) In Egypt?
(A) Zar [?].

12. (Q) Outline the teachings which were received in India.
(A) Those cleansings of the body as related to preparation for strength in the physical, as well as in the mental man. In the travels and in Persia, the unison of forces as related to those teachings of that given in those of Zu and Ra. In Egypt, that which had been the basis of all the teachings in those of the temple, and the after actions of the crucifying of self in relationships to ideals that made for the abilities of carrying on that called to be done.

In considering the life physical of any of the teachers, these should not be looked upon by students as unnatural conditions. Rather as, that the righteous Father CALLING to those that had builded in their experience that enabling them to BECOME what each individual must in their own little sphere, gradually enlarging same to become inclusive until they - the individuals - are one in purpose, one in aim, one in ideal, with Him." From Reading 5749-2

I believe it is a mistake to claim that Jesus taught the same thing that Eastern teachings taught. Eastern teachings are based too much upon there being no such thing as an eternal soul and this World being nothing but an illussion. With Eastern teachings there is an emphasis on pure consciousness to an extent that it is hard to imagine that the magnitude at which love exists is understood.  With Eastern teachings God often takes a secondary role and in the case of a religion like Buddhism plays no role at all.  

Going by my experiences and the messages I received it isn't a matter of reverting back to where only "one" self abides in a state of pure consciousness. This would be reverse evolution.  The goal is to get to the point where many souls and God exist eternally in a wonderful state of peace, beauty, joy, knowledge and love.  

Going by the instruction I've received, Christ most certainly knows that there is such a thing as eternal Souls and these Souls have unlimited potential, once they get around to living according to divine wisdom and love.  Souls aren't going to stop existing because somebody goes through an intellectual dialogue which contends that such a thing isn't possible. Awareness, the energy of life, and the mind that directs the energy of life according to its knowledge, all work together to maintain the reality of a soul.  Souls are intially created by higher levels of being.  Souls end up being quite ingenious. They know how to be one and many at the same time.

Regarding this World being unreal, Christ loves it way too much to speak of it as unreal while many people and animals still suffer within it. The intelligence that created this World does exist. The energy that was used to create this World also exists.  When Souls live in this World either as a person or an animal, they do in fact experience its existence. This World won't exist forever and doesn't represent the only manner in which the energy that is used to create it can exist; nevertheless, it is real while it used.

Hi Matthew,

DocM said in his opening post,
Quote:

As I seek to explore my own consciousness, I am more eager to experience God and Heaven.  I think that PUL only has meaning when extended throughout all consciousness.  As such, it has meaning when we express PUL to others, and they to us.  And if God is the source of PUL, we should acknowledge this too.   The unity between all of us can still be present in this model, yet our individual perception of consciousness persists as well.

 

I found this to offer.
It is a small portion from a 200 page book dealing with essential issues spiritual seekers often face, this passage in which God is speaking to a seeker.



Quote:

"My child, what do you want? Do you want to love Me or do you want to prove to Me that you love Me? There is a great difference between your love for Me and your demonstration of love. Your love of Me and your wish to demonstrate your love for Me are two different things. You do not have to demonstrate your love to Me as long as you have the inner cry to love Me. This inner cry is not theoretical, but practicality Itself. It is the height of practicality. I am the eternal Lover and you are My mirror, so you have to know that when I look at you I see My own reflection. Remain My mirror and My Love of you will be your love for Me, for I see Myself alone here on earth and there in Heaven. I do not see anything as something other than Myself. I do not see anybody as someone else. I see only Myself, My larger Self, My universal Self, through you, My mirror. Through you I see Myself, My own reflection. Therefore, you do not have to prove your love for Me. Just maintain your inner cry to love Me devotedly, soulfully and unconditionally. This inner cry is not only My divine Will in you, but it is also My supreme execution of My divine Will in and through you. I love My creation. Therefore, I live in My creation. If it just cries to love Me, that is more than enough. I need no other proof. That is proof itself: the cry, the cry, the soulful cry, only for Me, only for Me.” - Sri Chinmoy,   excerpt from "Everest Aspiration"

Note: unfortunately or fortunately, I will not be interested in debating the truth value of the above passage as with this like everything else, I have faith that the meaning and relative utility of it will be self-evident to any individual according to any individual's current evident-Self.  This, coming from a belief that in the scheme of things, if L is really, truly, genuinely U and P, then there can be no falsehood involved. Meanwhile,  I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution if it does help to expand anyone's horizons. So, onward!

