After a serious consideration of so many points of view, atheism stands closely to buddhism, hinduism, and the tao, that there are no gods or God as a deity. There simply is—a complex interdependent organism we call universe—that of which, we are all pieces.
There is no god as defined by religions today, for the term god, how used as a deity is silly, really. There is only one thing and it’s an event. A big one—call it whatever you want, but abrahamic religions are at odds with common sense, reason, enlightenment, awakening, etc. And what is and what isn’t. It’s an impossible religion, stripping its members of the tools required for its objectives. Guilt is now institutionalized as a virtue. The hypnotic state is lord and waking up is forbidden. If there is god, there is nothing that is not it.
All I know is there are no things, no people, no objects. A noun is simply a figure of speech. A person is defined much more by what they do than what they are, but in fact its one thing. A thing is a unit of thought expressed in language to describe form. That same form that appears to be so tangible has little or no traditional matter as a concept, but energy. But that too, is one thing.
For purpose of description and understanding we must break the world down into some sort of units, but there is no matter, only shapes. Body and “spirit” are outdated terms. It’s all one thing.
One quite often hears people say “all things consist of matter”, but what is that? They are the specific patterns of manifested energy. Matter as such is an abstraction. Looking for a uniform matter as the principle of everything is like wanting to not eat cherries but fruit in general. But fruit is also an abstraction. Matter cannot be contrasted to separate things as something immutable to something mutable. Matter in general cannot be seen, touched or tasted. It isn’t tiny little granular building blocks of nature. What people see, touch or taste are only certain forms, registered in the neurons by language. Matter is not something that exists side by side with other things, inside them or at their basis. All existing formations are the same matter in its various properties and relations. Matter vs spirit are outdated terms. Its all one event where we calculate regularities and write them into generalities.
These forms of energy that appear so tangible by our senses (made from levels of the same energy) yet things are not what they seem. The christian ego is a fraudulent misrepresentation of reality. You are not a visitor here on probation, but you are here because you are it. You are the big bang still banging, way out on the edge of a continuous happening.
Nothing is in charge. Your freewill is a reaction to stimuli. Your choices are presented to you by dominant personalities that interpret—that the Rorschach Blot of a universe can only be their way.
So, what does it all mean? It doesn’t mean anything at all. But it’s a hell of a vacation from the voids that bookend a function of an interesting process. It’s amazing.
TheCommonAtheist 
But they don’t buy this. When I tell them, they say where did energy come from? There has to be someone who created energy. Fuck law of conservation of energy. It’s god.
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The universe is a brute fact. I think it’s hard to comprehend how long this has been going on, and when it rests, energy still exists without form. Oscillations, undulations, infinite cycles and we are “just” nerve endings. Sensors, etc. Our brains and bodies are mostly automatic functions yet we identify ourselves with our scanning feature, that part that looks out for danger. Then there are personalities that capitalize on that feature by frightening and lording over others.
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Then I say love and the other virtues are also brute facts. Fatherhood and Motherhood are brute facts too. Family? Friendship? Also rudimentary brute facts. All one thing I agree. But I do include all. If the universe is being all of this, then there is room for an intelligent, personal aspect that is not unreal. It would seem there is also room to yearn for and be loved by his aspect… and even to be held accountable to personal responsibility by it. Uni-vers. Absolute unity with infinite variety. I love your posts Jim. They are so thoughtful and thought provoking!
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uni-verse. one song 😊
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uni = one
verter = turned, combined
universe = turned into one, combined into whole
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yes, turned into one. you said it!
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Then there’s the Greek ‘katholou’, meaning “on the whole”, combining ‘kata’ – about – and ‘ὅλος’ – whole. That doesn’t make the term ‘catholic’ indicative that everything is only one thing and that it’s all Catholic; it’s simply a linguistic utterance to refer to ‘everything’… but used now to imply some special religious meaning than is present. It’s a religious term only in the sense that it has stolen the term and abused its meaning to suggest only this religion is universal because, hey, language.
