The leaf, got me thinking about my body's bio electrical field, since i took the leaf with me while i was having breakfast - and i stuck it next to my bed at night,it was always close to me - while i left the other leaf on my desk, which means it could be somehow possible for me to transfer energy to the leaf, just by having it in close proximity, once my non supported leaf dies off abit more, im going to try leaving them both some distance away from me [different room], and maybe just have a photo of the one im trying to keep alive and kicking - so i can rule out or verify that.

it's very true, that the afterlife will not be proven to almost everyone for a long long time, i would'nt mind going to the monroe institute once, i like the way they use hemi sync. but monroes books really started putting me off oobe's, due to the claims which he started coming out with.

well, i dont know about you matt - but i plan to live forever.

good to hear, you have some pride in your work - my doctor cant even speak english.

have a good evening
craig

B-man, why are you to spamming up my thread with your irrelevant personal issues.  Can you say "Private Message"?
*****************
I helped you keep it at the top of the page, didn't I?
I'm such a nice guy...

THE PREXISTENCE OF THE SOUL IN SCRIPTURE(?)
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O.K., I'll humor you, there's no reincarnation, yadda
yadda.
Reality is LINEAR. Not cyclical. I'm with ya so far. O.K.
We're here in the physical, right? O.K.-
We go to the non-physical (i.e., a permanent
"bardo" state) after we die. O.K.-
What were we BEFORE, then? Presumably something LESS evolved than humans. An
"animal" perhaps? (NOT human though, or even
an intelligent alien - we've got reincarnation then,
and that's a big no-no.)
So... the people who get screwed in this life,
are paying for something they did as a MONKEY?
(or the equivalent thereof in "another dimension")
I don't think you can hold an animal responsible
for its actions, any more than you can hold a
florid schizo or retard responsible for THEIR actions. At best, they have the moral status of CHILDREN - who in turn, are equivalent to (smart!) ANIMALS, prior to a certain point. To be "less evolved" than a full human adult, implies a lack of free will.
So there goes the "paying for past mistakes" argument. Which leaves us with Calvinism I suppose, and "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" (for WHAT though? If "God" hated Esau so much, WHY did he create him???)
And so, we're in another "cycle", aren't we? (But maybe that's the best way to view reality - as a cycle, NOT A LINE. If there is an afterlife, logic would seem to dictate it is cyclical, not linear... Hence my viewpoint.)
Raving mindlessly again,

B-man

[Listen up, Brendan and Craig!  8)]

THE PREEXISTENCE OF THE SOUL IN SCRIPTURE

[B-man:] "What were we BEFORE [birth] then?  Presumably something LESS EVOLVED than humans.  An `animal' perhaps...So people who get screwed in this life are paying for something they did as a MONKEY (or the equivalent thereof in `another dimension?'"
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Brendan, you continually create false caricatures of Christianity in a desperate effort to duck the real issues.  Your assumption of moral accountability to a prior monkey-like existence is unbiblical and just plain silly.  It is refuted by Jeffrey Wands' paranormal encounter with his unborn son.  

Jeff Wands, author of "The Psychic in You," was George Noory's guest on "Coast to Coast" a few nights ago.  He shared this fascinating incident involving his son.   During his wife's pregnancy, she and Jeff were watching the movie, "The Right Stuff."  Jeff remarked that it would be wonderful if their newborn son would grow up to be an astronaut.   One day Jeff's son announced that while he was in his mother's womb, he observed his parents watching that movie and recalled his Dad's wish that he grow up to be an astronaut!  Jeff had never expressed this wish since.  Obviously the son's preincarnate self expressed an intelligence that is more human than animal.

Is Jeff Wands' experience incompatible with biblical teaching?  Not at all!  Most Christian pastors are unaware that the Bible implies the preexistence of the soul.  This doctrine may supply another key to our grasp of seemingly unfair suffering.  This point can be illustrated by Betty Eade's NDE:

"I saw how desirous these [mature] spirits were of coming to earth.  They looked on life here as a school where they could learn many things and develop the attributes they lacked.  I was told that  ...we had actually chosen many of our weaknesses and difficult situations in our lives so that we could grow ("Embraced by the Light", 89-90)."

But like Swedenborg, Betty is warned against a reincarnational spin on these revelations.  She is told in her NDE: "I also learned that we do not have repeated lives on this earth (93)."  Since the Bible does not teach reincarnation, her revelation brings her NDE into line with biblical revelation:  

"As Jesus went along, He saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked Him, `Rabbi, Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'  `Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' replied Jesus, `but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life (John 9:1-2).'"

Notice that it is Jesus' disciples--not His opponents--who pose this question.  Their question assumes that the blind man might have sinned during his prebirth existence and implies that our pain in this life may be a function of preincarnational mistakes.  Conversely, our special purpose in this life may be a function of our preincarnational service: e. g.