- u

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

PS - Thanks for your comments Alysia and Vajra

Ultra posted:
"My child, what do you want? Do you want to love Me or do you want to prove to Me that you love Me? There is a great difference between your love for Me and your demonstration of love. Your love of Me and your wish to demonstrate your love for Me are two different things. You do not have to demonstrate your love to Me as long as you have the inner cry to love Me. This inner cry is not theoretical, but practicality Itself. It is the height of practicality. I am the eternal Lover and you are My mirror, so you have to know that when I look at you I see My own reflection. Remain My mirror and My Love of you will be your love for Me, for I see Myself alone here on earth and there in Heaven. I do not see anything as something other than Myself. I do not see anybody as someone else. I see only Myself, My larger Self, My universal Self, through you, My mirror. Through you I see Myself, My own reflection. Therefore, you do not have to prove your love for Me. Just maintain your inner cry to love Me devotedly, soulfully and unconditionally. This inner cry is not only My divine Will in you, but it is also My supreme execution of My divine Will in and through you. I love My creation. Therefore, I live in My creation. If it just cries to love Me, that is more than enough. I need no other proof. That is proof itself: the cry, the cry, the soulful cry, only for Me, only for Me.”



- Sri Chinmoy,  
excerpt from "Everest Aspiration"
[/quote]


Recoverer responds: "Is Chinmoy claiming that worshiping him is the same thing as worshipping God? Say you're really happy and your friend is really sad. You help your friend become just as happy as you. Would you expect your friend to worship you as a God because you helped he or she, or would there be too much of an equality factor when it comes to the love you share? Would it be necessary for your friend to worship you as God in order for you to help your friend? Sure there would be some grattitude and mutually shared reverence and respect for each other, but one who helps simply for the sake of helping would never expect to be worshiped as God.

When it comes to God realization, all any of us can realize is that each of us is just one little piece of the many pieces of God's being that God used to create everything.

This might sound contradictory, but I actually find it very admiral that people are willing to have devotion to a guru they believe to represent God. It shows that they are willing to have feelings of love, humility, respect and reverence to that which is divine. I've been amongst these people, and many of them are quite wonderful.  I remember speaking to this really lovely lady after she left the guru based group both she and I were a member of. She said: "Our guru was false, but the love we felt was always real.

R quote: Our guru was false, but the love we felt was always real.
___
very astute observation of that lady. for I believe that only love is real, that all else I see is false. from my perspective, she and yourself would have to observe non-truth, in order to find truth. therefore the false guru played his role.
in my life, everything that was going wrong to my then perceptions, were actually the right place to be in in order to learn who and what I was.
each experience was but a stepping stone.
____

The Love that JC has for what has been created in this world, is different than the love he has for mankind.
Any time you see a lack of love in this world such as war, you are looking at something quite unreal.
meaning war is false creation.
We are a warring planet; therefore this world is not real, because it does not speak of truth, nor love.

It is not JC's home, nor is it my home. it is a movie only. as the physical body is nothing. J did not identify with his body as being real, nor did he wish to establish a false religion. He only preached on brotherly love. It became a religion when it should have been a pathway of going into one's inner closet.

I'll go so far as to say there's nothing out there. Nothing is real, and nothing has any meaning to me, but what the meaning I place upon it. this helps me remain unattached to the world, the money, the objects to possess, the relationships, all of it is but temporary as is our respective sufferings.

the only thing J would tell me that is important that we serve the purpose of love while here, as he did in example.

it is just as easy to make a joyful sound as it is to belabor the fact we are not in heaven and blow the old blues horn.

