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, 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...

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.

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.
 

Hi DocM and OutOfBodyDude,

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

All quotes = OOBDude Quote:


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

Quote:


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:


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:


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:
 

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

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.
"

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...

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...