Begs the question … why can’t we learn this? … why have so many people all over the world spoken about the unknowable for thousands of years … and continue to yet today?
Though I may agree with you that conceptually God is limitless and intangible, I’ve still tried to capture the history of Jah, the biblical God.
Flip, for instance, to page 22: djedefsauron.net/index.php?o … Itemid=150
Seems you’ve done an immense amount of research and compilation of historical data.
For me … history has merit … even revisionist history … yet … nobody drives their car constantly looking at the rear view mirror … an occasional glance may even be deemed necessary and usually sufficient.
Perhaps if people would spend as much time as they do looking back or analyzing, debating, arguing and so on … worn out hypotheticals … and use the time that is freed up from this activity … to be vigilant about what is going on in their daily lives … carefully reflecting on and contemplating the events of their daily lives. St Theresa of Lisieux said it is often the small seemingly insignificant events of our lives that are most important.
We are socialized/programmed to go after the ‘big fish’ … to search for the ‘eureka moment’ … the epiphany … and so on. Perhaps we miss many opportunities to make small baby steps towards a better understanding of our personal life and humanity in general … maybe.
The description of an experience is never the experience itself. Yet we can communicate our thoughts of how it made us feel and how we arrived at it. This is true of a mystic experience or a God experience.
Yes… 7 years of private (non-funded) research … in the prime of my youth (ages 23 to 30, I’m 30 now)
It was a sort of penance, gave me a worldview like nobody else has, but the more i breached this divine, ethereal plane of pure knowledge, the lesser became my trace in the worldly or material plane… I’m 30 now, and looking for a job
Nevertheless, although in the old days it is true that the knower couldn’t articulate knowledge of the divine, in this information age it is possible.
What is more, possession of this knowledge gives me hope for the world… i’ve known for 1 or 2 years that this knowledge is a necessary waypoint in a path that must lead to the Golden Age.
Like I said, eureka moment is no different than orgasm. After the glitter fades away, you are still going to need a society founded on something. And that is where the DNA machine comes in.
I think the reason people look for answers to God, Life, the Universe and theory of everything is because deep down they believe that once they understand it they will be as Gods, and then be able to transcend the earth realm. But that is where the DNA machine comes in.
Uccisore … I’ve been trying to break away from the ‘flock’ for a long time now. Progress is slow and painful … find myself unwittingly slipping back into the ‘flock’ … attempting to know the unknowable … and too often talking as though I know the unknowable. Another one of my many human weaknesses.
God is, according to Anselm, the maximal possible being, that exists on top of our imagining it. This can only be Being itself. Which means that Anselm supported Pantheism.
The reason Taoism sounds familiar is because it is a Pantheist religion. Tao (God) and Nature are One.
This is a little story I heard a while back. I think it’s quite appropriate for this thread:
[i]An Enlightened master was sitting by the side of the river enjoying the sound of the running water and wind in the trees when a man came along and asked him a question. The man said “Master, can you tell me the essence of religion in a single word?” The master remained silent. Thinking he didn’t hear, the man asked again “Master, can you please tell me the essence of religion in a one word?” The master said, “I have heard your question, and I have answered it. That word is ‘Silence’ and my Silence was my answer.”
The man said, “This is too mysterious. Can you be clearer?” So the master wrote the word “meditation” in the sand with his finger. The man responded, “I see what you have written but can you make it a little clearer?” The master wrote the word “MEDITATION” in large capital letters. By this time, the man was getting annoyed and said "You seem to playing games with me”
The master said, "The first answer was correct, the second was less so and the third less so again. When words are spoken or written, especially when made to look important by using large capital letters, they tend to be seen as holy and worshiped in themselves. The master then erased the words he had written in the sand and said, “Listen to my first answer – this is the only true answer.”[/i]
The Silence the master said was the essence of religion is not the silence we experience in this world of duality. It’s not the silence that’s in opposition to noise. It’s not an external silence. This Silence has no opposite; it’s an internal Silence. It’s a state of being, it’s Awareness, it’s Consciousness itself.
If you understand Silence intellectually, then what you understand is the concept, not Silence. A person in a dream cannot understand the person who is dreaming him - though they are one in the same. The lesser consciousness cannot comprehend the greater Consciousness. It’s as simple as that.
What Is, can’t be explained or understood. It can only be realized.
Perhaps the enlightened master should have said, “You are I; and we are it”. I suspect that the chief temptation of any spiritual master is pride as in “I got the inside info; you don’t”.
He was asked for one word that described the essence of religion. You have seven. :-"
That aside: what you say is intellectually correct (according to most Advaita schools) but the master’s answer resonates with me more. For me, the word ‘Silence’ is like the word ‘Presence’. These words take you to the very edge of realization and realization is what the master was trying to convey. The master was pointing rather than lecturing. He wanted the man to experience it rather than know it.
Mooji’s guru’s guru was a guy who rarely spoke. He was called ‘the personification of Silence’ and people came to sit at the base of his couch and drink in the Silence emanating from him. To the western mind, this is ludicrous because the mind is programmed to get, to learn and to consume. Here, the aim was to put all thoughts and beliefs aside and just enter the Silence. The Silence is another name for Self.
Yep. After Awakening, the remaining ego often starts to reform around the new ‘enlightened’ identity. This one reason why so many people who have realizations, fall out of it soon after. This is where the master gurus experience comes in. The guru/disciple relationship is something almost never discussed or written about. It’s a fascinating area because this is where the rubber hits the road. This is where the newly Awakened go through their 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and much of that turmoil is the habitual ego rising again.
Yes, Jesus’ temptations in the desert were all about ego. When Jesus was able to overcome Satan, His own ego, he was able to begin His ministry. As for a single word describing religion, presence seems to fit.
Satan was not Jesus’ ego and Jesus never overcame his own ego. Jesus was very narcissistic and narcissists are usually also schizophrenic. Schizophrenia allows a connection to the ethereal realms. Jesus was hearing demons in his head telling him to do things, that is all. Jesus did not have many real powers, he could not jump off a building and survive, so he used the classic magician’s excuse for not doing so.
There is really no such thing as ego either, just different mental components.
There is reptilian brain, mamallian brain, right brain, left brain, childmind+thirdeye, feminine brain, and masculine brain.
Dumping ego seems to be related to increased activity in the right brain, feminine brain, and childmind, and zero activitiy in the masculine brain.
This is a bad thing, because it causes nihilism and lack of drive, creative inclination declines. How many buddhists are known for their inventions or creative products?
Uh-huh. “Nobody can know the truth about religious matters, now sit back and listen while I tell you the truth of religious matters” is a common enough theme around here for me to not accept that it’s an accident.
Sounds a lot like the story of Elijah on Mount Sinai … looking for the unknowable in the thunder … in todays’ langauge … in the noise of the market place.
Looking for the unknowable in the fire … in todays’ language … in the crucible of “preach and criticize”.
Found the unknowable in the silence … in todays language … Oh No! … please … anything but Silence!
Many years ago, during a friendly chat in Andalucia Spain, a young Spanish man posed a similar question. He was a short order cook in a local hotel that catered to Westerners yet his wisdom seemed far beyond his station in life. He quickly put me in “checkmate” when he asked me how I got to Spain.
As you already know … there is no process to ‘break away from the flock’ … only a wish … a dream … which in fact may more truthfully reflect a “running away from failure” … failure experienced from life within the ‘flock’.
Using generally accepted metrics for success … for goodness … my life has largely been a complete failure … except one metric … I have 9 grandchildren.
