God to read your words again alysia.

And I would say more...

Our actions will record god or bad vibrations in our astral body depending on the acts rather than based our thoughts about the acts. So it's the great judge inside us or God inside us.

Even if you thing that there's no problem when you rape somebody you know that you are causing PAIN to a brother. so YOU KNOWN!

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Those guys were seeking personal attention, so they attempted to produce *some* crop circles (which were incomparably poor versions of the genuine crop circles), and claimed credit for many more. Crop circle experts have dismissed these guys and their fradulent claims of ownership for other crop circles around the world.

The notion of reincarnation when combined with the notion of simultaneous time presents a problem.

Let's suppose that there are 10 reincarnation "dramas" being played out at once, rather than sequentially.  (More accurately, they would be incarnational dramas.)

If that's true, then what is happening to one of my other "selves" is really happening now.  Right now, as I type this post, my other selves are going thru their own lives, things are happening to them just as things are happening to the self who is sitting at this keyboard.

So far, so good.  But, the problem is, if I'm experiencing the results of what's happening to them, I would end up being like a pinball.  Bouncing all over the place, one second happy and buoyant, the next second sad or angry or depressed.  There be no linearity in my own life.  I'd be seriously schizoid. 

Now, on the other hand, if time is sequential and each of my 10 lives occurred one after the other, then I would essentially be an amalgam of all those other selves.  I would have psychic imprints on me based on all of the stuff that my previous selves have experienced.  The good, bad and ugly.  BUT I wouldn't be knocked around from pillar to post as I would be if I were feeling the effects of my other lives while I am living this one.

Those of you who have read Jane Roberts Education of Oversoul #7 know about the concept of simultaneous lives in terms of how they can affect us as we go about our own daily life.  The problem with that concept, at least in my mind, is that it doesn't give us a chance to feel the causes and effects of this one life.  Again, we would be a pinball in a giant machine.

So you pay your money, you take your chances.  No one knows for sure.  We can only guess.  And await whatever lies beyond after we take our last breath.

Roger

Matt,

I know of a philosophy professor who gave a student's  paper an F with this  comment: “Your thesis isn’t right; it’s not even wrong!  It’s just meaningless.”   The professor was referring to the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness which is poignantly illustrated by this tale which I've posted previously in a different context.  Joe was gazing in awe at the sky through his telescope.  His friend Bob asked him what was so captivating.  Joe replied, “I’m fascinated by this little green man in the sky eating toasted cheese sandwiches.”   Curious, Bob demanded the telescope, but reported: “I can’t see him.”   Joe explained, “Oh well, I’ve been gazing at him for a long time and he’s used to me.   But he’s shy around strangers; so he just vanishes.”   Bob wondered if he or Joe was going mad; so he invited his friends to gaze through the telescope.  Each time Joe found a new rationalization to explain why none of them saw the little green man.   When the others reacted with disdain, Joe defiantly replied: “I know by direct experience that the little green man is up there!  And I don’t care what any of you think!”   Of course, Joe’s claim is epistemologically meaningless because nothing can even in principle falsify it.  

Matt, please consider how this analogy might apply to your monistic belief that individual identities are ultimately illusory.  Practically speaking, how does this belief differ from the traditional view? Specifically, what is at stake in the debate?   If your monistic view were false, how could you even in principle discover this?   What test case or evidence might count against your view?  To the degree that you are not prepared to answer these questions, surely your monistic perspective is as meaningless as Joe’s.   But I'm confident you can eloquently address this epistemological problem.

The traditional view embraces God as the source and sustainer of all that is.   In that ultimate sense, we are all a part of God: e. g. “In God we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).”  From that perspective, God can say: “I form the light and I create the darkness. I make well-being and I create disaster (Isaiah 45:7).”  God is not culpable for His creation of disaster because disasters are produced by the forces of chaos created by God to establish an unpredictable high-quality moral order that is independent of His micromanagement.   The traditional view also claims that an omnipotent God has the capacity to create free and independent individuals, whose actions are beyond His control.   In what practical ways does your monistic view differ from this traditional view?  

Put differently, how does your view of illusory individualism differ from the traditional view of individuals with limited but free self-awareness?  Are you denying that we are free to reject the will of our Creator?  If you are, that would be a meaningful distinctive; but it would make us illusory robots and would rob our love and uniqueness of all its dignity and moral value--a very depressing scenario indeed!   Conversely, if you admit we are free, then individualism is by definition a reality even if we will ultimately find ourselves restored to union with God--the traditional view (2 Peter 1:4)!    If “the One” can create humans who can act independently of "His" control, then it is meaningless to claim that individual egos are an illusion!  Of course, we could still ask whether we retain our individual identities if and when we merge in some way with God consciousness.

Matt, the ways I can conceive of making your monism meaningfully distinctive from the traditional view are all offensively absurd.  Consider these 3 claims and explain to me how you can reject these, and yet, still come up with a metaphysical view that is PRACTICALLY distinct from the traditional view I've sketched out.

(1) Don’t pray to a loving God.  Pray to yourself.  After all. your mind is God.  So there is no arrogance in attributing virtual omnipotence to yourself. [To me this view makes true humility virtually impossible and cannot produce the miracles generated by conventional faith.]  