I pointed out the universe’s etymology in response to the idea that it’s one ‘song’. That’s combining an actual root ‘uni’ with a modern meaning of a musical term ‘verse’. That’s cheating, so to speak, because it isn’t true; verse as a musical reference is not the root and so the meaning of that part of the term is a different source than the actual root. Pedantic, I know, but honest.
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Do you think root words, evolving meanings, and their misuse shapes way we perceive the world? Like the word person, coming from the latin persona meaning a mask. Now we assume the person is the real deal while it is the fake? Latin colliding with christian ego? That same idea of ego that you embrace 2nd to hebrew influence? It actually shapes much of your scientific approach were so proud of while condemning the source that shaped your approach. The words we use shapes the way we see things.
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That’s twice you’ve referred to something called a ‘Christian ego’ I supposedly exercise. But I have no clue what it means. Can you clarify for me?
As for language, we’re using several here. My written language is much different than my spoken. And I do use etymology to grasp root meanings even if I use evolved meanings. I find it often helps me to understand shades of transmitted meaning.
As you know now, how we think – including the spoken and written language – determines what we think. This is why you’ve been grilled on what you mean when use terms like ‘spirit’ – because it’s such a fuzzy concept descriptive only in the sense that is helpful to obfuscate very fuzzy thinking about something else. Religion especially but any faith-based belief is usually FULL of such fuzzy terms. Terms for nouns, however, like ‘person’ usually have a more concrete modern meaning after evolving from its root… and continuing to evolve through time and common usage. So, yes, language in the sense of transmitted meaning limits our ability to accomplish this task, which is why some languages are better at doing this in certain areas than others. Just consider gender – a typical linguistic tool absent in English but helpful describing (usually) a subtle shade of meaning versus, say a minor scale in music, or an axiomatic mathematical model. Languages are the vehicles so it helps to understand which is being used and in what ways in order to grasp the kind of meaning being transmitted.
Clear as mud?
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i got you working, didn’t i? 😃
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tildeb, it is said that when the mind becomes quiet enough, the cosmic sound can be heard. that is the AUM (or OM) of Hindus, which corresponds to the 3 stages of cosmic creation: A (creation) U (preservation) M (destruction). also corresponds nicely with the cosmic microwave background.
it became the sacred HUM of Tibetans, the AMIN of Muslims, and the AMEN of the Romans, Greeks, Christians, etc
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If all those virtues are brute facts, then so are the vices. Hitler was as natural a phenomenon as a tsunami.
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I feel the brutishness in the vices but not in the virtues. The vices attack me mercilessly. I must believe in virtue because it is not actually a brute but rather, a gentleperson. So I am happy that in believing the gentle truth of virtue, I find it is as true and far superior to vice in everything. In this way I am saved.
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But many people are born quite pleasant in their personalities. Two of my kids are that way. I would think they are both needed to comprehend the other. How would you comprehend virtue without vice? A world of strictly left sided people, or backs with no fronts or black without white would be impossible.
In hindu philosophy there is nothing that is not god, and this is your doing. It suffers only, and does it to know the good. You could not know one without the other. It is the left hand of god in Hebrew, although monotheism auspiciously never says who stands on the left hand of god, even though its quite obvious, like in the book of Job. The “all good” and god of love only, is at odds with the principle of polarity, which is in the universe as a whole. But I really like your sentiments here.
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Religion is a mental fantasy, bought by most of the world because there was nothing better for sale. Why are humans the only species that wants better? Because they think there is better available, when really there is only different. Few humans can accept there is only different.
Life is life, and can only be life. Not-life cannot be life, nor can life be not-life. They are fundamentally different, and it is the fundamentals that we can, as humans, respect, and tolerate.
As I think I mentioned to you recently, the universe is not-life, yet it contains life.
Knowing life shall set one free.
Bullshit?
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Life, as you have previously described, can be not-life. We are not simply examples of life in biological form, but forms inside of life itself.
If what you say is true, it is at odds with the cyclical nature of everything.
