I now believe in god, and invite you to prove me wrong… ;)

Nick POSTED:
bhaktajan,

You said,

"The Absolute = God the Person."

--> OK, I see where you are coming from. In my belief system, the Absolute is completely impersonal and has none of the traits you are describing. I guess we can just agree to disagree on this one.
Click to expand...

Nick,

I realise that my posting may seem that I am positing a subjective opinion but I am not. I am trying to be creative in my choice of words . . . but only to express that which is written in the Vedas.

Nick, I am relating a paradynm that has been hidden in India's Vedas.
While we in the west have been busy for centuries in all sorts of hard earned endeavors ---ancient writ has finally surfaced for public view ---these things are where I am quoting from.

It is what is stated in the Vedas, for your review and consideration.

Yes, it is correct to say, The impersonal [nir-vana] is absolute.
But Nick, you learnt that from the Vedas. You learnt it from a source. Some will later challange you and say, "It must be personally experienced, It cannot be Described. Or descriptions are not good enough to know Transecedence, it must be experienced to be known" ---I digress

The same source that Reveals God as Impersonal says entoto:

God is present in the World in Three Aspects:
1 The Void;
2 The nucleus of all atoms
3 The personality of Godhead

One need not do anything except that which his free will dictates; or that which the dictator of the country you live in [due to your past karma] says you must do to show your patriotism to the tax-collector's wisdom or dictates. ---jeez, I digress again.

.........................................

"The Absolute = God the Person."
Simply put, I am saying that this is the mystery of living [This really is not meant by me in the historical traditions of Western Abrahamic Sentiments].

You have heard "Love is the mystery of life" ---Love towards what/whom?

For Love and Compassion to have a refuge there must be a person at the end of the tunnel.

I am a Hare Krishna Devotee ---so the knowledge of God as Defined in the Bhagavad-Gita & the Bhagavata-purana etc has connotations of the meaning of "A personal God" like that which has never been known except prehaps since the older librarians fled the Alexandria Library with such sucken hearts when beholding the implicit destiny of future generations heading straight toward the edge of History's Maya.
 
Bhaktajan,

Ah, Hare Krishna, now I understand. I see Hare Krishna as a devotional belief system while my own personal belief system is decidedly non-devotional. Perhaps that explains why you see the Absolute as an aspect of God while I see the exact opposite -- God as only one aspect of the Absolute.
 
The Infinite that you refer to is made finite by your pronouncements.
Click to expand...

Well that is exactly how you come across to me and I think I am saying the opposite. Name anything about ‘person’ or personality that is unlimited!_? You see there are no things. So you cannot say infinity is god as a person.

Throughout your posts you fail to describe the space of the absolute, which I keep asking about, we have to define that before we can go on, or else we are caught up in semantic differences.
 
You stated the same thing twice, and, you attributed one to me:

Nick wrote:

. . . you see the [A] Absolute as an aspect of God while I see the exact opposite -- God as only one aspect of the Absolute.
Click to expand...

You are actually saying 'No thing can be considered Absolute'; IOW, there is nothing that is absolute.

But, the dynamism called creation is an absolute state of affairs, even in its temporal illusion.

The entire cosmos taken in its entirity is absolute.

a] Other wise you are saying all is a false illusion (a dream within a dream within a dream) ---and then say, And there is no one dreaming; no one is outside the dream.

b] Other wise you are saying enlightenment means to see the truth that all is untrue ---and thus the goal is to 'desolve' the souls latent properities (primarily it's ego) and merge into a sleep state thus avoiding the rick of the waking state to be in an illusion called life and living. Yes, that is what is revealed in Buddhist & Hindu "Advaita" doctrine as 'the dharma'.

But for the Hindu Vaishnava School of theism that I adhere to the soul is always active ---where there is the principle that there is a Principal Person behind the purpose of pleasure/pain; happyiness/distress; birth/death ---and we spirit souls are part and parcel of the Supreme Soul (the Goal of the vedas & Yoga) as reaised byway of intense "Feelings of Seperation from the Supreme Beloved".

