"I'll start with the below paragraph first, even though Dave wrote it last, because it is the main paragraph I want to address. My comments can be found within double quotation marks."
Criticisms of these concepts tend to be arbitrary, mythic or merely opinionated. There are a few data that seem to controvert these concepts, but the bulk of evidence seems to support them. In particular, logical arguments against these general principles seem largely non-existent. unfoprtunately, this seems to make people unhappy when their favorite manifestation of God is compared to other manifestations of God. It worries many people to think that Jesus said much the same thing as Krishna, as Moses, as Mohammed, as Arjuna, as Vajnavalkya, or as Zoroaster etc. I tend to view that kind of objections as elite snobbery, but since I'm equally snobbish for my own ideas, maybe that's a basic problem with any kind of metaphysics.
""Can't a person know something without it being referred to as elite snobbery? Does one have to bow down to gurus who put themselves on a pedestal, so one won't be considered a snob? There is no way that Jesus, Krishna (and Arujuna), Moses, Mohammed and Vajnavalkya said the same thing. Regarding my opinions being arbitrary, mythic and merely opinionated, why not try to see a viewpoint beyond what you read, experienced in a trance state, and collected from hypnosis subjects, and see what happens when you make contact with light beings who exist at higher realms, and see if they have things to say that differ from what gurus say after they parrot each other over and over again? Since they don't even acknowledge the existence of something such as a higher self/oversoul/disk, how could they possibly know what reincarnation looks like from such a vantage point?
Regarding my feelings for Christ, I would think it would be apparent by now that such feelings aren't based upon book knowledge, but upon experiences and messages I received, mainly after I was willing to acknowledge that perhaps I don't know who/what Christ is actually all about. I still don't know, but it sure seems to me that I've been notified that he has more to do with divine reality than people who don't try to find out for themselves but instead stick to the opinions they formed, are willing to admit.
If somebody such as Krishna or Vajnavalkya were reaveled to me I would have considered them, but they weren't. What am I supposed to do? Pray to God for answers and then not accept the answers I receive, because some people who want to believe that every Tom Dick or Harry guru who walked this earth, is just as valid of a messenger of God as Jesus was? Forget it. ""
[quote author=dave_a_mbs link=1202219576/15#25 date=1202414083]From spiritual work, there is a strong inference that the afterlife is not experienced in everyday terms of rational abstract thought.
In meditation, rational thought gets in the way and must cease to proceed. The higher states of samadhi require that eventually ALL thought must cease in order to reach unity with God, as thinking distracts. In regressions, the spirits contacted tend to be monomanaical in throught, totally one tracked without the ability to abstract (because, perhaps, abstraction requires a place to hold the abstract thought, which is difficult without a brain), and thought occurs on a primary level in terms of nominals and absolutes. That's why a person who builds a BST can get trapped into it
""I don't believe that thought has to come to an end in order for unity with God to be found. The only thing one does when they reach such a state, is experience a part of God in his unmanifest state. Is there something wrong with his ability to manifest and create? If he chose not to make use of such an ability, none of us would exist. In fact, there wouldn't be anything to experience at all, because even love and peace are the results of his ability to create something that can be experienced.
It isn't a matter of bringing one's thought processes to a halt. If this was the case, anybody who had a lobotomy would have an enlightenment experience. The key is to get to the point where one no longer needs to look outwardly for peace, happiness, security, knowledge and love, so one will let go of one's opinions and experience truth as it is through universal mind. When I have done so I was still able to think in a regular way. However, I was connected to a level of mind where things are known as they are. The only reason there was something to know, is because God's creative aspect of being got around to creating something that can be experienced. Otherwise you'd have an awareness being with infinite creative potential, who never got around to making use of it.""
The everyday state of mind corresponding to "non-thinking" is sleeping. Some of the esoteric Buddhist texts suggest that by lucid dreaming we can prepare for the afterlife - the idea being that this allows us to exist in a dreamworld as thinking beings. If we can "think" without the use of a brain, this might be useful.
Looking at our existence as a process, the nature of what we are is only partially dependent upon the body we choose. We exist as a dynamic flow of information, always in motion, never able to stop. This is also true of the "material world", which is always engaged in some kind of change by which it manifests its nature. So too, our dynamic manifests our own nature. This dynamic carries values from which we derive goals, and from goals we derive our attitude toward events, which determines how we respond to the stimulii that the events bring us. This means that just as the flows and eddies of a river determine which banks get built up and which ones get washed away, so too the flows and eddies of our dynamic existence will continue to define what we attach to, and what we avoid. In other words, we carry our likes and dislikes into the grave where they define what happens next.