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I don’t think so, but then my vision is probably different from yours. We both use words from the English language, but that does not guarantee we mean the same thing. I really wish we could talk mind to mind, but most people are afraid to possibly expose our complete inner selves. Even I have secrets I want no one else to see, but to be able to communicate with total understanding would be well worth the risk. Dare to try, Jim?
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This rings very spiritual to me.
And then, “So, what does it all mean? It doesn’t mean anything at all.” Okay. There is that.
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There is nothing spiritual. Its all one thing
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I’ll say it again: how we think determines what we think.
How you think in these posts reveals a long discredited method used especially by the ancient Greeks: a form of logic that presumes its premises are true. This is what preceded the scientific revolution and why it produced zero knowledge about reality. You’re doing the same thing.
You continue to use key terms from this ancient method (like forms and nature and meaning) none of which are anything more than presumptions you import and then impose on reality thinking all the while that you are extracting information from reality to support your presumptions! This method is what leads you into this black and white, true and false, real and not real, framework that does not reflect information adduced from reality. It reflects your assumptions embedded in how you think about reality. This is what we call a priori thinking, assuming the conclusions but using these assumptions to justify the premises!
This tactic is the core feature of religious belief: presuming axioms for logical deduction about a system that does not possess such axioms, but suffers from their importation. By using these presumptions and applying them to a non-axiomatic system leads you to believe that only permanence can be true (that’s what axioms do, border a system with rules and regulations like math) and so therefore the lack of it, the lack of permanence means illusion. You’ve assumed your conclusion.
So if you can identify change using the scientificmethod (a method where no axioms are assumed but adduced only from how reality seems to operate), you again presume your model is scientifically valid (this is the bait-and-switch tactic used by religious apologists all the time) to support your a priori non-scientific beliefs about it. Voila!
This is how religious belief defends itself from arbitration by reality. In essence you are using the same method of thinking (the ‘how’, by importing a non-scientific framework, one that is purely metaphysical and then applied through the use of axioms) to do the same thing, to reach conclusions logically that are not reflective of reality! That’s why logic alone is slave to the reflective value of its premises and why you will always reach the conclusion you desire by using axioms that guarantee your presumptions will be logically valid but immune from reality’s arbitration of them.
Change how you think, change what you think.
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You have stated these things multiple times without refuting one claim. Are you saying you are a separate event from the big bang?
It is true how you think shapes the world you live in. Are you content with the way things are going based on this idea that you are a christian ego?
You are simply contrary and argumentative no matter what I post. You agree with nothing here at all?
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It’s not a question of refuting, Jim; it’s a question of re-framing BECAUSE your method does not produce knowledge about or insight into reality. It is a metaphysical exercise leading… nowhere. (Just like religious belief.) It has all the appearances of something deep but is nothing more than a deepity, in the sense that it’s true but trivial. Yes, there is no such thing as permanence but it requires the importation of your assigned meaning to that fact to have any traction that you think leads you to the conclusion based on the supposition that meaning to be valuable must have permanence, there’s no permanence, therefore there’s no meaning, therefore life is meaningless! You create your own conclusion not because reality leads you there (lives can be and are full of meaning to those living them!) but because of what you have already imported, your own meaning to conclude meaninglessness… without ever considering an alternative method of coming at the idea regarding the importance of meaning in life, the importance or relative permanence, energy, matter, processes, mechanisms, time frame, etc… That’s why your claims are true in one sense but trivial in the sense this approach (just like religious belief that uses the same method) produces no insight and/or knowledge about reality.
How you have thought about this determines what you think about this. Change how you think, change the world; stick with a non-productive method, keep the world at bay but your beliefs about it unchallenged, stagnant, non-illuminating. That’s a recipe for self-created and sustaining depression and denial of personal responsibility about its personal value, n’est pas?
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by taking the position of the scientific observer, you also have already pre-determined your view of reality. you already ASSUME that the universe is something outside you, a thing that can be studied, analyzed and understood by your mind.
no less a prison than the guy assuming there is a god. just a more… sophisticated prison.
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So the wildfires that killed dozens of people in California this month….they do not exist “outside” the people that they killed. Effectively, the people killed themselves! Because the people are wildfires! Profound!
