Hi,
On this self-deceptive thing of religion. I am extremely fortunate to know
from direct
personal experience that religion is not self-deceptive. When you find that
you do have
an immortal soul and there is a such thing as God there is a great new joy
in your life.
Magic is restored in the sense that you come to view the world with a new
fascination
because you know there is more to it than the simple information conveyed by
the senses
and your thoughts. You know who you are and by default who you are not.
Freedom from
death arises and is witnessed by such things as the impossibility of having
a nightmare.
It is an intrinsic survival characteristic of all incarnated beings with
physical bodies as a
carryoverfrom the animal characteristics of physical bodies to have both a
fear of death and
a fearof the unknown. A person that has experienced Self-Realization (not
self-realization
which one interpret as the ego realizing something or realization of some
sort of personality)
knows that they are immortal and indestructible/can not die. Simultaneously
by knowing who
one Is, a person knows who one is NOT. This is very comforting. The entire
perspective of the
person changes toward everything. There is a detached awareness toward all
things because
all things lose their importance. The importance of everything in nature is
greatly diminished.
This can appear as you say to be a self-deceiving sort of thing and
escapism. It is escapism.
Escapism from the ego and mind and emotions and the physical body. Because
the Christian
religion is based on faith I could not accept it. They would have me believe
the world is less
than 10,000 years old and that there was only one God. All the other
religions were wrong.
Only what the Bible said was true and if you did not believe this you would
go to hell.
For many reasons I realized that I could never accept this. As far as I am
concerned faith
is the sort of thing you walk around with until you get the facts. Then I
found Yoga and
as opposed to religion it required no faith except in the beginning. It
takes faith in the
beginning to test the hypothesis of the initial statements it proposed. By
performing the
actions required certain consequences/experiences come about. In fact the
traditional
method of teaching is such that a Guru (Gu = darkness ru = dispeller) only
tells a beginning
student what they need to achieve progress toward Self-Realization. Since
everyone is at
a different level of spiritual evolution (as opposed to physical body
evolution) - each student
would receive custom tailored instructions from the Guru. No further
instructions are given
by the Guru until the student achieves the instructions they are given. The
reason being that
further instructions can not help the practitioner. The whole point here is
that there is
a big difference between yoga and religion. Yoga requires no faith. Religion
requires it.
This same method of proposal of a theory and then experimentation to confirm
or deny
the truth of the theory/proposition is the method of science also. It is not
rational for a
person to discard the truth or falseness of a theory or proposition until
they themselves
test it/it comes alive in their own experience either way. In yoga it is not
good enough
for another person to test the theories because it is the experience itself
that is sought
after. One does not come to know how scary a roller coaster ride is from the
descriptions
of others. Nor what an orange tastes like if they never tasted an orange.
Words are nothing
more than models that represent actual experiences. No models of words can
convey
actual experiences. ('you had to have been there'/'a picture tells a 1000
words'). Because
words as models do not allow one to understand experiences beyond a certain
point.
There is nothing in any language anywhere that can convey the experience of
the color purple
to a blind man. The whole point is that since words (and the mind) can not
do this for perceptions
that arrive to us from the external world through our senses - what chance
could there
possibly be of conveying the experience of God - an infinite abstract idea -
by means of words
and the mind? There is no chance of this. God can not be perceived by the
mind and the senses.
Both mind and senses have to be transcended. Neither philosopher nor
scientist therefore
with mind and senses as limited instruments of perception can arrive at the
notion of the
experience of God. Raja Yoga proposes the way to transcend these is through
concentration
and meditation. Quieting the mind and senses to allow the soul to manifest
itself. When it does
you quite dramatically recognize the mind as distinct object that separate
from You.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was enlisted by the Catholic Church to map the
Christian religion to
logic and reason as established by Aristotle. Aquinas was the first I
believe to 'prove'
the existence of God using logic and reason. He drew the line however on
understanding
God because that took revelation - intuition. (The reason the Church
enlisted his help is
because the Church was battling heresies coming out of science left and
right. By conveying
the idea 'You come to know the maker by His works' he vindicated science and
indeed helped
the Church save face. The point being that religion has already mapped to
logic and reason.
