Why become anything? Just keep your logic open, well serviced and functioning and... have the resolution and courage to use your understanding!
Sorry, m8 - but "just functioning" even when "well serviced" is simply not enough (remember the story of a guy falling from Empire Staste Building, mid way being asked how he feels and he say "So far so gooooooooooooooddddddddddd...."... Humans need much more than that... we can and we need to strategise, critically assess, plan well ahead (if we are fully Human - many never get to that stage, 'course...) and so forth... The story with Kant continues, where Classical German Idealism after him makes a clear distinction between Understanding and Reason... and things get more complex... We end up as Beings in constant becoming (Hegel), which is our true, Modern 'nature'...
One question I ponder is- - why does anything new happen in the universe? I mean, left to its own devices, anything you can think of gets old pretty quickly - decays, rusts, breaks up, deteriorates, or whatever happens to it. However, life continually gives rise to new things - (new ideas), new beings, new forms, and, in the case of humans, new ideas and things that have never even existed before. Why is that, I wonder. What is it that gives rise to novelty? Might that be 'God'? If not, what? What rule or law is it that describes or identifies the source of everything new? Being an agnostic/ atheist I can't fathom........
It rises because it can; not because it should. You're noticing all the times that life succeeds, but not all the times it fails. It took at least a billion years from life to evolve from simple celled creatures, which are easy to create with simple chemistry, to more complex ones that can self-replicate. The truth is that your experiences will always blind you. This is why people who see strange lights in the sky will often assume 'aliens'. When you don't understand something, your mind will go back into what it knows to fill in the gaps. If you've been fed the stories about intelligent design and creators your whole life, when you don't understand something, you'll fill it in with that.
I'm agnostic but interested in the truth so I do a lot of thinking and research on philosophy and religious issues in order to keep an open mind. It occurred to me when I was thinking one day that if God exists and he already knows everything I'm ever going to do then every decision I'm ever going to make has effectively already been made. This would mean that there is no such thing as free will. Since free will is a necessary ingredient for sin to be meaningful this has some pretty astounding implications. Thoughts?
Hi Buddhists would say that when there is a need, a desire, there is no free will. Man is not free. There is only will to fulfill the desire, to obey the desire. One is enslaved to it. God may be just another desire, wishful idea that prevents will to be free. Free of what? Well, free of desire. When there is no need, there is freedom of action, otherwise we just react according to the desire meaning God, or some other wishful idea.
If you would be theist you couldn't either. Ancient seers of India asked themselves a similar question...they saw the world as 'Lila' a kind of divine game that God is playing. This question (why) only arises when you make a own identity out of every form. The 'source' is the present moment. Anything ever is created presently. God essence is present consciousness. And it expresses itself as form. This all is ever beyond mind / intellect since mind consists of patterns which are always past. It are not the experiences that blind, it are the past (learned) patterns...one can make 'direct' experiences....the categorizing intellect is the 'second instance'...the means to 'achieve' that is called meditation. The term meditation is freqently missunderstood. To meditate simply means to be present 'any' moment. Yes there is consciousness without thoughts. It is litrerarily 'unthinkable'... Why is free will essential for sin? Sin becomes not meaningful because of god. It is your own idea of sin and god that makes it meaningful to you. The original meaning of to sin means to miss an aim like an arrow...actions that cause suffer in you or/and others. I have mentioned it already the topic becomes far less complicated when dealing with time. You guys should try to understand what Meister Eckart has meant when saying: "Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time." Ego and intellect have their resistance to resolve the illusion of time. They are founded in the time..they cannot 'accept' that anything is ever now...in other words they deny god. God does not know anything already before you know it...god is the present absolute consciousness itself from everything is created, at any moment, at every now. You, your idea about god, your idea about omniscience, your idea of free will, your idea of yourself.. It only seems then that god already knows anything 'before' it is the retrospective conclusion of the intellect....
Hi Yen, I am pretty well familiar with Indian philosophy, If it could be named like that. In reality of consciousness, free of desire, the source of everything is One Being, witnessing awareness. Desire is that which creates trouble. It creates thought and dislocates existence from the present moment into time. But we, here in the Western world, have a concept of God that is Omni this Omni that. Such a God(Jehovah) leads his people through time, which is incredible, horrible misleading. Hence, so much violence, slavvery, and suffering in history of judeo-christian world..