Heck…I wonder if should head over to Answers in Genesis. They make more sense than many of the comments in this thread. I have strongly agreed with tiledb on some things before, but he is calling out mystical deepity for what it is!
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Way too much to comment upon, so I will just pick something. Re “A person is defined much more by what they do than what they are, but in fact its one thing.” I think you are conflating things arbitrarily. The example of the universe being one organism is more than a bit of a stretch. It is almost never the case that something happening in one galaxy has an impact upon another galaxy. So, “Interdependence” is not something I would state as a property of the components of the universe.
And, as the the quote, I think people are defined by what they do … by others. But we, and on rare occasions, define ourselves by who we think we are. And these are almost never “one thing.” It is so very, very hard to know a person so well that you know “who they are.” Rather they are what they do for moment to moment. The woman I love more than any other on the planet can irritate me … in the moment. And I her, of course. But by and large we know who the other is and I think it rare that anyone who has not shared a significant part of someone’s life with them even gets a peek at who they are.
And, I always read your posts because they speak to me in ways that others do not, so do continue, please.
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you call it “a happening, an event” and you say, “there are no things, no people, no objects”. so, that begs the question… Who is watching this happening?🧐
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Nobody other than us eyeballers.
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are these eyeballers some kind of entities? you said there is no ‘person’.
so, Who, who knows this event?
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in zen buddhism, there is a type of meditation where, as one goes on about their day, they keep asking the question “who is doing the walking?” “who is seeing this?” who is listening? etc. this is called self-inquiry, and i think some version exists in almost all traditions.
intellectual understanding is necessary, for sure, and your vision is good. it is all one. but understanding must evolve into being. and while this question may seem self-evident or puerile, such spiritual practices are extremely powerful because they work on a subconscious level- they break through illusions that we hold in our minds. like sitting, doing nothing. seems such a waste of time. people forget that vinegar turns into wine by doing nothing. and the butterfly sleeps in its cocoon for month before it becomes what it’s meant to be.
everything comes from nothing, always remember.🙏
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You people know nothing. Repeat after me: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. If you can do it again in 15 minutes, you’ve solved the world.
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I thought is was, ” Person. Woman. Man. Vote. Biden.” I’m pretty sure that’s right test.
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I AGREE!!
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We “are the big bang still banging”, yes!
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It may seem like a trivial thing, but not recognizing this changes the way we observe the world. The world is nothing to confront or control, but in nurturing it we are nurturing us. Thanks Jim.
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“The world is nothing to confront or control, but in nurturing it we are nurturing us.”
I absolutely, unconditionally agree!
The trees and water plants do not exhale oxygen for us to breathe because they love us and want us to have that second beer. It is a biochemical function that operates within larger ecosystems and spheres that sustain us throughout the process we call “life.”
I am of the mind that this singular relationship between us and plant life is one of the first things we should teach our children. The basics are simple and every child on earth could learn where the air they breathe comes from and every child and every adult should be kindly directed to plant a tree–their own personal tree and watch over it and keep it healthy. If that happened, I think life on this dear planet would be quite different.
Great post!
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here is a good, beautiful movie about non-duality. talks about Ramana Maharshi’s awakening experience. he’s quite unique in India’s history of spirituality, as his awakening happened suddenly, without any prior practices at all.
this is all shown in first 10min of movie, so give that a try and see how crazy it sounds. if you have patience, i recommend watching 50min, the rest is not necessary.
you will understand what ‘god is.
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I like a lot of what you said. However, a lot of things (or non-things really) happened in my life… many of deep mystery and timelessness. (Of course, i may be full of hogwash.) 🙂 One feels that one can be beyond merely being part of the big bang still banging if one transcends being merely immersed in sequential thought/time. True mystery and timelessness are beyond the limitations of man.
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I agree with you Tom. This line of thinking is really directed towards those that ignore reason by stopping where they are comfortable. But even reason in science shows we are one if they don’t carefully guard their words. Lets just take their Big Bang as truth for a second, to the outer reaches of the universe—it’s all one thing. Yes?
