The Nature Of God

[DoWalker]

I'm always seeking new perspectives on spirituality and religion. I've come across his ideas that, supposing God exists, there are only a few possibilities.

1. God created the world intentionally, and predetermined its fate. Our individual fates are also predetermined.

2. God created the world, and predetermined its fate, but leaves our individual fates up to our own actions.

3. God created the world, and invented physics, and since then has mostly stood by and watched.

4. God exists, but not as a seperate entity. (?) emitted the cosmos, and does nothing consciously or unconsciously to affect fate.

If there are more possiblities, please feel free to add them.

Question: What are your thoughts on the nature of God? I'm especially interested in your reasoning. Anything outside the usual Torah/Bible/Koran references would be welcome.

P.S.: I think we already have enough discussions based around the idea that God does not exist, so please limit responses to those based upon the assumption that there is something divine beyond human perception.

[vicente]

Religion: God created the world...

Quantum Cosmology: Hawking-Hartle No-Boundary Theory,...there is no big-bang, no singularity, no creation, nor creator, no beginning, no end, for time does not exist.

please limit responses to those based upon the assumption that there is something divine beyond human perception.

divine, adj. of or pertaining to a god

Without religion, there is no divine, no god, no supreme being. Without religion there is Light. Not the Christian "light", as in their god is light and in him no darkness.

The topic of light often gets confusing. There is physical light (measurable through motion), and, on the other hand, there is Clear Still Light, upon which, physical light effects its motion. This motion is not "born" from Still Light, but is dependent upon Still Light, as a childs seesaw is dependent upon its causeless fulcrum. However, if speaking of light/time and dark/space, then light, that is, simulated physical light, is borne from dark.

The Bibles Genesis says, "and the earth was formless, and darkness covered the face of the deep,...then the wind of the elohim moved upon the primordial ocean".

As the wind/spirit of the elohim (plural of god) moved, that movement/condition borne light from the Void,...the dark, Boundless Womb of Duality. Creation, through the nurturance of darkness, dies into light. Polarity's light does not hold within itself the potential to birth, for it is the result already spawned through darkness.

Keep in mind the laws of thermodynamics. (Dark) cold compresses, thus multiplying cold to create (light) heat. Heat expands, thus dividing heat back to cold,...the pulse of duality.

Collective Consciousness however, instructs us that light/illumination precipitates wisdom,...however, if we ponder on it honestly, it is darkness, the Void, which is All-Pervading, not light. Where is it true that light conquers dark? There is no amount of light that can illuminate all dark, for in Duality, darkness always surrounds it. Rudolph Steiner once said that light was the antipathic aspect of polarity, whereas darkness is its sympathic expression.

A prevelant human construct suggests that light is good and dark is evil,...not because it is, but because to understand the truth would wreck the fragile fabric of society's delusion and the religious faiths they cling to.

However, through light, the world can not be experienced directly, but only viewed from the past. Projected light only illuminates the past. Projected light is movement, a movement manifested from the desire to seek the Stillness of Source. Movement is always behind the Now.

Darkness is as the womb, the perceived beginning which contains all possibilities. Projected or simulated light is born from darkness, and then rejects, and even curses the boundlessness darkness from which it came.

Cosmologically speaking, ordinary knowledge only see's as far into the universe(s) as light allows,...then there is darkness. Kind of like what Rene Schwaller de Lubicz said about how "you don't know the questions unless you already have the answers".

Darkness has no edge, and therefore no center,...darkness is not separate from anything. Light, on the other hand, does have a definable edge, and thus a center. Simulated light has a here and a there,...light inherently understands it is separate from Life.

Light, from a metasensory point of view, is the antipathic compression into form from dark, whereas darkness is the sympathetic expression of that polarity from light. As I said, cold compresses, heat expands.

vicente
:)

[DoWalker]

The reason I don't post on the Science page is because despite being well read, my understanding of Quantum theory is imperfect. From what I DO understand, time does not exist, or rather everything exists simultaneously independent of time. However, just as light can only be understood as matter in some contexts, and as energy in others, the universe can only be understood with the idea of time in some contexts, and without it in others. Again, I freely admit that I am not a Quantum physicist, but I am not stupid. If what I have said is incorrect, please enlighten me. (Pun intended.) :lol:

Cold compresses, heat expands.
The heart pumps blood in, and pumps blood out.
The lungs breathe in, the lungs breathe out.
The waves come in, the waves recede.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring
We are born, we die, and are perhaps born again, and die again.
Because Hawking, along with other physicists, have not yet been able to fully reconcile Quantum Physics with Special Relativity, (it's what irks him most, he admits in The Universe in a Nutshell,) I'll speak of the universe as having a beginning, possibly an end, possibly another beginning.