J, or God, must be seen as accessible to each and everyone person and within each one, otherwise we do not get into heaven alone, without each other. only together.

we must not worship each other, nor any, but when the student is ready, the teacher does appear.
it is a law. respect no man's ego who does not draw you up to his own level.
J said, if I go, I go to prepare a place for you. That is what he has done, essentially by keeping the voice for God, Spirit within the Earth dimension.
therefore the voice for God can speak thru any which have purified their heart.
For ascended masters are here, and we have no ears nor eyes to recognize them.

but you know, when you feel love, which has no conditions on it, you are made free at once, to see all else is false.

the world, as it is, cannot endure in such perfect truth, perfect love. We are now in the shift in consciousness, everything is changing, we need not fear change.

In truth, we have never left the heart of God; we but dream we are here, suffering, struggling, maintaining a certain lifestyle, always getting more, bigger, newer things, what a rat race.

I can't wait to serve my term and be out of here where my real home is. I just want to say thanks to everyone I met here, which includes my family who gave me the most trouble!

they were only in a role also.

love to you all..remember to keep the faith of a mustard seed.. :)

Here is Robert Bruce's answer to the question, "What is God?"


Quote:

Robert Bruce wrote: I could give it to you in 3 words, but it probably needs a book or two to properly explain it. 'you are god' Not an aspect of God...but actually god...the creator of the universe. This is the only thing that makes sense.

and...


Quote:

Robert Bruce wrote: You are God. You are Source. Whatever you want to call it, you are the creator of the universe. Scientists know a lot about the universe, from a millisecond after the so called Big Bang. But they know absolutely nothing about what happened before this point, of where it came from or what caused it, etc. The universe has a Source. This Source is pure consciousness. Matter, every atom, is a manifestation of consciousness or Source. This includes you.

This is coming from one of the most knowledgeable and experienced explorers on Earth.  

Robert Bruce wrote:
[size=10]Robert Bruce wrote:

I could give it to you in 3 words, but it probably needs a book or two to properly explain it.

'you are god'

Not an aspect of God...but actually god...the creator of the universe. This is the only thing that makes sense. [/size]
============================================

The question behind my thread was not whether or not our essence is from God, or whether we are God in a sense.  It was whether there was a superconsciousness that is God, to which we do not currently have access that is loving - this would back up Bruce's explorations that PUL is our reason for being.  Or, whether the unity simply is, and love is beside the point.

As I've stated before, the fact that we are God or source in our essence does not answer this question.  Many point to a unity of all thngs, but in the physical world, it appears to be a dog-eat-dog existence be it in human interactions or even the animal kindgom where something is always consuming another.  Duality and the Maya or illusion of the physical reigns supreme.  So yes, there may be a unity of all things, and we may be individual points of God consciousness, but none of these ideas explains whether the superconsciousness that is God is loving, or simply a unity.

NDEs and OOBEs seem to point toward a loving God and discarnate angels, helpers, etc. who exist on the principles of PUL.  To say that we already are God, as logically satisfying as that is, is only understandable/meaningful, when we are "God-realized."  Otherwise, my initial reaction to Robert's remarks was "that's very nice, but it wouldn't hold much water with my wife if I used it as an excuse not to take out the garbage."  

I appreciate your getting Robert's views on things, since he does astrally explore, and has interesting experiences.    

Matthew

I would say, from my own experience, that if you look for a loving God/AllThatIs you will find one.

The evidence cannot come from any one of us, personally, because it must be your experience.

That is all I know about it.

love, blink

Hi Doc, do we need to start again?  :)

My personal view in response to your specific question is God is everything, everybody (being) and everywhere - that it's not a matter of separation.

Another way of getting to this is the idea that everything is brought into existence out of the action of God (universal mind) on some underlying  primordial energy.

There is an apparent separation, but it's not real. It's the result of our perceiving ourselves and our reality in a certain (egotistical) way, and as a result mistakenly concluding that it doesn't work on the principle of love, and that God is elsewhere.