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The Big Bang (not ‘their’ Big Bang but a non-partisan explanation that seems to fit the evidence) was an event, a singularity, a thing, a noun. Inflation after that event is a process. That process is what’s travelling outwards, an action, a verb. An unfolding process like to the “outer reaches of the universe” you mention is not a noun but a verb. A thing like the Big Bang, the singularity, the event, is a noun. You are conflating the two, the noun and verb, to be the same ‘thing’ to fit your notion that ‘everything’ is one. Well, to be blunt, it isn’t one because nouns are not verbs and verbs are not nouns. These are two different descriptive ideas, not one.
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Can you have one without the other? Would it mean anything? Can you have subjective without objective, and put it into context? The point is you can’t have one without the other. They go together like back and front, left and right.
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It is my experience that the first casualty of inquiry into a ‘spiritual’ explanation of the material world is language. That’s a clue… and great big Red Flag.
The exploration becomes one of a never-ending series of word games meant not to clarify and define and describe what can be shared about a shared reality but to obfuscate and make opaque one-to-one meanings between the words and the reality they are supposed to describe, missing this word-to-reality connection. Hence the opaqueness.
This intentional muddying of the linguistic landscape is the essential ingredient necessary to make room for woo, for ‘spirituality’ to be believed to be descriptive as if reasonable and logical and relevant to a shared reality, and it almost always becomes transmitted in the form of metaphysics (words to describe stuff beyond reality), transcendental (words used to describe stuff outside of time and space), an oh-so-insightful lexicon of cloudy and muddled thinking (everything real is an illusion and illusion is the only thing real, you see).
To accomplish this shaping to make room for the unknowable but perceived by the wise, language is hijacked and abused where white becomes another kind of black, that up is the true essence of down, that verbs are nouns and nouns are verbs and reality is all so very mysterious when one glimpses what lies beyond. This is religious mumbo-jumbo to a tee, where projections of superstitious beliefs and heartfelt wishes is Poof!ed into another kind of existence, the unreal real existence, the reality we can glimpse if we squint just so and go along with the idea that everything real is nothing more than the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave but the essence of the forms are true… well, true for those who have the trained eyes to perceive that which exists beyond.
It’s all crap. Plato’s forms are crap because they’re not true; they rely on the word game to give them substance.
And we know it’s crap because, if true, we can know nothing about these forms because we are not equipped mentally or physically to perceive beyond what’s real. Spirituality is nothing more and nothing less than just another run-of-the-mill religious belief but without specific scriptures. This is why, in exactly the same way, religious belief – like such ‘spirituality’ – is at the end of the day still and only a word game, using linguistic subterfuge as tools to play with their meaning; if the evidence for such claims to be knowable were in fact available for impartial examination, the evidence would speak for itself and the physical reality by which reality operates the same for everyone everywhere all the time would and could be shown to be breakable by anyone anywhere at any moment. This evidence is just as lacking for spirituality claims of the mysterious ‘beyond’ as it is for religious claims of the afterlife.
That’s why faith – belief of the religious kind, belief in things not seen, belief in things not heard – is necessary to pretend the obfuscating and confused language actually means anything beyond mumbo jumbo, beyond belief in woo, really is a means to perceive. It takes faith. If it weren’t based in faith, it really would be a method shown to be ‘another way of knowing’. This is exactly what is missing in action: the product of this other way of knowing. And when we tally up all the products revealed about reality through spirituality/religious belief using this other way of knowing, we stay at the same grand total of new knowledge: zero. Not one jot or tittle of new knowledge using this method has been, is, or probably ever shall be produced. That’s how we know it’s gibberish even if it sounds like wonderful and wise words from the fabled sages of antiquity.
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So, tildeb, when you have feelings or intuitions, an enlightenment of sorts on a scientific concept, are those feeling just illusions of a misfiring, errant physiology? How many aha moments in your life now seem elementary to you, if not outright wrong? The method that religion uses, is used all the time in science and with many great inventors as as well. You seem to want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
But in one religion faith is the pinnacle of belief, and in the others, faith is a barrier to meeting the objectives. The problem is holding on to anything as a special knowledge, in science or religion, because nothing is fixed. Science thinks the same ways as religion. It thinks it can save the world while simultaneously wrecking it. And both believe they are superior to the other when most likely they depend on each other.