This cyclical nature of reality is represented by the Yin/Yang of Taoism, and it's one thing that argues for the existance of something beyond mortal ken. Obviously, these all have physical explanations, such as gravity, but the very fundimental nature of constant cycles and revolutions seems to imply a universal "heartbeat," or as you put it "the pulse of duality." Chi has been described as that which causes the motion from Yin to Yang and back again. Is this the Clear Still Light of which you speak? And if not, please clarify the difference. I also remember (I think the Dalai Lama,) describing the true nature of thought as "pure, still light." Please clarify your perspective for me.

[vicente]

This cyclical nature of reality is represented by the Yin/Yang of Taoism

Who's Who in Duality
Yang............Yin
centripetal........centrafugal
positive...........negative
spiral-in..........spiral-out
implosive.......explosive
converge..........diverge
gravity........levity
generative.......radiative
charging......discharging
heating.........cooling
moving towards...........moving away
accumulating....dissipating
inhalation....exhalation
compression....expansion

Chi has been described as that which causes the motion from Yin to Yang and back again. Is this the Clear Still Light of which you speak?

No. The Clear Still Light of Source is Causeless. The Clear, Still Light is as a fulcrum from which Yin-Yangeffects its motion. Chi would be synonymous with White Light, the perceived One, from which duality extends. The "One" however, does not exist (perceived existence, like a dream) without the "Many". Just as there is no Here without a There, or a Center without and Edge. Wholeness is not a union of so-called opposites, but the dissolution of the Edge and the Center. In other words, Oneness is a delusion.

So, what words point to that which is beyond Oneness and its inherent Duality?

Love,...Truth,...Peace,...Causelessness,...Uncondi tionality,...Eternity,...Dimensionlessness,...Thou ghtlessness,...Gnowledge,...Nowness.

:)

[todd]

A few more options:

1. God exists, eternal in our time dimension, infinite in our space, part of everything, part of us, part of our mind, true and conscious, the living side of nature, and the “life” potential in the un-living nature, but not the universe itself. He created us, as he created life as we now, part of him.
2. God is pure conscience, the “whole” our selves are unifying with after death. “we” are just students, living, growing seeds, …Life is matter conscience..
3. God is just a superior being, “unus”, Eternal in our comprehension, his consciousness is unlimited, “we” are one his many creations, life as we now is his creation.
4. God is made-up by human imagination when Earth has been visited by other superior species. This doesn’t not exclude the theory that we are their creation as part of a terraformation process, sort of nanobots. 150 years ago they decided the oxygen level is too high, and the ph is not proper and gave us some technology to alter it.
5. God is our creation out of the fear of death and un-existence.

[vicente]

God exists, eternal in our time dimension, infinite in our space, part of everything

Here's a point of view from A Course In Miracles:

If God did not create the world or the body, who did? Moreover, who are we and how did we get here?

This is among the most commonly asked questions, and is certainly an understandable one. Almost all people believe that they are physical and psychological selves, living in a material universe that pre-existed their coming, and which will survive their leaving. The difficulty in understanding that this is not the case lies in the fact that we are so identified with our individual corporeal selves, that it is almost impossible to conceive of our existence on the level of the mind that is outside the world of time and space.

When the thought of separation seemed to occur, A Course in Miracles explains that man seemed to fall asleep and dream a dream, the contents of which are that oneness became multiplicity, and that the non-dualistic Mind of man became fragmented and separate from its Source, split into insane segments at war with themselves. As the Course explains, these fragments projected outside the mind a series of dreams or scripts that collectively constitute the history of the physical universe. On an individual level, the serial dramas our ego personalities identify as our own personal lives are also projections of our split and fragmented minds.

Thus we are all actors and actresses on the stage of life, as Shakespeare wrote, living out a dream that we experience as our individual reality, separate and apart from Who we really are as Real Self. Moreover, our minds have projected many different personalities in the collective dream of the fragmented little self, complicating the whole process. Therefore, the question "How did we get here?" must be understood from this perspective of the collective and individual dream. In other words, we are not truly here, but are dreaming that we are. As A Course in Miracles states: "[We] are already home, dreaming of exile" (text, 169; T-10.1.2: 1). And this is how the dream seemed to happen:

Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which man remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting [to laugh] did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects (text, p. 544; T-27.VITI.6:2-3).
These "real effects" constitute the physical world we think is our home. The following passage is perhaps the best description in the Course of the process whereby this effect came into existence, once man took seriously the tiny, mad idea that there could be a substitute for Love. As we shall now see, this resulted in the making of the physical universe which is believed to be an opposite to our true Home:
The physical universe substitutes an illusion for truth; fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it.
You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Home, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.