Yoga from the vaishnav vantage point (bhakti-yoga) is about "ettiquette" ---a practiced ettiquette whose importance is learnt by trail and error birth after birth ---until we direct all the ettiquette (bhakti-yoga) that we cultivated and which stayed 'fixed' & 'attached' to the heart's deep recesses to Re-union ('religio') with God's Pastimes in His Abode.

Please note: All I am saying would be sentimental hyperbole if it was NOT all derived from scriptural references.

Nick, you can surely feel free to disagree ---but that is not yet the issue here ---I am relating that there is a revelation of Godhead and who/what/where/when/how God is in the Vedas ---and For God's sake Nick, I am telling you that I, as a yoga adherent, that I have arrived at this knowledge after taking all the detours and requisite yoga paths in my own past lives ---this last part of my writting is not meant to ilicit sympathy nor to inspire cynical rebuttals but to declare that we band of brothers have seen the Glarring effulegences of all the varieties of inglorious basters already.

krsnas tu bhagavan svayam,
Bhaktajan

God is the Absolute Truth when all paths of Yogic mystisism are taken to their finality.

The Absolute is The person God.

Nick, I am thoroughly versed in the Hindu school of Moksha/Mukti (liberation) as declared as "impersonal" (God is Formless & simply another temporal manifestation of material energy).

That is the path that must first be traversed (brahman>Param-atma>Bhagavan) ---First, 'I am not this material body/Ego/Present Birth with all its trappings; I am Spirit soul ~I am the stuff of Brahman';
Second, 'All sentient beings are also Spirit Souls ~each a part and parcel of the Absolute Soul aka Paramatma';
Third, 'All parts and parcels are seeking reciprocal pastimes with Bhagavan aka The Persoanlity of Godhead'
 
Z wrote: Name anything about ‘person’ or personality that is unlimited!_?
Click to expand...

The cycle of Birth and death (the phenomenum of re-births/transimigration of the soul) is unlimited.

Every insect has a soul that originally was in God presense, in the Kingdom of God, and enjoyed in reciprocal pastime with him ---but hving fallen from the eternal realm outside material manifest energy, has entered into the ocean/jungle/pantasmagoria of the material world of time, Matter & energy where there are more than unlimited facility to crawl with your belly rubbing against the ground.

There are 8,400,000 species of sentient beings.
There are more worker ants then there ever will be humans walking on the earth.
Each ant is engaged without pay, pension, or even a car-park or public transport ---but the ant does wish he had ---but hey, what does a stupid ant know?
 
describe the space of the absolute
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by "space" ---but I got a notion ---I will answer in the way I am familiar.

We can qualify it better later.

There is a VOID that the cosmos occupies and fills with its cosmic expansions.

That Void is truely a void, a place devoid of all qualities and attributes.

Again, the Void of the Universe (the field) underlies all the phenomena of physics (matter & energy). Matter & energy transmutates into every sort of combination ---yet the field is nuetral & unchanging and untainted by this goings-on of the physical events of Matter & Energy.

Matter/Energy & The Void (the field) cannot be seperated from eachother.

Something-ness and nothingness and cannot be seperated from each other because they comprise 'Duality'. Up & down, Light & darkness etc cannot be seperated from each other ---this is emblematic of the law of duality (aka, ying and yang).

The void (aka, brahman in sanskrit) is distinct, but inseperatable from Matter & energy (aka, prakriti in sanskrit).

The void is pure is the purest sense of the word pure ---it is Zero [please note that the Zero-State refered here is no the same as used in business finance accounting].

The Absolute Truth (Godhead as the ultimate goal of mystic yoga disciplines) is "NOT MANIFEST" in the same way that we see how "Time is manifest in a our temporal transient world" [Do you see the irony of this last statement? "Time is manifest ONLY in a temporal world"].

The "absolute", in reference to the Nature of God's Persona, is equvilant to the understanding of that which is "eternal".