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Feelings is term we give to our subjective responses to chemical changes in the brain. There’ nothing weird or ‘errant’ about that. It’s normal physiology and we have all kinds of names for these.
And those ‘aha’ moments you describe are all about making connections, seeing patterns, between what appears as disparate areas of understanding and are indications to me of active intelligence. This is where groundbreaking ideas come from.
None of this is woo or superstition or faith-based belief in any way. So no, I’m not throwing anything away if and when I allow reality itself to arbitrate belief claims made about it. To allow reality to do this, we have to give reality preeminence in evaluating our belief structures and empowering some level of confidence to its judgement. We have to hold off leaping to the conclusions we want, stop cherry picking whatever confirms only this conclusion, and learn to admit when we honestly don’t know something. That’s not a failure but a legitimate and highly useful teaching tool.
Not believing what we want but granting reality the right to arbitrate claims made about it is both difficult and challenging but that and that alone is how knowledge about reality is built. There is no shortcut to gaining knowledge. It’s hard, disciplined work. That’s why we call it ‘life-long learning’. It never stops.
And we test reality’s arbitration by seeing if the model explanation that covers available evidence of we think might be the case, might be how reality operates, seems to be true for everyone everywhere all the time. And nothing demonstrates the legitimacy of higher levels of confidence in these explanatory models better than through applications, therapies, and technologies that work, meaning these avenues of evidence put into practice do so for everyone everywhere all the time. In this way we know the explanation by which we are operating through these methods is not simply a projection of our assumptions on to the world nor a conclusion made by us alone; they are adduced FROM reality. They seem to fit how reality really does operate. That’s a very powerful tool to gain insight and very strong evidence that our confidence in the explanatory model is wisely placed.
This role by reality in our beliefs about shows reality is not a subjective illusion but does show that the method is a consistent and reliable way to know about it, and so we lend these explanatory models that work our considerable confidence.
Just because an explanatory model that works for everyone everywhere all the time doesn’t mean the explanation is certain. It means it is worthy of our highest levels of confidence. (That’s why these fully vetted explanations are awarded the exalted term ‘theories.’ That means such explanations over time have adequately addressed all criticisms of it. They are few because of the rigor needed. The demand for certainty is an utter lack of rigo and is used all the time by the weak-minded who think permanence is an either/or condition to excuse explanatory models of no knowledge value, of no applications, therapies or technologies that work consistently and reliably for everyone everywhere all the time, to make equivalent any explanation regardless of the quality and quantity of the evidence for or against them. It is an apologetic faith-based attack and tactic used to paint knowledge about how reality seems to operate as somehow and constantly variable when this is gross distortion of how we operate in reality.
For example, not for one second do any of us doubt the effect gravity has on our lives with each and ever step we take. We physiologically account for this permanent force all the time and it takes a special kind of dishonesty to argue that because we don’t know for certain what gravity is, we can therefore doubt the confidence we exhibit that we need to adjust for it not by physical accounting but by merely by the amount of belief we invest in it.
Any lack of certainty is used by the purveyors of woo to try to make wiggle room for reality-denying claims as if reasonable and possessing ‘special’ knowledge, ‘special’ insight, and is the necessary groundwork out of which conspiracy beliefs, denialism, superstitious nonsense, woo, and unreasonable doubt can then be sold to a gullible and non-critical public who don’t think well but stand ready to believe whatever makes them feel special and wise and insightful. And it all starts by dismembering language.
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Yes, well appearances (and words) can be deceptive.
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You had written, Jim, that, “If there is god, there is nothing that is not it.”
Yes, well, we have to be careful with what we maintain. A lot of our manifested universe, in the ways and parameters that we exist in (and “as”) it, tends to be significantly illusory. (This does not mean that we should get all depressed and jump off of a cliff… not by any means.) I don’t say “God,” but i do maintain that the sacred exists.