(2) There are no “higher’ as opposed to “lower” astral planes.   Those value terms ignore the Monroe doctrine: “There is no good, there is no evil.  There is only experience.”  In fact, so-called Hells for Arab suicide bombers really do involve fantanstic sex with black-eyed Muslim virgins; and the so-called thief’s hell is for many a place of just as much self-fulfilment and satisfaction from their perspective as PUL-filled heavens.  So to say that Mother Teresa is a better person than a mass murderer, a rapist, or a sadist is just an ignorant biased judgment.  However harmful our deeds may seem, they are all equally valuable manifestations of the divine unity.

(3) There are no “good” or “evil” people.  So-called evil people simply have a different mission and life experience than so-called good people.  We all volunteered to play the hero or the villain or some other role in our present incarnation.  Hitler is a highly evolved loving soul who is, after all, a manifestation of the one God.  He reincarnated to supervise Nazi  genocide to help Jews learns karmic lessons.  In a sense those Jews “had it coming” because of  karmic debts.  Strictly speaking, the Nazi death camps contained neither any “good” Jews nor any “evil” guards.  On this view, a Jew like yourself should be grateful to Hitler for services rendered!  Any perspective that allows this line of reasoning is absurd.  

I look forward to your attempt to help me see what is at stake, practically speaking,  in your view.

Don

Don,

If you read my posts, you can see I am still deciding on my "operating system," so to speak for my personal metaphysical truths.  I am looking for a consistent metaphysical system that can account for the various experiences of NDEs, OOBE, psychics, mediums and my Jewish roots, believing in one God.

As such, I question on this board, and meditate.  Don, I do not believe in truth that all individual lives are illusory in full.  The unity of all things means that the separation is illusory in part, but when perspective is focused on the individual, there is meaning in that perspective.  The tusk of an elephant may be looked at as a part of a whole, or an individual organ unto itself.


If you are asking for a defense of the New Age system, I may not be your best source, but I may give it a crack:

1.  I would pray to a loving God, whether I thought that my own identity contained the tinniest essence of that God or not.    I wouldn't pray to myself, although some people who have posted believe we all have limitless power inside us to access, sometimes through something akin to prayer.  In my own personal intuitive system, I believe in a supreme God.  I hope to experience something in meditation or travels that would give me direct experience of God or heaven.  I could not pray to myself.

2.  As far as the "there are no higher or lower planes," I leave this question open.  Many sources talk of level of vibrations, and loving souls being at a higher vibration, invisible to denser souls.  This question can only be answered by direct experience or communication with others.  I disagree with some new age thinkers, possibly even Kyo on this point, however;
I don't think exploring your dark side, hateful or unloving side that causing harm is an equal alternative for a soul.  I don't believe that we all have to incarnate as serial killers or that on a cosmic level it is equally thought of.  There are thoughts and actions which bring you closer to God, and those that take you away from God.

3.  I do not believe people are either pure good or evil.  However their actions may cause harm, pain and suffering and thus bring them away from God.  As such, anti-cosmoethical behaviour (as Kyo might say), is done by people who choose evil actions deliberately.  In my book, there is right and wrong action even if people are not 100% pure evil or good. 

Hitler or his ilk could never be seen as a loving soul.  The massacre of Jews was not  a cosmic favor.  Inflicting harm and death, torturing and suffering are not necessary to perpetrate on one another.  Disease and natural disaster may randomly inflict these things on us, but if done as a deliberate act, the inflictor is not a knowing actor pretending evil in order to do good.


So, what am I left with?  I am a man on a spiritual quest.  I believe in God, though I haven't experienced him/her on a personal level.  I have had interesting experiences with my thoughts changing physical reality through meditation, which leads me to believe that we are more than our bodies.  I have had elevations of my consciousness recently where I perceived myself as being part of an entire scene with my conscious thought observing everything (this happened only recently and was empowering).  I have read extensively in spiritual and new age doctrines, along with judeo-christian ideas (some of which have been greatly enhanced by your scholarly work), and I am in search now of a cohesive personal metaphysical system to live by.

I am hopeful that if I continue meditation, one day I may have a transcendental experience that gives me a glimpse into our ultimate reality, more than what I have had. 

I started this thread to bare the consistencies or inconsistencies in the system of incarnation, specifically of unrepentent evil=doers.  Several people (Kyo, Alyssia and Kathy come to mind), gave reasonable responses on how such an evil-doer could incarnate in the first place...or reincarnate.

Matthew

Hi laffingrain

I really not mind you calling me Auggie lol !! 
My name is Caryn if you prefer that, though it doesnt matter ... Auggie is quite fitting!

For interest;

Augoeideian is the Greek word for-
the Risen Body of Christ.  Ray-like light.

It is a name that I aspire too.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Bud-S :  Morals are a huge issue in the AfterLife
it might be the ONLY issue in the AfterLife.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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For all that I've studied my life along what you wrote here is exactly true. I've known several "drama" in the other side due to "moral" questions and it seem to be main issue there.

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I agree.

I would like to let it clear that as long as I could get from my researches it’s impossible to make somebody suffer on proposal and yet not being affected by that.
There’s kind of natural law that lead us to be in harmony with each other otherwise we can’t feel ok.  (it’s something stronger that our idea of morality.)