Absolute = eternal.

If there is something that can be called Eternal then its nature can be called absolute.

In the material world nothing is eternal ---except the whole of the material world taken as a whole can be called absolute; the souls, that inhabit bodily-encasements (a body of a species of living creatures) are absolute; the void where all material & spiritual worlds occupy is absolute too.

The Void is actually the bodily effulgence of God's body.

God does not live within the material world ---but he does visit; and he does expand his own energies to give life-force to all, to exist lives independent of his persona ---until via yoga (linking up process) the soul re-establishes a loving personal relationship with God and practices the requisite cultivation of Love-of-God so as to reconcile and finally end "feelings of seperation".

All else other than Yoga of Devotion to Godhead leads the souls to the illusion of being the Ruler of all one surveys ---which of course is an illusion. This scheme is absolute too.

Did I forget to answer your query?

bhaktajan
 
Bhaktajan,

You said,

"You are actually saying 'No thing can be considered Absolute'; IOW, there is nothing that is absolute."

--> Yes. There is no one thing that can be said to comprise the absolute.
　
"The entire cosmos taken in its entirity is absolute."

--> I disagree. There are other aspects to the absolute besides the cosmos. The cosmos is only a temporary manifestation of the absolute.

"…Other wise you are saying all is a false illusion (a dream within a dream within a dream)…"

--> I am.

"…and then say, And there is no one dreaming; no one is outside the dream."

--> Our existence is only an illusion. Only the absolute is the real ‘thing’ that ‘exists.’

"…Other wise you are saying enlightenment means to see the truth that all is untrue…"

--> Yes, all of the cosmos is an illusion.

"…and thus the goal is to 'desolve' the souls latent properities (primarily it's ego) and merge into a sleep state thus avoiding the risk of the waking state to be in an illusion called life and living."

--> Yes, but the goal is to merge into in wide-awake consciousness, not in a dream-like state.

"…intense "Feelings of Seperation from the Supreme Beloved"."

--> That idea fits into my belief system too (except I do not use such emotional language).

"Please note: All I am saying would be sentimental hyperbole if it was NOT all derived from scriptural references."

--> I believe that all scripture is a lot older than we suspect, and that all scripture has been rewritten to a certain extent. I do not trust my final beliefs on such scripture.
　
"…I have arrived at this knowledge after taking all the detours and requisite yoga paths in my own past lives…"

--> It is important to know that there are different kinds of people. What works for you does not work for me, because you are I have inherently different approaches to religion.

"…this last part of my writting is not meant to ilicit sympathy nor to inspire cynical rebuttals but to declare that we band of brothers have seen the Glarring effulegences of all the varieties of inglorious basters already."

--> Do not worry, no offense taken.
　
"God is the Absolute Truth when all paths of Yogic mystisism are taken to their finality."

--> I disagree.

"The Absolute is The person God."

--> I disagree.
　
"God is Formless & simply another temporal manifestation of material energy."

--> I agree that God is a temporary manifestation.

"That is the path that must first be traversed (brahman>Param-atma>Bhagavan) ---First, 'I am not this material body/Ego/Present Birth with all its trappings; I am Spirit soul ~I am the stuff of Brahman'; Second, 'All sentient beings are also Spirit Souls ~each a part and parcel of the Absolute Soul aka Paramatma'; Third, 'All parts and parcels are seeking reciprocal pastimes with Bhagavan aka The Persoanlity of Godhead'"

--> I agree. Our true nature is nothing like our personalities that manifest on this physical plane.
　
 
Nick,
You have been agreeing to:
What I know to be 'advaita' or 'maya-vadi' hindu schools of philosophical thought.

I have shown that I am familiar with the logic conclusions of these philosophical conclusion of these impersonal Vedic traditions.

I have been prompted to express two things in my posts so far:
a] My own opinion
b] the revelations of Ultra-orthodox-Theist-Hindu Scriptures . . . along with a dose of Hindu Metaphysic too.
 