Are the illusory things part of the sacred? No, not really. Did the sacred create the manifested world/multiverse? No. Was the Big Bang the beginning of everything, and is it big, and is it a bang? No. No. No. Is it all one thing? Perhaps, in a way, but oneness is largely a math thing and a lot of things occur that are not at all what they seem.
Is the Christian ego a fraudulent misrepresentation of reality?… as you suggest. Yes, and the Gospel of Thomas was rejected, by those who did not see the pristine beauty there, in favor of authoritarian nonsense supporting ugly hierarchies… though that Gospel, too, was distorted some over time. But you have to sort out the weeds from the actual good crop. Those who loved the G. of T. were all butchered and killed by the hierarchical church establishment, and the G. of T. was banned. Books are written that the G. of John was written as a rebuttal to the G. of T.
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Thank you Tom. First, I am very happy you’ve taken the time to visit. I have followed your spot for quite some time and I appreciate your meaningful contributions.
I don’t like the term god, for it seems to have a monarchical bitterness about it, but we use the terms we have. One thing that jabs at me is people’s unwillingness to carry reason and logic beyond the comfortable parts. If you carry things out al the way, the scientist sounds like a mystic, and the mystic sounds like a scientist. One big round.
Really we currently have about four options.
1. The universe is a dumb accident of time, chemical reactions and hot gasses. A random fluke that created organic matter and evolved to intelligence and consciousness—Science.
2. That the universe is a self governing organism (very hard to challenge) and that there are no laws of nature, only observable change.
3. Life is the drama of god and we are “the million masks” (Chesterton) The entire thing comes and goes, and when we can no longer tolerate the game we’ll shut it down and close the curtain. But behind the scenes continues to plan the next round. This is our doing (Hinduism)
4. That the universe is made by a potter who is also the boss. That heaven is arranged like an ancient legal court (all the churches are patterned this way) and that god is a deity who has a certain set of rules for us that are completely arbitrary to him. That we are here on sufferance and probation. That if we’ll love to do the things he says voluntarily, we have a chance to dodge he’ll fire.
5. The shamanic model—a living earth that has been the source of all life since time immemorial.
Sorry for the long reply. I lean towards the organism, but really like the shamanic model as well.
And one other thing; Who experiences reality and the illusory? What always remains?
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Just got the randomly interesting pantry. Anyway, I read this scripture and thought of your essay here. “No one has seen God at any time but the Son of God declares him.” John 1:18. And, “…For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made.” If I understand what you’ve written, this physical thing we’re in is an expression of the unseen principles or nature of existence. If so, I really agree with you. But my conclusion about those unseen forces is radically different. I actually don’t separate the physical from the mental emotional, material from the ethereal. And if all are the outworking of the unseen then the unseen must be ultra conscious and extremely intentional. It seems like we might agree on the nature of reality but our conclusions are most opposite.
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”And if all are the outworking of the unseen then the unseen must be ultra conscious and extremely intentional”. Distraction. Life is a distraction of labels and words (In the beginning was the word) we focus our attention now outward therefore do not see. But who is the thinker of your thoughts? If it’s all one, how can you really be an ego?
What happens when we realize jesus was not the son of god but a son of god, as in context of the greek?
We find that through other methods/practices that by stripping away thought and focusing inward we can see god. But since there is nothing to contrast it too, essentially it cannot be seen, like as in a mirror or some thing contrasted against a background, because it is the background. We are temporarily living an illusion of our own doing.
Strip away all the philosophy and it is clear that I am, but not so clear what I am, because there is nothing to compare it against. You are very close I think, but seem to have reservations about claiming ownership of your doing. Those prophets and awakened beings that did claim ownership of it, typically start churches and become self important through misunderstanding the experience that they can claim I am as Jesus did, yet was not the only one and made that clear.
The word, the categorizing, the naming of things, thinking, now thought and words have us spellbound. Naming everything (Adam) creates a separation as things that are of a single organism. You’re it!
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