"The word of the Lord came to me, saying, `Before I formed you in the womb, I KNEW YOU, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5)."

The wording here seems to imply not just divine foreknowledge, but the soul's preexistence.  The demonstration of moral goodness prior to birth can lead to a "happy disposition" in this life:

"I was a boy of happy disposition.  I had  received a good soul as my lot; or rather, being good, I had entered an undefiled body (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20)."

The Catholic Old Testament contains the Wisdom of Solomon.  Its teaching about the preexistence of the soul makes me wonder about the contrary traditional Catholic teaching that the soul is instead created at conception.  

None of these texts specify when human souls are created.  But one ancient Jewish text claims that all souls were created prior to the earth's creation:  

"All souls are prepared for eternity before the formation of the earth (2 Enoch 23:5)."

Similarly, Origen (c. 225 AD) taught that we all preexisted and inhabited countless worlds clothed in bodies appropriate to each world.  This church father also rejects reincarnation, but lends some  credibility to the potential relevance of prior lives in helping solve the mystery of suffering.

[B-man:] "I want to keep rejecting what I got wrong or what went wrong.  If `you only go around once,' then you have to accept leaving certain `unfinished business.'"
________________________

Duh, uou criticize me without closely reading anything I say!   So I must repeat myself.  NDEs indicate that we will all be subjected to an comprehensive past life review in which we will not only be forced to relive our past sins, but also to experience the devastating emotional impact of our misdeeds from the perspeptive of those we vcitimized.  So in the afterlife, your "business" will not be left "unfinished.".  Also, you will find yourself in a spirit plane based on the principle like attracts like, probably with no chance of concealing your thoughts from others.  If that predicament results is a Hell, that Hell is self-chosen as a way of teaching you your current level of spiritual development.  But according to Scripture, God's love never permanently abandons anyone after death.  So you can always choose a more godly and loving path.  Or you can choose annihilation!

[B-man:] "Are `spiritual things' really more enjoyable than arranging the sock drawer or mowing the lawn?"
________________

You remind me of a sexually insecure guy who has never had good sex with a gorgeous woman.  So he rationalizes this sad fact by claiming that sex can never be an enjoyable experience.  You have repeatedly been exposed to astral reports about the bliss of astral sex and the earthlike delights of the heavens.  Yet you prefer to put your head in the sand and seek the cocoon of annihilation.  You refuse to read any books on spirituality that might transform your life and you refuse to meet the minimal conditions for an experience of God's love and grace.  No wonder you loathe the Christian fundamentalists in your extended family.   You have a fundamentalist mentality in agnostic clothing.  You are a poster boy for psychological projection--the tendency to project what we unconsciously dislike about ourselves on to others who unconsciously remind of us our ourselves.  

I challenge you to actually try to have a spiritual experience.  You've been posting on this site for a long time now.  Why not buy Bruce's latest how-to book and practice with it?   I intend to do that myself if my Gateway CDs and my current practice with Robert Bruce's detailed astral technology continually fail to produce results.

[Craig:] "If god interfered with Joseph to change human events, doesn't that mean he's interfering with the free will of many humans?"
____________________________

No, Joseph's brothers imprisoned him in a well and planned to kill him later.   But God arranged for an alternative: Midianite slave traders who could take him for a handsome fee.   Also God blessed Joseph with the gift of precognitve dream interpretation. which allowed him to anticipate the devastating famine that would soon ravage the Middle East..  Joseph's gift ingratiated him with the Pharoah and led to his rise to power so that he could store up food and grain for the coming crisis.

Still, your question has merit, Craig.  Sin can enslave people to certain obsessions or addictions (e. g. heroine).  According to the Bible, God can occasionally use our obsessions and addictions to accomplish His purpose.  But such divine interventions do not interfere with our freedom in the grand scheme of thiings.

[Craig:] "Right action is...based on rules which the rest of society oges by...What stops you from raping and pillaging?  Society does--peer pressure--simple advantage of numbers...Evolution has programed us with accountability."
_________________________

You keep overlooking the basic issue of ethics:  How do you get an "ought" out of an "is"?  Put differently, why "ought" I to care about the demands of social rules, peer pressure, or a conscience shaped by evolution?  You might reply, "Because society will punish your violations."  That reply is pragmatic, not moral.   What if I enjoy raping and pillaging and am smart enough to get away with it?   You might urge me to listen to my conscience.  But a conscience can be seared and reprogramed once the arbitrary nature of evolution is recognized.   You might respond: "But suppose everyone reaped and pillaged?  That would make human life a living Hell!"   True, but most people will not follow my outrageous example; that hypothetical is irrelevant to my real life experience.

