@ CMax

Queries:

You write:
1. What, then, would be the purpose of spiritual evolution since we are already a direct emanation of pure consciousness of the supreme Lord God? Wouldn't the "end game" for the individual simply be a return to itself as Lord God?

2. And if the development of consciousness (spiritual or otherwise) is ultimately the pure consciousness that is God itself, what benefit was there ever to the Lord God, unless we are gaining experience on its behalf?

3. And if that is the case, are we not simply food for his Lord God, in the form of experience? Or is God attempting to see himself by creating an endless array of mirrors through which it can experience its own reflection?

---

One more thing. You mentioned to Andrew that the soul travels in:
Are you implying here that a soul requires a form of "sustenance" in order to maintain its existence, like a physical body must?

If so, how would "eating" (or whatever it does to replenish itself) on the astral be a viable replenishment source when the astral is "lower" (less subtle) than its own body that exists on the soul or Atma level?

For example, could a mind (or a body on the mental level) get sustenance from the physical level? How would the Atma "eat" from the physical, or astral, or any lower level? And what is it precisely that the spiritual body must eat, to rejuvenate?

@Chris
I'm still catching up on this thread but I wanted to post my paper for you because there are other options than an intelligent creator to possible explanations to how the universe could have come about. While I agree philosophically at some point something needs to make things go assuming an infinite time line its not necessary however an infinite time line is illogical in itself because it contradicts a lot of physical and logical laws.

docs.google.com/document/d/18ZSpzpiQM7v7...yBXARfdECPc7hOI/edit

After viewing the thread more closely I have some additional comments.

I need to heed my own advice here but here goes. First, I know first hand that discussing matters that you hold close to your heart can get heated. To the theist Linda's advice on prayer can be helpful. When discussing philosophy and religion I think it makes sense to adopt the methodology of great philosophers. As Christians we should ask ourselves if we are discussing the topic in a way Jesus would approach it (I rarely think I am lately). I would encourage non-theists to follow methods that justify the image they wish to project to the world. If you feel compassion without religion is important I think it should be reflected in your post. If being proven right is your highest priority then I propose you are in the wrong place to find what you want most. I think a great deal of ground can be covered but not if the discussion reduces itself to personal attacks. If I've offended anyone by what they took as a personal attack I am sorry and there is no reason for me to attack people searching for answers and truth.

Hi Shawn,

I would like to add that you and Christopher's presents here has enriched the conversations in this web site through your input. For me, you both are a blessing and I thank God that you decided to share your faith and knowledge.

Love you guys, Linda

@Christopher

Check out the current work in neuroscience and brain/mind research. You are really just talking about "mind" when you say consciousness. It is well-settled that mind is an "emergent property" of the brain. So that is what it is.

Your question is not very clear. You seem to assert that consciousness had to be part of the world (for reasons that are not at all clear to me). I see no reason why the world could not be just exactly the way it is right now - except without humans.

Genetic researchers have determined that we all descend from a very small group of potential first parents (our adam and eve if you will). They estimate that the population of humans got down to perhaps a total of around 100 people. My point is that we humans came extremely close to becoming extinct - as has happened to most species that have ever lived.

Had that happened (human extinction) the rest of this world would have kept right on spinning as it has with us. So I am at a loss to understand your point that consciousness had to have been part of life by definition.

>> They estimate that the population of humans got down to perhaps a total of around 100 people.
perhaps 8.

David -

Please answer the following question directly and honestly for all of us here in the forum:

Have you ever changed your mind about anything whatsoever?

The obvious answer to this extremely basic question is YES, you most certainly have...of course you have.

Not only do we all change our minds literally every day, but the mind itself appears to be in a virtually constant state of perpetual flux on a moment-to-moment basis.

So, on this point I will now ask you another question in regard to your summation that the mind is a simple function of the brain and nothing more.

David...if your mind is constantly changing, then who or what is it that is witnessing the internal change of mind for you?

The natural response to this question would be..."Well ME of course!"

