Adam & Eve sitting in a tree....

[Akivah]

The problem lies in the state of mind the reader is in when reading scripture, which determines how it is seen and understood. Therein lies the problem, as it is open to many personal interpretations, most of which are probably erroneous conjecture. Therefore, scripture should be set aside and the first hand spiritual experience sought FIRST. That way, one is in the right kind of mind with which to read and understand scripture. The true nature of Reality cannot be ascertained by seeing through the distorted lens of descriptions about Reality, but via Reality itself. Only a mind at one with Reality itself can show us what is meant by scripture. Anything else is a distortion.

You state that the problem is personal interpretation and then state that the solution is personal spiritual experience. Your methodology doesn't fix the problem as both methods are personal. Thus every person will have a different interpretation.

I think the proper way is to do a comparative analysis to the same text in other places in the Tanakh. Then apply the same contextual meaning to both passages. This method will have differing people arrive at similar conclusions.

 

[Akivah]

Myth or history? A bit of both.

It sounds like you got your story line from the Russel Crowe Noah movie.

 

[godnotgod]

jl

You state that the problem is personal interpretation and then state that the solution is personal spiritual experience. Your methodology doesn't fix the problem as both methods are personal. Thus every person will have a different interpretation.

No, that is not what I am saying. What I said was:

"Only a mind at one with Reality itself can show us what is meant by scripture."

In this merging, personal view dissolves away. This is what is known as 'divine union', or 'yoga'. In Buddhism, for example, Nirvana is the extinguishing of the seeker.

Deepak Chopra describes the spiritual experience as 'the merging of the observer, the observed, and the entire process of observation into a single Reality'

The spiritual experience is not a personal experience of 'I'; it is the experience of The Absolute experiencing itself as 'you', in the same way that a wave is the total action of the ocean.

There is no longer the notion of an 'experiencer of the experience'.

 

[Akivah]

jl


No, that is not what I am saying. What I said was:

"Only a mind at one with Reality itself can show us what is meant by scripture."

In this merging, personal view dissolves away. This is what is known as 'divine union', or 'yoga'. In Buddhism, for example, Nirvana is the extinguishing of the seeker.

Deepak Chopra describes the spiritual experience as 'the merging of the observer, the observed, and the entire process of observation into a single Reality'

The spiritual experience is not a personal experience of 'I'; it is the experience of The Absolute experiencing itself as 'you', in the same way that a wave is the total action of the ocean.

There is no longer the notion of an 'experiencer of the experience'.

I don't get it. How can a single reality exist when each person's mind has their own reality? The only way you can get to what you describe is if separate minds merge into a single hive mind.

Human minds are not homogeneous to be a metaphor to waves in an ocean. We are more like snowflakes. We can be clumped into a snow drift, but each individual flake is unique.

 

[allfoak]

You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me.
John 5:39

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything
has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes
may be reconciled."--The Kybalion.

 

[godnotgod]

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything
has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes
may be reconciled."--The Kybalion.

From a larger view, all dualities merge into the One Reality.

​

All I am saying is that to interpret Reality in terms of a conceptual description of Reality is to miss the mark. All descriptions of Reality can only be understood properly in terms of the direct and immediate apprehension of Reality itself. Therefore, the mystic puts scripture aside and goes directly to the Source within, knowing that scripture is but a second-hand account of the first-hand experience which it is attempting to describe.

 

[godnotgod]

I don't get it. How can a single reality exist when each person's mind has their own reality? The only way you can get to what you describe is if separate minds merge into a single hive mind.

Human minds are not homogeneous to be a metaphor to waves in an ocean. We are more like snowflakes. We can be clumped into a snow drift, but each individual flake is unique.

"Each person's mind/reality" is not actual Reality; it is only perceptual reality. The actual Reality is that all sentient beings share a common consciousness, just as all fish share a common and singular ocean. 'Separate minds' is but an illusion of the mind itself, while the mind itself is a self-created principle. 'I' creates and maintains the convincing illusion of separation, where no such separation actually exists in Reality.

Like snowflakes, which share the universal substance of water, minds are temporal manifestations of a universal, singular, and permanent Consciousness. Snowflakes cannot exist without water; minds cannot exist without consciousness. Just as water precedes all snowflakes, so does consciousness precede mind. When mind dissolves away, there is only consciousness, which sees things as they are, rather than how the mind only conceptualizes them to be.

 

[Thief]

for this thread...it seems GNG .....is not God

but is the reincarnation of the serpent from the garden event

 

[godnotgod]

for this thread...it seems GNG .....is not God

but is the reincarnation of the serpent from the garden event

Surprise! The serpent in the Garden event is none other than the Godhead.

 

[Thief]

Surprise! The serpent in the Garden event is none other than the Godhead.

not surprised at your post.....

 

[godnotgod]

" all paradoxes
may be reconciled."--The Kybalion.

Paradox can only be reconciled when, as Patanjali stated:

"Yoga (ie divine union) is the cessation of all of the activities of the mind"
*****

"We create a certain theory and then there is the honeymoon with the theory. For a few years things go perfectly well. Then reality asserts itself. Reality brings up a few things and the theory gets into difficulty because we had excluded a few facts. Those facts will protest, they will sabotage your theory, they will assert themselves. In the eighteenth century science was absolutely certain, now it is certain no more. Now a new theory has come: the theory of uncertainty.