We find support for this in the way that some spooks build BSTs in which to hide - they can't see any farther with the limited apparatus they're using, because it lacks the concepts needed for escape. To rescue them requires that Bruce, or one of us, encounters them and gives them new information through which they can get past their stuck places. I have exactly the same experiences working with entities attached to people, and when I encounter spirits in the afterlife who have issues to be worked out.
As a result, when we die, the Bardo Thodol tells us that we are "blown hither and thither by the winds of karma", meaning that our residual urges and such are pushing us along in spite of our preferences.
I use the perspective that everything is actually either a projection of potentialities from God from which we pick and choose the world in which we want to live, or everything is the dynamic nature of God into which we are absorbed in death. If we pick a path through the world that can attach to a physical shape, we can use the faculties of that form to think, since the brain is an effective computer. (As far as I have been able to tell, we attach by breathing - once you intend and take the first breath you get all the feelings that go along with it, and life proceeds as if a person. Until then, all the potential lives are just passing images.) Otherwise, we are, to the degree that we allow it, merged into the nature of God, much like a meditator who has quieted all the competing thoughts and ideas.
The question is why would a person want to leave the unity of merger into God, even if imperfectly merged, and go back to the cycle of deaths.
As anyone who has had a transcendental experience knows, the experience of transcendence does not remove our drives, desires or urges. No matter how we struggle to retain the divine, the mundane slowly creeps back, until in a moment, a day, a week or a year, we find that we have subsided back into our intiial state. (If you have never had a transcendental experience, this is rather like the manner in which a wonderful dream slowly fades, no matter how we struggle to stay asleep. - And then we smell the morning coffee and it's gone, as we renew attachments to the world.)
I suggest that we have the ability to stay forever as one with God. The problem is that to stay in oneness with God we have to stop wanting the things that come with being people (or whatever critter you reincarnate into) - we have a lot of options in our universe. If there is even the tiniest little urge remaining, then it will redirect us into another incarnation. After all, God gives us what we want - whether we want it or not - So watch out what you wish for!
""Coming out of a transcendental experience while still involved with the physical World, isn't the same thing as being a bodyless being who has moved on to the World of spirit, and is surrounded by the love and light that pervades the realm, rather than the mixture of influences that exist in the physical. There are too many examples of people having NDEs where they felt no need from an attachment standpoint to go back to their life in the physical World, even though they weren't involved with a spiritual practice beforehand. The same was true for me when I had my night in heaven experience. This experience wasn't below samadhi, it was beyond it. It was a state where I didn't have to bring my thoughts to a stop, in order to see what truth is about.
We weren't created as unique beings by accident, as eastern teaching tend to assume. We were created so we can partake with God in the creative process. He decided to provide the gift of life to many others. He allowed self determination to be a part of the process, rather than creating a bunch of automatums who can't decide for themselves. In the end we all get to return to God (there might be some exceptions) with the lessons we learned and the uniqueness we have to contribute, so we all get to share an eternal state of love and oneness. A state that wouldn't be a possibility, if he didn't get around to creating us in the first place.
It isn't a matter of renouncing the physical World. The physical World can't compete with what the spirit World has to offer. It is more a matter of learning to be a being who knows how to live according to love, and learning to be a soul who can exist with many possibilities. How can one learn about such possibilities, if one is intent on snuffing all of one's being out of existence until only pure awareness exists? Isn't it interesting that people who have NDEs tend to speak of the importance of living according to love and taking part in life in a meaningfull way, rather than telling people to renounce the World because you'll incarnate over and over again if you don't. It is gurus who have little knowledge of the spirit realms who speak of such things.""
For major urges and strong attachments, reincarnation seems to occur rapidly. Within a week or so after the 9-11 attack I found that most of the Arabic pilots could not be contacted in spirit because they had been reborn. For those with little attachment to the material world there seems to be a much longer time between rebirths. This suggests that we do indeed have an eternal life in heaven available, but in general we choose to reincarnate instead. The usual analogy is that this is like choosing a piece of broken glass when we are offered a priceless diamond.
""I find the above hard to believe. The evidence provided by people who explore the afterlife realms show, that people with issues tend to get stuck in a lower realm like state after they die, until they reach a point where they call out for help. Once they call out for help, they'll receive some help before they choose to incarnate again, if they choose to incarnate again. The evidence shows that incarnations don't take place in a haphazzard whoever jumps into a body first manner. A fair amount of planning first needs to take place.