Higher consciousness by this view is not so much a case of going elsewhere, but of achieving a mind state that sees more of the total reality. As opposed to seeing only a certain take on the world through the reality tunnel of egotistical conditioning.

God is in a sense around and through us all the time, but because of the way we selectively perceive and analyse we draw the wrong conclusions - blind ourselves so to speak.

The practical application of the love based view in accordance with say Buddhist teaching (on compassion) or for that matter the exercises in ACIM seems (I can only claim to be a beginner in this regard) to back this up. Outcomes often confound our received view on the nature of things.

Lots I'm sure can quote examples where for example showing love to others (in a way that gets through - it's a skill as well as a genuine intention issue, and we can fall short in both areas while being certain we're doing the right thing) who have been behaving aggressively towards them, and seeing them fold and change tack....

Doc

So basically your question is whether the Source loves its creations or is in a neutral state about them.  I answered this question in my previous post to the best of my understanding.  Like I said before, the feeling of love we and all other consciousness experience is basically the feeling of source consciousness itself.  Therefore, the Source, at the highest level, is in an infinite state of love, and this should answer the question.

Please pardon my coming in again. What I was trying to say OOBD is that I feel the Source is not separate from its creations (all of them, not just us humans, and not just in time/space), it'd have to be schizo or a self hater not to love them as itself....

Right on vajra.  I agree.  I believe love is most likely the source consciousness' one and only state of being.  Therefore, we feel love when we act/think according to our innermost being(Source).

We/ our souls separate from God in many ways.  God-as-Love doesn't exist separate from us, but we do get distracted -- Do we ever! That's why our returns to God are so overwhelming!

We think we're coming closer to God by talking about related topics and practicing methods that we think will bring us closer. But we're still not united with the Loving God That IS All until we change our state of being.

Many of us try to bridge the gap, but also many don't try any longer. They have given up for now, and so their degree of separation is even greater. God gives them this right and God is patient. Hopefully 'He' also is amused by our antics.

When we come here to the earthplane seeking knowledge, we have left God and his garden Paradise for us. Little do we realize that all we do here is remember bits of what we already knew --that Love is the essence of knowledge, that All exists in unity. We have separated our 'ego' out from the All-That-Is (God, Love) and then look back to try to recall the All, but it is too much for our separated self to understand.

It's so difficult for the finite to comprehend the infinite until it remerges with the essence of it--the essence that is the Loving God-That-Is-All.  :)

Bets

:) There's no doubt Dude that at the practical level love seems to underly  pretty much everything. There are other modes of expression that we can and do indulge in most of the time, but the underlying 'truth', 'reality' or the best practice/least suffering path seems to be based on it. (tough to get to the point where you could say you know that experientially, and in it's entirety. But it certainly seems true in the instances where we can find the courage to raise our game to test the proposition)

It's hard on the ego to swallow the remembering part Bets, the idea that we're effectively if not only at least mostly digging ourselves out of a self made mess.

It may not be the only reason we're here (given that it's all presumably in accordance with God's will) - but if as many teach it's not something He created, then He probably has a purpose for it, or it's at least within a possibly infinite band of possibility that's just fine by Him...

wrote on Jul 24^th, 2008 at 3:22pm:

I would say, from my own experience, that if you look for a loving God/AllThatIs you will find one. The evidence cannot come from any one of us, personally, because it must be your experience. That is all I know about it. love, blink

Blink, I don't know how you manage to sum up so well but you did it again.
It is what we focus on, what we want to see, is what we will see, to say, to be one-pointed is also to be creative to create what we want to see, and there is power in numbers as well. Yet what we wish to see, to create, must become an experience, to express that.
I had this minor? revelation once. the idea was if I did not express love, as in verbal, then love remained unreal and unmanifested.
it appears the only thing holding us back from expressing love is fear of nonacceptance. I can guarantee everyone there is a point where fear is no longer there to hold back the expressions of Love, so long as there are no conditions being imposed on yourself to express it.