Just a hundred and fifty years ago Immanuel Kant came across this fact in Germany. He said that reason is very limited; it sees only a certain part of reality and starts believing 'that this is the whole. This has been the trouble. Sooner or later we discover further realities and the old whole is in conflict with the new vision. Immanuel Kant attempted to show that there were ineluctable limits to reason, that reason is very limited. But nobody seems to have heard, nobody has cared about Immanuel Kant. Nobody cares much about philosophers.

But science in this century has at last caught up with Kant. Now Heinsenberg, in physics, and Godel, in mathematics, have shown ineluctable limits to human reason. They open up to us a glimpse of a nature which is irrational and paradoxical to the very core. Whatsoever we have been saying about nature has all gone wrong. All principles go wrong because nature is not synonymous with reason, nature is bigger than reason."

Osho

Osho - Talks on Zen: Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol. 1, Chapter 4: Learn from the Peacocks, Question 5

 

[godnotgod]

not surprised at your post.....

Of course not. You're impervious to anything smacking of actual Reality. You only find dead, stale but seemingly safe and secure dogma attractive.

 

[Super Universe]

The Law of One (Ra Material)


The Law of One - PDF version

There are many beings in the universe, good/bad,selfish/unselfish, control freaks/independants, and more. There are also many levels of beings, the higher levels usually have beings who are considered good, unselfish, they are not control freaks, they are teachers as well as students.

Not all the higher level beings are good. Some of them feed off of lower level life forms attention and even worship. When fear is preached, like saying "The earth is about to suffer some cataclysm," that should be a warning to you.

Oneness sounds great at first. "We're all one," sounds like something from a higher plane of existence but individuality was and still is God's gift to all of us. You can be a part of a community yet still be an individual. Even in heaven you will still remain an individual. You will still be "you". Becoming "one" with others is like becoming a Borg with a central hive mind. You will be a drone.

 

[godnotgod]

Oneness sounds great at first. "We're all one," sounds like something from a higher plane of existence but individuality was and still is God's gift to all of us. You can be a part of a community yet still be an individual. Even in heaven you will still remain an individual. You will still be "you". Becoming "one" with others is like becoming a Borg with a central hive mind. You will be a drone.

LOL, No, that is not the way it works, though it may seem to be so.

Humans can be creative, but not attached to their creations. To understand that we are at the root of all things One, is to understand the part we play in relation to the whole, and to be fully supported by the whole. This is participation in the joy of life at its most rewarding.

 

[allfoak]

From a larger view, all dualities merge into the One Reality.

​

All I am saying is that to interpret Reality in terms of a conceptual description of Reality is to miss the mark. All descriptions of Reality can only be understood properly in terms of the direct and immediate apprehension of Reality itself. Therefore, the mystic puts scripture aside and goes directly to the Source within, knowing that scripture is but a second-hand account of the first-hand experience which it is attempting to describe.

And i too understand you.
It took me less than 2 years of intense study when i came to the same conclusion.
The funny thing is, i used the scriptures as a catalyst to get there.
I was a youth who knew nothing but alcohol, drugs, emotional and physical abuse and petty crime as a way of life.
I now understood however, that i did not need the scripture since i am the embodiment of the scripture but it was extremely helpful as a guide and still is.

 

[allfoak]

Paradox can only be reconciled when, as Patanjali stated:

"Yoga (ie divine union) is the cessation of all of the activities of the mind"
*****

"We create a certain theory and then there is the honeymoon with the theory. For a few years things go perfectly well. Then reality asserts itself. Reality brings up a few things and the theory gets into difficulty because we had excluded a few facts. Those facts will protest, they will sabotage your theory, they will assert themselves. In the eighteenth century science was absolutely certain, now it is certain no more. Now a new theory has come: the theory of uncertainty.

Just a hundred and fifty years ago Immanuel Kant came across this fact in Germany. He said that reason is very limited; it sees only a certain part of reality and starts believing 'that this is the whole. This has been the trouble. Sooner or later we discover further realities and the old whole is in conflict with the new vision. Immanuel Kant attempted to show that there were ineluctable limits to reason, that reason is very limited. But nobody seems to have heard, nobody has cared about Immanuel Kant. Nobody cares much about philosophers.

But science in this century has at last caught up with Kant. Now Heinsenberg, in physics, and Godel, in mathematics, have shown ineluctable limits to human reason. They open up to us a glimpse of a nature which is irrational and paradoxical to the very core. Whatsoever we have been saying about nature has all gone wrong. All principles go wrong because nature is not synonymous with reason, nature is bigger than reason."

Osho

Osho - Talks on Zen: Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol. 1, Chapter 4: Learn from the Peacocks, Question 5

Good stuff!
Nothing to disagree with.

 

[Thief]

Of course not. You're impervious to anything smacking of actual Reality. You only find dead, stale but seemingly safe and secure dogma attractive.

i have no dogma

and you don't even believe in yourself

 

[godnotgod]

i have no dogma

You do make a great poker player, I must admit.

 

[Electus de Lumine]

....made a sinner out of you and me.
History or allegory?
What is this story about?

All perspectives welcome.

The two first humans with souls that had no free-will where given it by Lucifer and thus Yahweh hated them for it.

Later his story changed the details drastically to appeal to his chosen people and the myths that where common at the time.

 

[godnotgod]

The two first humans with souls that had no free-will where given it by Lucifer and thus Yahweh hated them for it.

Later his story changed the details drastically to appeal to his chosen people and the myths that where common at the time.

hmmmm.....the version I had always heard was that Lucifer did not feel that Adam & Eve deserved Paradise and so revolted against God.