But suppose that there is an afterlife.  Suppose further that advancement from unpleasant planes to joyful planes depends on mastery of certain moral principles and spiritual truths.   Then those principles and truths automatically serve as a basis for morality and allow us to derive an "ought" out of an "is."  Iris Murdoch, an Oxford atheistic philosopher, wisely confessed: "If there is no God, it will be necessary to invent Him."  Otherwise, morality lacks objective grounding and is meaningless.

Don

Now you're cooking, Craig!  We need an Ultimate Power to justify morality, but how do we know the nature of that Ultimate Power and what it wants?  From a Christian perspective, this means that the principles governing advancement towards the heavens must be clarified together with Christ's role.   So we must first ask, "Can we make rational sense of Jesus' atoning death?"  Paul concedes that if the Gospel of Christ's atonement and resurrection is false, then Christianity is a waste of time (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).  Even if it can be made rational, we must then confront your question [my agenda question #5], "Why would God demand that you have a blind faith in him/it?"

Taking my cue from all your questions, I deem it advisable to break the first basic question ("Can we make rational sense of Jesus’ atoning death?") down into these 4 separate questions:

1. Isn’t  the doctrine of Christ’s atoning death just as implausible as the related obsolete Old Testament doctrine that God requires sacrifices to mediate divine forgiveness?

2. How can anyone’s death--even the death of God incarnate--possibly atone for our sin?  This question is formulated in response to Craig’s confession: “Why Jesus’ dying washes away my sins, I have no idea... He sends Jesus who “died” for my sins, but I  wasn’t even born.  So I had no sins for him to die for.”  

3. Doesn’t the Gospel overlook God’s responsibility (= fault) for creating us with our sinful nature?  This question is formulated to reflect Craig’s charge that “ultimately it was god’s fault for their sins."

4. Why should anyone’s salvation depend on embracing an abstract theological system like the Christian Gospel?

I will post my replies to each of these 4 questions every other day next week so as to allow a full day's discussion before posting the next question.

Don

B-man,

thanks for your response.  But I think you miss the point that Craig now grasps very well.   Some people live only for self-gratification no matter whom they hurt and could care less about your social contract, which is an arbitrary means of creating a functional society.  Since most people respect our social values, our egotist can rob and rape, as long as he can get away with it, and live a pleasurable life.  In this scenario, he can only be made morally accountable if he is answerable to a Higher Power and if his postmortem condition is adversely affected (like attracts like) by his selfish brutality in this life.  But Craig rightly points out the crucial issue that determines whether morality can ever be utimately meaningful.  Can this Higher Power and its principles be equated with the Christian God? 

Don

(4) CAN WE MAKE SENSE OF JESUS' ATONING
     DEATH?:

Q1. Isn’t the doctrine of Jesus’ atoning death just as implausible as the Old Testament doctrine that God requires sacrifices to mediate divine pardon?

In themselves, sacrifices have no appeal for God whatsoever.  God’s stunning confession in Jeremiah 7:22-23 makes this clear:
“When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, ...I gave them no orders about burnt offerings or sacrifices.  My one command to them was this: Listen to my voice; then I will be our God and you shall be my people.”

God’s confession contradicts the impression created by the Pentateuch that Moses’ lawgiving efforts were entirely authorized by God.  In antiquity sacrifices were so universal that one can speak of a Jungian sacrifice archetype embedded in the human unconscious.  God simply used an already existing priestly practice as the framework for imparting insights that were more important to Him.  When the Jews forget this truth about their rituals, God confesses, “To me they [the rituals] are a burden I am tired of bearing (Isaiah 1:14),” and even waxes sarcastic: “Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of male goats?  Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psalm 50:13-14)."   Jesus makes it clear that God offers revelation within an outmoded Jewish legalism with the expectation that this legalism will manifest 3 love principles:

(a) “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and foremost commandment.  (b) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).”  (c)  “However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this sums up the law and the Prophets (Matthew 7:12).

Similarly, Jesus’ stresses the underlying principles that give spiritual value to the many Sabbath and purity laws.  So He reduces the countless Jewish Sabbath laws to just one principle: “The Sabbath [rest] was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 1:27).”  Thus, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that morality is revealed to serve the best interests of people, not vice versa.  Similarly, he reduces Jewish purity laws to just one principle: "Nothing that goes into someone from outside can make that person unclean; it is the things that come out of someone that make that person unclean (Mark 7:15)."  For Jesus, life is too complex to be governed by a rigid set of moral rules.  So when our best interest clashes with moral precepts, the precepts can be set aside.

The Hebrew prophets make it clear that religious doctrines are only valuable insofar as they promote a loving spiritual consciousness.  When doctrines fail to serve this purpose, they are temporarily nullified by God!  For example, Israel relied on ritual sacrifices in the Temple as their means of securing divine pardon.  But when their rituals no longer promote loving justice, God suspends them and the doctrines that support them: e.g.  

