[Note: Phinn's book seems too well-written for its own good.  It reads like a novel.  But in my view, its monolithic, articulate, and witty characters are clearly an extension of Phinn's personality.   My quibble is that it does not ring true for me as credible descripion of the afterlife.]  

VERIFICATION AND THE CONCEPT OF A MORAL ABSOLUTE

I'm going to try one more time to refocus this thread on its stated objective.  Terms like "rignt" and "wrong" are meaningless unless the can in principle be subjected to some sort of verification test.  This post tries to demonstrate how the use of these terms can be meaninful within a New Age model of the afterlife.  

Is is the "right" thing to do to manifest a loving lifestyle?  One might object: "There is no personal God of love.  Nature {evolution) is brutally amoral, based as it is on natural selection and the survival of the fittest.  So human morality is nothing more than a herd instinct to concoct rules that make our herd life viable."  One might object: "Society cannot function without respect for other people's right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness."  His opponent might counter: "True, my life would be horrid if everyone ignored morality and took pleasure in controlling and hurting others.   But in fact, most people are naive enough to buy into our abitrary herd instinct.   This means that I can commit any crime I desire if it brings me gain or pleasure.  As long as I don't  get caught, my quality of life will not be adversely affected."   The other objects: "But how can you live with your cionscience?"  His opponent might reply, "My conscience can be seared once I realize guilt is just cultural conditioning designed to reinforce an indefensible harmonious conformity." The bottom line: if there is no postmortem justice, than "right" and "wrong" are vacuous concepts.  

So how can the concept of "right" and "wrong" be elevated beyond the status of relativistic personal belief that may safely be ignored?  Only if the concept of a moral (spiritual) absolute is meaningful in the afterlife.  Ask yourself, "Does God embrace a moral value because it is right or is it right because God embraces it?  The first question seems misguided because it assumes that God might be subject to a moral order that transcends "Him."   The second question has more potential.  

Suppose God were a sadist.   If God advocates a set of rules that assume might is right, we would rebel.  We simply are not wired to accept such a view.   But suppose God is love.   We are wired in such a way as to embrace the principle that guidelines essential to promote love provide us with a basis for right and wrong.  

But what then is our answer to a Devil's Advocate who challenges this as arbritary?   The concept of a moral absolute is meaningless only if it is grounded in the nature of postmortem existence. Let's provisionally assume the conventional Christian view that there is only one moral absolute-- PUL. On this view, other values would merely be consequences of PUL, and so, would not be independent absolutes.  
 
Suppose that progress towards PUL raises one's spiritual vibration and this facilitates spiritual ascent through the astral planes towards union with God.  Then PUL can serve as a meaningful basis for the concept of right and wrong.  "Wrong" (e.g. sins and vices) can then be defined as those attitudes and lifestyles that lower one's spiritual vibration, causing one to drift further and further away from progress towards union with God.  Suppose someone objects: "Your concept of a PUL absolute strikes me as arbritrary.  Why should I accept it?"   My reply: "If you are willing to embrace the consequences of shunning PUL, then this concept is indeed arbitrary--for you.   But if you want ultimate spiritual fulfilment, you must embrace PUL as if it were a binding absolute.  Of course, what "sins" and "vices" drive one further away from union with God can be disputed.  

But how could this model ever be verified or falsified?  Most of this site's retrievals sound like jailbreaks rather than moral graduations from lower planes.  If I can be sprung from a lower plane and function well in Focus 27 without any progress towards PUL, then PUL can be discredited as a moral absolute.   But that assumes that astral planes are not really governed by the principle of like attracts like.  In this regard, I am struck by one of Gordon Phinn's follow-up explorations of a retrieval.  Gord found that the retrieved soul had returned to his hollow heaven. He and his mentor wereangry at Gord's meddling.  With the best of intentions, Gordon had apparently helped cause the equivalent of a jailbreak. The retrievee evidently had not yet made the requisite changes in his energetics to function well in a higher plane.  This report rings true to me and supports the notion of PUL as a moral absolute.   More astral research needs to be done on the conditions needed for for successful retrievals.  Such research might confirm my perspective on the PUL absolute.

[By the way, integrity forces me to acknowledge that i cannot honestly recommend Gordon's book on the afterlife.  It rings fictitious to me.  But the retrieval alluded to above does ring true to me.]

In my next planned post I will challenge a common view of PUL expressed on this site.

Don

this pretty much resonates with me Don, although I would say that we are energy beings when the denser body is removed, in that what remains is a form of energy. I agree this thing we discuss is a state of being. I say it is both being and energy then.
I do remember doing one retrieval where PUL was not employed. I don't know about terming PUL as ecstasy..as the word ecstasy has certain connotations attached to it. so I'll stick to my own label for it until I can come up with a better one. sometimes I am leaning towards "pure life force" meaning when imbued with this substance, there is a sense of well being and health and a wish to smile upon all others, yet I don't relate it to nirvana, or ecstasy or bliss in any way. I do see PUL as being in a center, or in a balanced state. I can see PUL working in our nation during the time of 9/11. everybody gets real cooperative and helpful towards one another in such emergencies...thats how I came up with the idea that there is basically good inside at our basis. I have one more thesis I'm working on; that is PUL is in degree of evolvement. I also work from another angle, death is in degrees of evolvement simultaneously with life, as two ends of the same spectrum while the observer self stands aside and watches.
cheers, alysia

Dave,

Addendum: When I write I am speaking to you but also whoever happens to be reading this. So if I comment on the obvious or use simple examples, it's not meant to be insulting.