That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to bide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable (text, pp. 347-48; T- 1 8.1.4:1-6.-5)

But A Course in Miracles further states that the world was made as an attack on Reality (workbook, p. 403; W-pIl.3.2:1), and this was accomplished, again, by the collective split mind of man that believed in its hallucinatory dreaming that it had usurped First Cause. This is the beginning of the ego's unholy trinity that was mentioned above in question 4 on page 4. The guilt over his seeming sin of separation and usurpation demanded that man be punished. Consequently, the fearful man sought to flee from his own insane projection of a wrathful, vengeful Reality who wished to destroy him. Therefore man projected his illusory guilt and fragmented self out of the mind, thereby miscreating a physical world of time and space in which he could hide from the non-physical Reality he believed he had dethroned and destroyed. Within these multiple dreams, the one man appeared to split into billions of fragments, each of which became encased in a body of individual insane dreams, believing that this would render personal "protection" against the ego's image of a wrathful Reality's ultimate punishment.
It is important to note still again that we are speaking about the collective mind of the separated man as the maker of the world. Every seemingly separated fragment is but a split-off part of that original one mind that sought to replace the One Mind of Man. Thus, the individual fragment is not responsible for the world, but it is responsible for its belief in the reality of the world.


Does A Course in Miracles really mean that God did not create the entire physical universe?
We answer this question with a resounding affirmative! Since nothing of form, matter, or substance can be of God, then nothing of the physical universe can be real, and there is no exception to this. Workbook Lesson 43 states, in the context of perception, which is the realm of duality and separation:

Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge....In God you cannot see. Perception has no function in God, and does not exist (workbook, p. 67; W-pI.43.1:1-2; 2:1-2).
In the clarification of terms we find the following crystal clear statement about the illusory nature of the world of perception, which God did not create:
The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others [e.g., the greater cosmos, as we shall see below in a passage from the text). But the time will come when all things visible will have an end (manual, p. 8 1; C-4. 1).
And finally, a similar statement in the text:
God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere [through the Holy Spirit]. Not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because Man believes it is, and from Man's belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. (text, p. 487; T-25.111.2; italics ours).
These passages are important, because they clarify a source of misunderstanding for many students of A Course in Miracles who maintain that Jesus is teaching that God did in fact create the world. They assert that all the Course is teaching is that he did not create our misperceptions of it. Statements which contain the phrase "the world you see," as in the above passage from the manual for teachers, do not apply simply to the world we perceive through our wrong-minded lens, but rather to the fact that we see at all. Again, the entire physical universe, the world of perception and form, is illusory and outside the Mind of Reality.
Therefore, nothing that can be observed -- nothing that has form, physicality, moves, changes, deteriorates, and ultimately dies -- could be of God. A Course in Miracles is unequivocal about this, which is why we speak of it as being a perfect non-dualistic thought system: It contains no exceptions. And so the seeming majesty of the cosmos and perceived glory of nature are all expressions of the ego's thought system of separation, as we see in this wonderful passage from the text:

What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is (text, p. 572; T-29.VI.2:7- I0).
To attempt to make an exception to this fact is to attempt a compromise with truth, exactly what the ego wants in order to establish its own existence. As it states in the workbook: "What is false is false, and what is true has never changed" (workbook, p.445; W-pII.10.1:1). And again in the text:
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all (text, p. 600; T-31.1.1:1-4).
In conclusion, therefore, no aspect of the illusion can be accorded truth, which means that absolutely nothing in the material universe has come from Reality, or is even known by Reality. Reality is totally outside the world of dreams.


What about the beauty and goodness in the world?

Following the above answer, we can see that the so-called positive aspects of our world are equally as illusory as the negative ones. They are both aspects of a dualistic perceptual universe, which but reflect the dualistic split in the mind of Man. The famous statement "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' is also applicable here, since what one deems as beauty, another may find to be aesthetically displeasing, and vice versa. Similarly, what one society judges as good, another may judge as bad and against the common good. This can be evidenced by a careful study of history, sociology, and cultural anthropology. Therefore, using the criterion for reality of eternal changelessness that is employed in the Course, we can conclude that nothing that the world deems beautiful or good is real, and so it cannot have been created by Reality.