If God is omniscient then that doesn't mean humans don't have free will. definition of omniscient: having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.
allright, speaking of sin, let me commit a couple all at once... so these links are very french, or flemish, if you like, in a foreign language.. they are about george brassens.. and they are off top[ic... apart from that he talks about chronos, or saturn, a figure in the classic pantheon that my good friend gorski refuses to consider.. chronos [sic] the god of time, and of restrictions too.. my french and my english are too insufficient to do an attempt at translation any justice.. and i have been unable to find a translation.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deV98Nu34yM http://brassenswithenglish.blogspot.nl/2008/07/saturne.html he is dreary, he is silent, he presides over things of time, he wears a pretty name, saturn, but he is god who is very disquieting.. is my best effort for the intro.. seems i have still got a free will to sin, my friends..
Oh. look: http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Timur http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Mongol And they haven't had "modern" technology... I mean... back to the drawing board...
i did, too, gorski, very quickly, although i must confess that i missed talleyrand, and molotov, my favorite politicians... although hardly gods...
Hi moon510, I've quoted Eckhart with some intent. He was a Christian Theolgican and Philospher of the late Middle Ages. (Similar statements are usually known from 'Eastern' religions.) Being German I grew up as a 'Christian'....due to my travels I know a lot from other Religions / cultures. The essence of all is the same, though. There is only one 'teaching'...terms have become another meaning during history. Many are abused for 'ego' reasons to exercise power. Many have been forged already when they had been written down... When I was young I could not do anything with Christianity. (Besides of that I am scientist, lol)...Buddhism then and later own life experiences made me to 'understand' Christian attributes. 'Direct' experiences and another way to 'see' the world / use my mind unveiled 'something' that is 'unthinkable' ..the happiness of being... I am not religious, though. I just focus there where life happens..now....people who cannot stop thinking cannot get the 'unthinkable'... and that what I post sounds strange as an conclusion of learned patterns of thoughts. The issues you have mentioned are because people have an idea of god. But they shalt not do that actually.....god is no product of intellect. God is no object and there is no 'my' god...ego games create one's god who is 'better' than others...
God if it exists doesn't need to be understood, it will be incomprehensible. Instead we should try to properly understand ourselves and to correct our flaws.
Yen, your insights are almost identical as mine. It's amazing! The Presence of that which may be called "God" can be experienced when we forget all ideas about it. God is just like something you know but can't remember it immediately. You try so hard to remember, but it slips your mind. Than you forget about it, you go on with your life... Then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, it enlightens you. Jacob Boeme was enlightened just looking on a plate hung on the wall. Human mind is strange.
Hi moon510! Yes it is amazing. And it is also amazing that people who are using their intellect / mind only cannot get this (like I myself didn’t get it when I was younger). There is recognition without thoughts / beyond intellect. They are not many people (yet), but when talking about both know then that there is this one truth, even though some expressions are a little different. Some words I'd like to quote, because they express it best... That is right. An individual should start by itself to ‘resolve’ issues. It is the closest 'place' where one can begin. But both actually cannot be separated. To fully understand ourselves and to understand god is finally the same. There is the idea of what you are and what you know or what you can know. And there is the idea of what you are not and what you cannot know = things beyond your mind. This illusion creates an idea of a separate god which one accepts, the other denies. But what is actually your ‘real’ Self, isn't it beyond mind -incomprehensible- also? At enlightenment god essence and Self are experienced as one life. So to say beyond mind / thoughts 'anything' is the same, the one and only now. Or in other words 'it' hasn't become yet, the expression that fits most is being itself.
I can't see anyone great becoming "great" by "just being now" - they must sacrifice many "nows" to "become somebody" later...
It's a matter of being awake, not being great. At least, it is so in some spiritual traditions, like Zen. They say you are great, you feel great only when you are awake. Greatness in terms of politics, business really requires sacrifice, sacrifice of life itself. Your life and life of others. In this mindset, one's goals are more valuable than life.
Yes one can talk about this without confusion. One needs just to be awake and already should have got a taste of ‘direct’ experience. (Sounds better than to say to believe in god) There is no becoming when "just being now". So to say the infinite pool of different ways of becoming remains fully available. God does not become. Anything that has become already is not god. Somebody has become already this somebody, something has become this something already, but it’s changing constantly, because he/she/it becomes something different all ‘the time’. If it is great or not depends on somebody judging about. But that is not ‘greatness of god’. That what is a great relief, is to know that that what I really am resides in being, not in becoming. I can become and enjoy what I become, forms and appearances also but I have ‘in mind’ that ‘I’ reside in being. I don’t get lost in the forms, identified with forms. I don’t die as form. People are looking for something that is constant, fulfilling, eternal, relieving, reliable, integer, great…. But they actually are looking for it where it never can be found. There where it has become already, in the time. And additionally, being is beyond mind. One ‘understands’ being when being. Being cannot be thought. Being is ‘before’ becoming. If somebody tries to understand that (intellect) then one has to resolve the unresolvable. How things become from the eternal now…how god creates the world, how your Self creates the world.