Islam did a better job and were way ahead of the Christians on ancient
Greece. In fact
it was only due to translation of some of Aristotle's works from Islam into
Latin that the
West was able to get them at all.)
It is easy to be skeptical about religion - who is to say which one is
right? Why are there
so many? If I was born in China and everyone I knew for hundreds of miles
around were
Buddhists - would I then be a Buddhist like everyone else? Does this mean
that if I am
a religious Buddhist all my life and the Christians are right then I will
fry in Hell?? Just
throw up our hands and say I am sticking to science/empiricism/what my
senses convey
and I can measure and objectively speak about.
Yet there must be something other than the physical universe we perceive
with our senses.
Why do all these people all over the world believe in one sort of a religion
or another?
If all there is is the material universe it should motivate all people to be
hedonists. Hedonists
have the objective of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. There would
be no reason to
be to help anyone or ever be nice unless there was something in it for you.
Every man for
himself. Law of the jungle. Only the strong survive. It is true that a large
part of the world
is exactly like this. Nature is like this. But that does not help explain
why innate characteristics
of people selflessly wanting to help people exist. No one wants to be the
bad
bad guy. Everyone wants to be loved for something. Everyone strives to be
perfect at something even if it is 'bad'. People in general believe there is
something greater
than themselves even if they can not put a finger on what it is. Proof of
this is the statistics
in any almanac. Few will admit being atheist even if they are. There are
1000's
of churches and temples all over the world. Further there is tons of
evidence of ESP/miracles etc.
(parapsychology has statistics on this)
When we turn our attention to philosophy we find this that or another.
Somebody seems to
say something profound and then someone comes along and blows away what they
say later.
'The Early Bird Gets the Worm' (or does the 'Early Worm Get the Bird').
There seems to be
no end result here. Just some sort of anthology or collection of ideas that
seem to have been
haphazardly slapped together and in the end really lead nowhere. A major
problem in the
West is Ivory Tower philosophy. Philosophers concoct all sorts of ideas. But
they do not
attempt to live by the things they say. David Hume who is a famous English
philosopher
once put forth a philosophy and later when questioned he said that he could
understand
peoples doubts about his philosophy because in his real life he was just
like everyone else.
Thomas Reid a Christian remarked of this that Hume was like a man with a
'hobby horse'
at home that he could ride to his hearts content. But if he ever took it out
in public
he might be arrested as insane. Unlike philosophers who think the study of
reality is
some sort of intellectual game - religious people attempt to live what they
say. One should
not publish a book on 100 ways to cook fish - without first having cooked a
lot of fish.
It is not good enough to intellectualize and construct theories.
Science is constrained to the study of HOW and is an empirical endeavor
based on
information received from the senses and the mind. As such science does not
conduct
investigations that deal with transcendental experiences (at least the
western scientist does not).
What is outside of us is unknown and unknowable. The only thing we can do is
replicate
the information that comes to us from our senses in our minds. The image of
a tree forms
on the retina of my eye. That image is transmitted to the vision center in
the brain
by the optic nerve. The image is a representation of the tree - it I not the
tree being
directly perceived.
When John Stuart Mill says 'Matter is the permanent possibility of
sensations' - he is
referring to this fact. And so 'Sensation is the permanent possibility of
matter' would not
make sense. In fact no matter is permanent at all. All matter in the
universe is in a constant
state of change. To investigate the possibility of God the Greeks inferred
that a
characteristic of the divine is changelessness because how can something be
immortal if
it changes they reasoned. This notion is still assumed today by most major
religions. So
the task at hand for the ancient Greeks was determining those things that do
not change.
