Sorry, I know I often make the mistake of being radically unclear in my philosophical explanations, forgetting what makes sense to me is not going to make sense to anyone else, unless it is clearly defined. I know I’m not the only one here who does this. =D
Anyway, in response to being made in God’s image, I still don’t see how that makes us seperate from God. I still don’t see how that we can be individuals, seperate from God and at the same time be connected to him. This is to say, that these spirit beings, or souls are created if you will, and they are eternally those souls, that they never revert back to unity. So, the problem I have is not with the seperateness, but the eternal seperation (not disconnection from God) of a seperate soul. Does this make sense? I think that things can become seperate in a sense, but they always revert back to unity. In fact, the seperation is a mere perception, but the unity is always underlying it.
That is why I can’t see how God can create anything and not see it as an illusion. Am I the only one this makes sense to? It’s not an illusion in the sense that it isn’t “real”, but it’s an illusion in the sense that it isn’t the “ultimate realness”. Hrmm, that sounds confusing, but I would liken it to us and atoms. It seems to us that we are all different, that all things and events have different courses, objectives and etc., which is true in a certain sense. But underlying the so called “make-up” of the physical matter, you find everything is made up of atoms. These atoms are simply aranged in a vastly amazing and wondorous pattern, but at the same time they are still atoms. The arrangement causes the difference, but not the actual makeup.
Now how these atoms are arranged is a totally different story, because it’s obviously not a result of blind force. But I don’t believe it’s an act of God, simply commanding this stupid, unintelligent “stuff”, matter, or atoms (the name is irrelevant really) into form. Because you see, when you have this analogy that there is a supreme ruler, commanding things into being, there is always the question of “what is the method of creation”, how did God become God, and it’s interminable. I am more likened to the Chinese definition of Nature, or Ultimate Reality (call it God if you want), that nature is so of itself. This could be likened to the fact that while you may have control over certain motor functions, analogous thought, etc. you are not organizing the operation of your nervous system, or the functioning of your brain, etc. It is self-regulating. In other words, it requires no operator. I dunno if this makes any sense to anyone else, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Let me know if I should clarify anything…
Oh and I never said that life was everlasting, or that a form holds together forever. I said that Being is eternal. And I think as we all know, all things that are made (all forms) come apart eventually. I was simply stating that past is a memory, and future is an expectation. There’s no way where you can say past or future exists, simply because in the past, it was Now, and the future will be a Now. Time is always Now.