Z wrote:
Throughout your posts you fail to describe the space of the absolute, which I keep asking about, we have to define that before we can go on . . .
Click to expand...

Z, if I again failed to properly reply ... let me know what you think I mean or just what you think in regards to the topic you have framed, "to describe the space of the absolute".

Thank in advance,
Bhaktajan
 
Bhaktajan wrote: "…this last part of my writting is not meant to ilicit sympathy nor to inspire cynical rebuttals but to declare that we band of brothers have seen the Glarring effulegences of all the varieties of inglorious basters already."
Click to expand...

Nick ---the meaning in my quote above is that we souls in the material world where brought up as contemporaries during the same Milleniums . . . the past 6,000 years of world history is our common heritage ---Re-incarnation again and again agonst the same comrades doing the same thing [the chewing-the-cud process] over and over again thinking we will get a different result.

We have seen the same battles together [even the mundane ones . . . or especially mundane ones], and still the future holds the same latent experiences for our next generations.

Nick, next time you watch a documentary of animal life ---Think of this sardonic notion:

"Documentary of animal's lives are travel brochures of future lifetimes for the soul"--Bhaktajan

Ettiquette is what comes after the Realisation of the soul as infitestimally small and hapless.

Ettiquette is what comes after the Realisation that God is a person ---because God is a Person He MUST be an absolute entity ---lest, Nicks' opinion would be 100% correct. But the philosophy that Nick quotes [knowingly or not knowingly] ia from the Vedas, just as where the knowledge of Godhead as an ABSOLUTE PERSONA is revealed.
 
You also have said "I now see where your're coming from"

Can you tell me "What is there that is ABSOLUTE?"

Is the Void ABSOLUTE?

Even intellectually, Is the Void ABSOLUTE?

Is there really a ZERO State of ABSOLUTE nothingness?

Bhaktajan


btw, do you sense or know before-hand, that I am setting you up to admit that . . . ?
 
bhaktajan
Thanks for the answer, I think we are getting nearer… at least now we are attempting to define the reality map.

The cycle of Birth and death (the phenomenum of re-births/transimigration of the soul) is unlimited.
Click to expand...

A circle in unlimited? As the soul is the same in life or death, the cycles are only apparent according to the vehicle used. Besides rebirth etc is not a personality.

What I mean by ‘space’ is the place in which the personality resides. Imagine nothing exists except the given ‘x’ be it mind, sopul or god or whatever, so we are placing it in a void. Then ask what its body is or its presence, nature etc, what is the ‘object’ or reality of a given thing.

Matter/Energy & The Void (the field) cannot be seperated from eachother.
Click to expand...

Indeed, you have the oneness both differentiated and undifferentiated ~ it’s the same thing and thus is not strictly separate. I don’t see a duality once I changed my terms from void and existence to the above.

The "absolute", in reference to the Nature of God's Persona, is equvilant to the understanding of that which is "eternal".
Absolute = eternal.
Click to expand...

Infinite rather than finite, yet infinity is incomparative, you cannot compare it to anything else. So what you think of as personality/persona, does not belong to it ~ no matter what that is! From this we can jump to the idea that ’godhead’ or the oneness or infinity, does not have persona in any context. That doesn’t mean it isn’t ’god’ it just means it isn’t god in any context we can think of. North american natives call this the ‘great spirit’ or the ‘great mystery’, in druidry it is the divine ceugant, its connection to existence can be called the Tao [or the awens in druidry, ma’at by the egyptians].

If there is something that can be called Eternal then its nature can be called absolute.
Click to expand...

I see your point that a oneness is always a oneness, infinity is always infinity and only infinity etc, but the term and meaning of the ‘absolute’ doesn’t allow from flow in and out of that, whereas in druidry we would see it as the source of all manifestation, it is paradoxically in constant flux. After all in order for infinite being to be a creator, it has to manifest from within itself in order to create.

There is no duality between the creation and creator, and all gods can create from the oneness just as we can if we learn how.