Even if you did receive this week in a clear manner, perhaps within a week meant quite a different thing for the Arabic pilots involved. Regarding what you found through hypnosis, is it possible that many of your subjects tuned into memories that came from their disk/oversoul, rather than past selves in a conventional manner?""
The Egyptians beieved in transmigration of souls through a vast number of preliminary stages, so that we work our way up from primitive ceatures to humans. Superficially, this makes excellent sense. Support is found in the fact that virtually everyone n regression who is asked to "go back as far as you can recall just now, and tell me what is there and what yo are doing" comes back with some kind of tale involving their existence as an animal. I personally recall being a worm, plus a whole lot of shaggy things that presumably were primate ancestors to my present form. Since those forms were the most advanced forms I knew, it makes sense subjectively that I would keep choosing the highest lifeform I could, and eventually I wound up as I am today.
"Even if the above is true, isn't it possible that this is done in a disk/oversoul sense. Therefore, the self that incarnated millions of years ago as a dinasor, isn't the same self that incarnates as a human today? I just don't see how so many memories could be stuffed into a body. It must be that a small portion of a disk/oversoul incarnates, while the rest of the disk/oversoul remains in the World of spirit.""
In particular, there is absolutely no evidence in regression work to support the idea that we start out as people. Like hell, which simiarly cannot be located - this is a myth designed for the gullible by the exploitive fire-and-brimstone crew, so that they can rationalize their egocentric feelings and desires. (These are the guys who seek the Voodoo Chicken solution to their own guilt.)
""I believe you are being rather simplistic. Do you really believe that past life regression has the ultimate say on the matter? If hypnotists can hypnotize people to act like chickens and celebreties, if Michael Newton can over suggest people as you suggest, then perhaps other hypnotists have influenced people more than they are willing to acknowledge. If a person is in a hypnotic state, there might be more to it than the words a hypnotist recites. Thoughts are things, and if a hypnotist somehow projects his thoughts to the person he or she hypnotizes, he or she might be effected accordingly.
Certainly I've made points that go beyond an exploitive fire and brimstone approach. Points that are partly based upon my experience. The fact that you've made such a statement simply shows your distaste for Christianity.
Even if some human spirits started out as lower life forms, does this mean that every spirit who ever incarnated into the human system has done the same? Isn't it possible that spirits from all kinds of places incarnate here?""
The solution to this dilemma that Buddhism suggests is quite creative. First, there are the "Four Noble Truths", that life is frustrating and inconvenient, that the frustration and inconvenience arises from attachments to material things that are transient and innately cannot satisfy us, and that gettign rid of clinging and attachment gets rid of frustration and inconvenience. Then we have the "Eightfold Path", which is like Patanjali's yoga sutras etc, and offers one way to rid ourselves of attachments. By ridding ourselves of attachments we allow ourselves to remain longer in a transcendental state.
""This was already addressed when I spoke of people who move onto higher realms during NDEs without having to go through some yogic path before they do so. Why don't NDE people and out of body explorers ever receive the message that you better follow something such as the four noble truths or else? Not to say that they don't have anything to offer, but I don't believe we incarnate to this World so we can renounce it. We come into it so we can learn from it.""
The issue of rebirth is handled in Buddhism by the suggestion that the best and highest goal is to serve others. (We support this by our awareness that all is God, so to serve others is to serve God, and to discover our own nature in God.) The Buddhisattvic Vow is a promise to return to serve others and help them get rid of their hangups. that helps all of us to clear up our issues, and thus is a universally useful thing. In later incarnations we encounter the world as we have "improved it" by service, and thus we help our own progress as well.
""My guess is that when people who make such vows return to the spirit World, they find that the divine powers that be have orchestrated things quite differently. I have yet to read an NDE or OBE account, or had an experience, which shows that Boddhisatva vow is adheared to in a universal manner. I believe the sentiment behind the Boddhisatva vow is noble; however, it is misleading in that it suggests that a person needs to become an enlightened Buddha before they stop incarnating. Many eastern based groups have used the fear that some people have of reincarnating over and over again, as a means to get people to not leave a group.""
Any other expression of the value of service to others is obviously equally useful, and any life in which we offer such service will benefit us and the rest of the world.
""Related to this, even though I don't agree with some of the conclusions of Eastern thought, I believe that people benefit from such teachings in various ways. For example, I believe it is fine when somebody such as Ramana Maharshi says happiness can be found inside. Hopefully they'll reach the point where such teachings don't become a way of thinking that they can't see clear of.""
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