“[God:] I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.   Even though you offer up burnt offerings..., I will not accept them;... Take away from me the noise of your songs;...But let justice roll down like rivers and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:21-24).”

Given God’s indifference to sacrifices which don’t express love, how can Jesus’ crucifxion be portrayed as a sacrifice?  It is the sacrifice to fulfill and end the whole Jewish system of Temple sacrifices (Hebrews 10:18; Romans 10:4).  It is timely in the sense that it precedes the imminent Roman destruction (in 70 AD) of the very Jerusalem Temple that served as the center for Jewish sacrifices.  The Spirit of the Risen Christ is now the spiritual temple that replaces and fulfills the role of the Jerusalem Temple (John 2:19).  In this respect, Jesus’ prediction of the Temple’s destruction (Mark 13:1-4) clarifies His mission of an atoning death (Mark 10:45).  So when Craig observes: "He [Jesus] could heal people ...Yet he couldn’t get away from a few Romans?  This leads to the assumption that he eanted to get caught," he is exactly right.  

So when we think of biblical truth we need to think in terms of the kernel of truth within the cultural husk.  But we must be careful not to prematurely limit either the number of kernels or the number of cultural husks (biblical and nonbiblical) that might contain them.  One implication of Christ's crucifxion is that it nullifies the sacrificial system that held no interest for God in the first place!

Don

Q2: How can anyone’s death--even the death of God incarnate--possibly atone for my sin?

Astral adept Emanuel Swedenborg reveres Jesus as divine, but rejects the view of many of his Protestant contemporaries that Christ had to suffer as our substitute to appease God's wrath and satisfy God's need for justice.  To ES, this negative and vindictive picture of God splits up God's unity.  Most modern biblical scholarship would agree with ES's rationale.   But he goes too far by throwing out the baby with the bath water.  ES rejects the redemptive significance of Christ's atoning death.

On the cross, Christ represents us; He does not substitute for us.  The Bible views Jesus’ death as the point at which Jesus joins humanity at its point of death and lostness (Col 1:22).”  Prior to His incarnation, Christ is not human but “the Word” in the sense that He is the rational self-expression of God as opposed to God in His unknowability.  Christ becomes human only through His incarnation and now has mysteriously incorporated His humanity into His divinity.  By His incarnation, He "empties" Himself of all His divine prerogatives and assumes all our human limitations (Philippians 2:6-7).   Only by being "put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves" can He represent us both on the cross and now as our heavenly "high priest" (Hebrews 4:15).  By His resurrection, Christ is restored to His divine nature (Phil 2:9-11)..  Because He has now absorbed humanity into His divinity,  we too are destined to “share in the divine nature (2  Peter 1:4).”  Irenaeus (180 AD) succinctly sums up this teaching: “God became what we are so that we might become what He is.”  Christ makes this possible through His role as our “advocate” (1 John 2:1) and “intercessor” (Heb 7:25) and this role underlies His loving presence as the Being of Light during NDEs.  

There is another way of expressing Christ's representative role on the cross that seems compatible with Matthew's provisional view of God.   In his book, "The Sacred and the Psychic," John Heaney surveys the major theories invoked by parapsychologists to account for telepathy and clairvoyance.   He identifies one theory as the most popular because it is the most consistent with the research and anecdotal data.  He summarizes this theory thus: Telepathy and clairvoyance are "an unknown form of energy which does not cross space but which reaches inward to the essential psychic center of a person.  At this center a transpersonal mode is reached where all humans and perhaps all reality are united (p. 20).  At this center, Christ and humanity are one.  So in his NDE, Howard Storm is taught: “The angels refer to God in many ways, but the term most often used is The One (p. 68).”  BY VIRTUE OF THIS ONENESS AND HIS ABSORPTION OF HUMANITY INTO HIS DIVINE NATURE, CHRIST’S ATONING DEATH CAN REPRESENT ALL HUMANITY.  

Of course, all this leavens open the question of divine responsibility for humanity's sinful nature.  I will address this question in my next planned post.

Don

I like Q2 from a jigsaw point of view.

It could explain why, a god would take no active role in humanity, or no where near as much after the death of christ. from your view point, god would have to evolve,and still be capable of new experiences.

But jesus as more of a symbol/learning tool for god, somehow does'nt have the same ring to it as, we were gonna be spanked, but jesus took the punishment for us.

But why would god need jesus to understand this, when people would die all the time, could he not just probe there mind/experience's, or are you classing jesus as a peice of god beyond that of the general human make up?. If it were, would'nt that mean that god would'nt have had the full experience, of never speaking with god, not being able to communicate with god, and not knowing there was going to be a reward after death. Not to mention, that whatever they did to him, he would be alive and kicking within a short amount of time.