God does not live within the material world ---but he does visit
Click to expand...

How can an infinite or absolute being visit? That just doesn’t make sense? :)
　
　
　
 
Bhaktajan,

You said,

"You have been agreeing to: What I know to be 'advaita' or 'maya-vadi' hindu schools of philosophical thought."

--> Yes, my belief system is similar to Advaita.

"What is there that is ABSOLUTE? Is the Void ABSOLUTE? Even intellectually, Is the Void ABSOLUTE? Is there really a ZERO State of ABSOLUTE nothingness?"

--> Yes, I see the void as the absolute. I say yes to the question, "Is there really a ZERO State of ABSOLUTE nothingness?" because the word nothingness refers to the void which also refers to the absolute. The word nothingness refers to everything beyond the cosmos, it does not refer to a lack of a cosmos.
 
This goes out to every or anyone: what do you actually KNOW? It's all well and good to say that the Vedas say this, or that, or summarize in one's own words the "wisdom" of the ages, but what do YOU actually KNOW? I know that meaning absolutely depends on context. There is no "meaning" outside a functional paradigm. In order to transcend the functional paradigm we need metaphysics, but the metaphysics is also a function of the paradigm, and has no real meaning outside of it, so it's essentially useless as anything more than a vehicle of fantasy- the fantasy of escape from the limitation of what one KNOWS. So, what do you actually know?

It's not a matter of disproving or even describing God. Please relate to me your personal knowledge WITHOUT resorting to hope.

Chris
 
China Cat Sunflower said:
what do YOU actually KNOW?
Click to expand...

“Know” seems to mean several things…


  • To perceive directly, have direct cognition of
  • To have understanding of
  • To recognise the nature of
  • To have knowledge (“facts”?)
  • To be acquainted with
etc.

...so do you need to hone in on this a little?
​


Know - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


Please relate to me your personal knowledge WITHOUT resorting to hope.
Click to expand...
I’m guessing you’re not wanting an endless list of facts that I may have accrued??!! But if you insist on an answer…

I can only know my own experience as I understand it, as I live my life. What I know is the reality of my life; it is personal, experiential, incomplete, incorrect, fragmentary, subject to change, ineffable, just is. In summary, I don't know. And it will soon end.

s.



​
 
I know that :
-this all is a frame of reference which we share with our multitude of misunderstandings.

-The power of Love is better than the Love of Power.

-All of us really know only a small portion of all there is to know so we should be humble/respectful with each other.
 
Bhaktajan wrote:
btw, do you sense or know before-hand, that I am setting you up to admit that . . . ?
Click to expand...


Nick the Pilot wrote:
Yes, I see the void as the absolute
Click to expand...

Bhaktajan's comment:
In another forum [a hindu philosophy forum] I had this prelonged debated about the Nature of the void ---this should have been a defacto conclusion ---but, NOooooo; there are apprently philosophers that cannot see that the simplest "Laws [ie: 2+2=4]" are later 'super-imposed upon eachother' to arrive at "more complexed laws" ---everything is predicated incontrast to an 'absolute state of existence' and all complex systems of thought or mathmatics or engineering or basic logic ---'are all constructs of multiple basic laws'. That is how IMO, we should approach and define God or even life.

If interested to read how so-called armchair hindu amature scholars could face the void, read what I argued with them here:

VOID Void void - Hindu Dharma Forums
 
How can an infinite or absolute being visit? That just doesn’t make sense? :)
Click to expand...

Same way that transicent illusory beauty exists . . . except it (Transcendant God) exists in thee anti-matter way ---just like "consciousness" does.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Z,
I agree and accept your conclusions as true!
Now, one glitch. The opinion is relative; it's not absolute ---we're back to square one again, no?
 
Z,

1 - Per your reckoning, is there anything that can be classified as wholely "Absolute"?

2 - Is the word or concept of "Absolute" absolute?

3 - Is the opinion that "there is NO Absolute", an absolute truth, or is it a Relative truth?
 
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