Bob

Sorry, DON! I'm tired.

Who determines what is appropriate for ordinary linguistic usage? Not academics. Remember when 'ain't' wasn't a word? Well, despite the best efforts of academics to exorcise it from the common vernacular, it is now very much a word, even though it's really a conjunction, even though it's a crude substitution. The elitists lost.

Who are *your* readers, Don?

Bob

Don said: So I guess my remaining reservation is this: if I'm incapable of EVER expressing PUL in my earthly life, how can I be said to express it in the astral realm.
______
Don, am I reading u right when you say you don't believe u are capable of expressing PUL in your earthly life, so then u don't believe u can express it in the astral realm either?
well, I remember a couple of stories you told me where it seems u did experience PUL, and I assume when you visit with the dying that this is an expression of PUL on your part. so in that regard, I do believe it is possible that what u experience in the giving of yourself, your time, that it will be duplicated in the astral realm or remains a strong probability, that what you give of yourself, that also returns to you in like measure.
___________
Don said:
  Of course, God's grace might occasionally infuse me with a quality of love that transcends my current spiritual development.  And I think that most of us have experienced PUL at some point in our lives.
_______
yes, I believe in grace also as a part of that thing we are calling PUL right now. we sure could use that in our world right now, grace, I think that is even more difficult to discuss than PUL. I would sing to you, might be the only way to express something like grace. I think gratitude, that is part of it..some days I get up and I just keep saying over and over oh thank you! oh thank you! not sure what I have to be grateful for even sometimes but think that spirit moves in our life this way, and I'm sure it moves in your life, and everyone's according to the cup they hold up to be filled, as in a prayerful way, or if people don't understand prayer, maybe I could say that there seems to be many ways to gladden ourselves which we overlook.
_______
Don asks:
Now what do my readers think of my attempt to translate the abstract notions of right and wrong into a conceptual framework that can verify their appropriateness?
_____

am I a reader? I guess so. uhmmm. are u asking readers to verify your appropriate attempt? I'm a little confused what u mean by the way it's worded.
how can something be appropriate, and an attempt at the same time?
a riddle.

I'm trying too. or attempting appropriate response here too, but I'm not going to measure you with my invisible measuring implement. you're doing ok.
but I'd wish you'd tell me a joke.
cheers, alysia

Alysia,

Yes, I've experienced PUL in radically varying degrees of intensity,  I experience it most wonderfully in my volunteer ministry to the terminally ill.  But when I'm not feeling well or am preoccupied with my own problems, I usually shut myself off from PUL.  I'm also ever alert to the areas of my life where I don't express PUL and the danger of overrating the purity pf the so-called love I express to those in need.  All I know for sure is that I really want to be a PUL channeler!

Bob,

I would say I expressed PUL, not ecstasy, in my retrieval dream in which I encountered Janet, an ex-girlfriend who committed suicide.   It was one of the most powerful emotional experiences of my life.   I'm trying to understand why I gradually came to the conclusion that it was just a lucid dream.    When I express skepticism about the genuiness of retrieval claims on this site, I'm not just basing this on the lack of adequate verification.   A revulsion envelopes me first and then I try to grasp the hidden criteria that have triggered this revulsion.   If I ever adequately identify them, I MAY decide that my skepticism is overwraught and that I need to reconsider.  The quest for truth can often be a roller coaster.  Anyway, I guess I now have to say this: what retrievers project might be PUL for some and just ecstasy for others.   An outsider may not be able to make this judgment of someone else's experience.  

This discussion is analogous to evangelicals who revel in their "born again" experience.   Technically, there is no such thing from a biblical perspective.   "Born again" in Greek refers to a change in spiritual status, not an experience.  The experience described is more accurately described as a transforming encounter with the Holy Spirit.    But that can vary dramatically from person to person.   What I object to in both Christian and New Age circles is the transformation of jargon-based beliefs into presumably identical experiences.  What this often means in practice is the substitution of a belief about an experience for the marvelous experience itself.

Don

Hi Don,

I'm resonating with what your saying here, too. 

Many blessings,
Kathy

well thanks for speaking so honestly Don, I had the wrong idea, that you were just playing devil's advocate here. apparently, you are trying to understand yourself more than other retrievers accounts.
I'm intrigued also about how you came to the conclusion that a lucid dream is somehow not going to cut the mustard for you and then you have a revulsion feeling when u consider it. thats heavy. I wish you luck to figure it out..but think u are on the right track to try to discover the basis of the revulsion feeling, there must be a belief system behind it?
please, if u get it cleared up, maybe you could share it with us, in the interest of the exploration we are all doing. all I would say is personally speaking, it doesn't do me any good or in growthwise terms, to put myself down in false humility terms, as it closes off my good if I do put myself down, or think there is something wrong with me, so I'm sorry I thought things about you, that there was something wrong with you, when now I've changed my mind, due to your most recent post, and I'm keeping you under my new age crystal where I desire to channel PUL also, which is so healing. I would like u to get up each morning feeling great and ready to face whatever comes to you, as you seem to have great strength coming your way, even though your skepticism puts a damper on things for the time being..well, trust as a child, maybe that will open you up more to your abilities. bless you Don. alysia