Doc's quote: So yes, there may be a unity of all things, and we may be individual points of God consciousness, but none of these ideas explains whether the superconsciousness that is God is loving, or simply a unity.
____
I don't understand how we can have a unity without love being the essence of unity? I have to re-read your entire post to get to the real question...quote "It was whether there was a superconsciousness that is God, to which we do not currently have access that is loving "

Either we understand God is Love, or we deny that God is Love. here Doc seems to deny God is Love. that may be because his perceptions will say deny God is Love.
Perceptions are just perceptions.
perceptions are not knowledge, or to say, direct experience of the voice for God. In my book, which is only like a road map, which is only my personal experience, nonsharable, but presented in limited words here, the voice for God is labeled the holy spirit.
for understanding what holy means, to me, it means whole knowledge, direct experience internally, which speaks to me, in the context of my belief system platform.

Doc says: that's very nice, but it wouldn't hold much water with my wife if I used it as an excuse not to take out the garbage
____

somehow I miss the point here Doc, as I imagine you to be the sort that takes out the garbage without your wife even asking you too.
In a room mate situation, I found it's best to do what is necessary, presuming both are equalized in harmony so assignments don't have to be given in such a household. whoever sees first it needs taken out, just does it.

did I not get the question right?
l
read some more good posts here and adding a bit more. Doc was inferring we do not have access to this loving superconsciousness, which is a God being. We do have access, once we look and focus in that direction. so I think I already answered the question. it is the illusion that linear time blocks access.
I believe I have been participating in a speed up of energies, I call shift in consciousness energies of late, but I witness those same energies here on this board in each you, so we have a unity. In that unity is Love. It must be unconditional, since I never expected anything from any of you, and yet you made your deliveries to me.

It was certainly not a cold, scientific unity. I felt PUL from you guys. btw, when you're thinking of Love, or PUL, it's not quite the same to say it is an emotion only, because, emotions are something we identify as our being, but our essence is aware, emotions, are tools of development within Spirit/God.
PUL is a consistent state of mind, emotions are passing things.

Dude: exceptional understanding you have: quote:
So basically your question is whether the Source loves its creations or is in a neutral state about them.
____

I think this accessment above of Doc's question hit the nail on the head much better than I did and perhaps I answered it somewhat.

I think Doc, if this is what your question was, that Source may be in a nuetral state about it's creations, is another way of asking if we are loved or not by the creator.

it follows in ACIM either we are giving love, or we are asking for love, and no exceptions to the rule.
What is like God, is His Creations.
If we can conceive of a neutral God, then what we are conceiving is not God, we are seeing only ourself as neutral, and attributing that nuetrality to God, or we can say we have made a graven image of God in that regard.

In other words, in this world, we are making it all up. jointly. It only becomes God's kingdom when we open the doors wide for that to manifest. Is why I simply say I'm starring in my own movie.

Yes, it appears we are going around the merry-go-round again!

I would like to agree and add this to blink's comment,
Quote:

I would say, from my own experience, that if you look for a loving God/AllThatIs you will find one. The evidence cannot come from any one of us, personally, because it must be your experience.

Loving-personal God-with form///All-that-is-impersonal God-without form are not exclusive of each other since they are the same thing.

The experience of one or the other can't be proven or refuted since it is a subjective experience between you and God or within you and your Self (why you will find it)- a unique manifestation of God/All-that-is, and therefore compassionately supported and facilitated according to ones needs.

This experience is nothing other than ongoing preparation - the process of realization.

- u  

Regarding the unity of all things under/within God,

(here comes an unnecessary tangent ::)  )  ---

I like that science too is finding simplicity and unity. Only a half century ago, science was using dissection to find its new truths, divide and learn, but now listen to them!  
Now by scientific measure I am very similiar to bananas or corn!  
Well, who'd have known such a short time ago! :D

In Japan a research center has simplified life down to only 3 or 4 strands of DNA. They ('they?)
can rebuild life from those few strands. The specializations and variety of life's DNA come as the simplified life developes.
(Please excuse my layman's explanation; PBS told it much better.)

Seeing separateness is futile!  
We are all One!

Bets