Among the earliest of them was Pythagoras. Same one that discovered the
Pythagorean
Theorem in Geometry. This law is that if A2 + B2 = C2 for a right triangle.
This relationship
is true for all right triangles regardless of size. More important it is
true if the physical
universe winked out of existence in an instant. Since this is the case the
ancient held this
and all mathematics and numbers as qualities of the divine because they did
not change.
Physical triangles drawn by humans were imperfect and subject to
decay/change but not
theoretical triangles. This idea can be extended to include ALL abstract
ideas. Red or
redness is an abstract idea. So is infinity. So is thoughts. So is mind. But
all these abstract
ideas are not the same. Through out history no one has ever really gotten
anywhere with
this idea - except of course science worships changeless things such as the
speed of light
in a vacuum and so forth. To me this is sciences idea of God. Close as it
will ever get. And
I am sure someone has already proved this either directly or indirectly but
I have not
yet found it.
I don't need to dwell on historical accounts and logical directions. These
are limitations
to me. There is a saying in yoga 'Mystical teachings are caught. Not taught.
' From direct
intuitive perception I have come to understand many many things that can not
be objectified
in the material world. The underlying depth of profoundness found in the
inner teachings
of yoga far transcend anything that is known in the West in the area of
philosophy and
religion. Not only is God real - magic/angels/demons and a whole litany of
other occult
subjects have basis. But I earn my real money so to speak tying together
things like
the purpose of existence/karma/spiritual evolution/angels/devil/hell. They
are fairly easily
explainable phenomena. Having said that most magic for money is fake and
when it is not
it is simply done by hypnosis as the easiest means available. That does not
mean for a
moment that all magic is fake or hypnosis.
My ability to attain Samadhi has given me certain abilities. (This by no
means means that
I am Enlightened - a common mistake/assumption) Of the sort that relate
directly
to the physical world I can control the flow of my cerebro-spinal
fluid/pituituary/hypothalamus
pineal gland and thyroid and heart. I came to bionet.neuroscience to look
for help on how
I can measure neurotransmitters and hormones. How difficult is this and also
what sort of
diseases could be helped by teaching others how to do this?
Any suggestions where I might look are appreciated. I have an extensive
library and live
within 15 miles of the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC
(Bethesda).
thanks,
Mike Dubbeld
There's a lot of humor and irony in the reality game. How could there not
be?!
I got the Iliad and the Odyssey for Xmas. Bloody lot those ancient Greeks.
"Peter F" <fell_spamtrap_in at dingoblue.net.au> wrote in message
news:3c2ba84d$0$24103$afc38c87 at news.optusnet.com.au...
>> "Mike Dubbeld" <miike at erols.com> wrote in message
> news:a0bav9$rrc$1 at bob.news.rcn.net...> <snip>
> > I have no
> > idea what an 'Evolutionary Angel' is but I am well versed in the theory
of
> > evolution and
> > have no problem whatsoever with it.
>> Perhaps I should have written "evolutionary perspective" instead of
> "....angle".
>> > As I said earlier the discoveries made
> > fairly recently
> > by neruoscientists on things like how mood affects our behavior
> > and how our personality
> > is a function of neurotransmitter chemicals and hormones and so forth I
> > definitely
> > believe. But these are the physical outcomes/results/manifestations of
> > things that
> > transcend physical matter and spacetime in general.
>> It seems your resoning implies the expression "Laws of
> Nature" and what it means.
>> Whether these are "Laws of" Fundamental Physics and Cosmology or (very
> broadly) Biology - i.e., recognized and confirmed within the fields of
> Science
> respectively referrable to as such - they are well and justifiably
> describable/classifiable as "Nothing"#. [#Ref.: Physics-oriented
> philosophical statements/proposals identical or closely akin to
"Everything
> came
> from nothing".]