Therefore, given that both beauty and goodness are relative concepts and thus are illusory, we should follow the injunction to always ask ourselves: "What is the meaning of what I behold?" (text, p. 619; T-3I.VII.13:5). In other words, even though something beautiful is illusory, it remains neutral, like everything else in the world. Given to the ego, it serves its unholy purpose of reinforcing separation, specialness, and guilt. Given to the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, it serves the holy purpose of leading us to an experience of truth that lies beyond perception. For example, a sunset can reinforce the belief that I can find peace and well-being only while in its presence, or it can help remind me that the true beauty of Man is my Identity, and that this beauty is internal, within my mind and independent of anything outside it.

[sonrisa]

Originally posted by vicente@Jul 14 2004, 02:13 PM
This cyclical nature of reality is represented by the Yin/Yang of Taoism

Who's Who in Duality
Yang............Yin
centripetal........centrafugal
positive...........negative
spiral-in..........spiral-out
implosive.......explosive
converge..........diverge
gravity........levity
generative.......radiative
charging......discharging
heating.........cooling
moving towards...........moving away
accumulating....dissipating
inhalation....exhalation
compression....expansion

:)

vicente, as I understand it, the nature of yin is inward (introvert) & yang is outward (extrovert) so shouldn't spiral-in, implosive, inhalation (breathing in), & compression be yin, & spiral-out, explosive, exhalation (breathing out), expansion, & radiative (radiating out) be yang, while generative (reproduction, moon, female) be yin?

for instance, molecules expand when heated (yang) & compress when cooled (yin)

explain further please

ps to DoWalker- there are topix in the Science forum that do not involve quantum mechanix, you can post in those if you want :)

[vicente]

Sonrisa,...the Who's Who of duality is quite simply, that is, once it is viewed through dualities point of view, instead of a humancentric one.

If 'yin' is female, mother, it is explosive, ascending, spiral-out, diverging, radiative, expanding.

From Tantra:

"The Force of Heaven determines the structure of the male sex organ, whereas the Force of Earth creates the shape of the female sex organ. As the Yang-force of Heaven descends from above, it creates the outward shape of the lingam. Conversely, as the Yin-force of Earth ascends from below, it creates the inward shape of the yoni."

Most peoples view of duality, of light and dark is as biasedly mixed up, as the propoganda of self-proclaimed Visionaries, like Rowena Pattee Kryder, who, in her 'Sacred Ground to Sacred Space' claims the "yang [male] is explosive, centrifugal, warming, destructuring and dissipating, while yin [the female] is implosive, centripetal, cooling, structuring and integrative". These are ego statements, based on a humancentric viewpoint. How is dissipating warming, or implosiveness cooling? These people only encourage a world of oxymorons.

Yin is ascending, Yang is descending.

:)

[sonrisa]

ok. I understand the ascending/descending part. It's the inward/outward stuff that has me confused. I always thought yin to be inward & yang outward. Are you saying that it's the reverse?

[a random hack]

"The Force of Heaven determines the structure of the male sex organ, whereas the Force of Earth creates the shape of the female sex organ. As the Yang-force of Heaven descends from above, it creates the outward shape of the lingam. Conversely, as the Yin-force of Earth ascends from below, it creates the inward shape of the yoni."

does this mean that 'yang force' is viewed as that which surrounds, thus defining, the lingam, and 'yin force' is that which is viewed as encompassed by, defining the yoni? <_<

not that it matters :lol:

[vicente]

Yes,...most think that synonyms of yin are yang, and visa verse.

Yin is cold. In descending it moves towards Yang/heat. Yang is heat, brought to that predominately male duality state through compression, but cannot remain predominately Yang, thus heat rises/ascending back to cold. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that Yang is ascending/Yin is Ascendent, whereas Yin is descending/Yang is Descendent.

Cold/Yin multiples, compressing cold/Yin into heat/Yang. Heat/Yang divides, thus expanding heat/Yang into cold/yin. That is the cycle of dream of duality.

:)

[sonrisa]

that is what I said, Vicente, yin (cold) is compressing, & yang (heat) is expanding.

Random, If the lingam & the yoni are what I think they are, then you got it bass-ackward. The yin force (yoni) would be that which surrounds (the lingam), & the yang force (lingam) would be encompassed by (the yoni)
:D

[a random hack]

<_< :lol: :)

[sonrisa]

Random :badgrin:

a lingam & a phone book were having a discussion over who got abused the most. The phone book sez, "People come in here all the time, rip out my pages, scribble on me, spill stuff on me, yadayada..."
The lingam sez, "That's nothing. Last nite somebody put a plastic bag over my head shoved me in a dark hole, & made me do push-ups til I puked."

:P

[a random hack]

:lol: :blink: :unsure: :D :lol:

[sonrisa]

:D