>> This "Nothing" is tolerably understood and interpreted (by me) in relation
> to how I understand and define "What Is", as: "The 'no thingness' (or,
> alernatively put, 'non thingy')
> aspect", as opposed to "The forms of energy and matter aspect", of "What
> Is". (IOW, "What Is 'in_ self-patterned _formation'", as
> opposed to,
> "What Is as an ultimate process - or potential - of endless extent that
> spawns *any kind* of Universe.)
>> The expression "Laws of Nature" is the collective label we put on the
> reguliarites that we
> can consistently and more or less directly detect in respect of _how_ What
> Is" (or "What Is going on") is an **evolved/evolving** (and obviously
> 'self'-patterning) process. In addition, the meaning might be loosely held
> to include the as yet or
> for ever to be unknown self-patterning tendencies of Nature that we
> nevertheless by
> extrapolation vaguely _expect_ to be part of how Nature is.
>> "What Is going on" can be _tenuously_ thought (if only by a "Tolerance
> Principled" attitude)
> to be thus IF the word "evolving" is meant (as it is by me) in an
> unconventionally general (even in an ultimately general) sense.
>> This "sense" (or concept meaning) is given and explained by how I define
> what I like to call a
> (or The) "Evolutionary Pressure Totality" - a concept that I define and
> understand especially (but not only) in
> respect of "this (our) Universe" and the phylogeny of us humans.
>> > I view them as the
> > physical causes.
> > As Saint Thomas Aquinas basically says 'You come to know the maker by
His
> > works.'
>> You are being up-front! :-)
>> >
> > "Matter is the permanent possibility of sensations." John Stuart Mill.
>> As I see things, that sentence of yours would be altogether more true and
> relevant and
> meaningful if the words "matter" and "sensations" swopped places.
>> > Do you believe believing in God is self-deceiving?
>> Yes, I sort of do. But I also know it to be true because of what can be
> losely described as "Science (the process of science and philosophy as a
> whole) -Established (i.e., by Science produced and proven to be true, or
be
> so far 'best' - i.e. practically and/or intellectually most workable)
> Principles, Theories, Interpretations and Concepts"; and because I
> thoroughly and tightly merged these "SEPTIC" informational matters into a
> few conceptual "tools for thought" of my own making.
>> [By the way: In the end of this only partly 'self-set' task -- of pursuing
a
> rational philosophical overview, one optimized for omniscientific scope
and
> a potent and revealing *philanthropically oriented* outlook -- my search
> suddenly got much more fun and rewarding when I saw that mankind's
> collectively contributed-to reservoir of serious informational matter
(both
> factual and philosophical as per above) could be sampled (or as if
> 'selectively siphoned-off') and summed-up with the aid of "septic" humor.
> But of course, puerile "septic" humor happens to suit someone with my
degree
> of tolerance and taste in humour, whereas to many or most other seriously
> philosophical individuals "septic humor" tends to be distracting by being
> perceived onerously, or as offensive penetration of their olfactories.]
>> Returning to answering your question:
>> I understand religiousness (amongst any other what I call
AEVASIVE/addictive
> preoccupations or pursuits) to be a kind and consequence of an, in every
> case 'quite naturally' environmentally
> necessitated, "selective self-regulatory
> unconsciousness", (so to speak).
>> > If it can be said that
> > science studies
> > cause/effect relationships - What was the First Cause?
>> As you might surmise, any *religiously conceived* such cause is, to me,
> thoroughly explainable as being 'real' primarily (and alonst only) as far
as
> it is a neuropsychophysiologically workable "cause for *comfort*" and for
> our species' relatively recent phylogenetic survival.
>> > I am sorry to hear you lack of experience with
> > real angels.
> :-)
>> Don't know what an IMO is.
> An abbreviation of "in my opinion", often used in posts to News Groups
> (NGs)..
>> Like you, I believe we should never never take "What Is going on" TOO
> seriously.
>> >
> > Have a nice Christmas.
> > Mike Dubbeld
>> Mike - have a nice one you too!!!
>> Peter
>>>>