Well, this answer, (if yours goes along these lines) essentially proves hands-down that the self is different from the mind, and further, we must therefore conclude that the self is also different from the body, and in both cases of mind and body alike, the difference must be on a level of absolute totality.

Otherwise, if there were no deep distinction between your mind and your essential self, then how could you ever change your mind about anything?

And on a more basic level, how could you ever change anything about your body as well, (*for example, going to the sports gym to alter one's physical appearance for the better)?

There must seriously be an aspect of our being on the very deepest of levels that never ever changes, and this is the exact point I am making in reference to the soul.

All accounts of the soul conclude that it is the hidden seer, witness and decider behind the mind/body complex.

The soul, or self is the changeless, deathless, and eternal witness of it's own experiences, whether they be of a pleasurable nature or a painful one, and just as every person who has undergone and documented a Near-Death Experience or NDE will confirm with you, death is NOT the end of life, it is only a transition.

The supposedly highly advanced neuroscientists that you mentioned apparently know nothing of how even their own minds work on a deeper level!

Further, the scientists have either determined the eternal nature of the soul to be true and are suppressing the information, or they still have not yet fully made the discovery, however, this does nothing to dismiss the literally thousands or unrelated accounts of NDE's that all describe nearly the exact same type of phenomena, when in fact if the non-theists were correct, these experiences should never have ever taken place in the first place.

Just a bit of food for thought.

Cheers David.

CM.

@Aces Lucky -

Here are the basic answers to each of your questions from your last post below:

Aces: 1. What, then, would be the purpose of spiritual evolution since we are already a direct emanation of pure consciousness of the supreme Lord God? Wouldn't the "end game" for the individual simply be a return to itself as Lord God?

CM: It is important to understand that we have been traveling throughout the material universes for literally countless millennia via re-incarnation, and although we may have originally come from God Himself, we have fallen very, very far from our original position, into the deplorable condition that we now find ourselves mired in.

Having been conditioned by material nature for so very, very long, it is quite fair to surmise that we have all fallen into a state of intense forgetful-ness of our real and true nature and our relationship with God as 100% pure spiritual beings with no actual connection to material nature at all, not even the material aspect of the mind.

Our main job while we are incarnated on earth is to attain a state of 100% pure and complete spiritual enlightenment, and this essentially entails abandoning all pre-conceived ideas and discovering the true nature of the self for both our own and just as you implied, ultimately God's benefit.

Since achieving this extremely lofty goal is by far the singularly most difficult undertaking that one can imagine let alone actually undertake, this point itself is the very purpose behind your question regarding the necessity of spiritual evolution.

It's the same basic principle behind why it is far easier to keep a white garment clean than it is to clean it after walking through a large puddle of mud.

Once we have walked through the "mud" of the life experiences of this world such as envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, violence, anger, delusion, attachment, ignorance, etc., these things tend to act as extremely effective traps for the soul through it's sojourn through the material universes, and the difficulty of escaping them becomes literally profound.

For example, can you list even one of the above things I just mentioned that you have been able to overcome in complete totality?

Tough stuff, right?

This is what keeps us coming back to the world, and conversely, cultivating the opposite mental and physical habits is what becomes our spiritual lifeboat.

Along with what I mentioned above, you could also basically equate that puddle of mud with physical nature and reality as well, which is essentially keeping the soul in captivity until it (*the soul) has learned all of it's life lessons thoroughly and completely.

When this has occurred, at that very instant one becomes free from the continuous cycle of being born and dying in the material universes, and this can happen even while one is presently alive and active in the world, as one does not have to die to become 100% spiritually free, even in this lifetime.

Aces: 2. And if the development of consciousness (spiritual or otherwise) is ultimately the pure consciousness that is God itself, what benefit was there ever to the Lord God, unless we are gaining experience on its behalf?

CM: There may be a variety of ways to express God's essential point of view, based upon an extremely in-depth level of soul-searching, meditation or even direct revelation, however, the truth is that the mystery only deepens anyway, and there is an infinitude of things that we will never truly understand about God...and that is part of His great beauty.

God is an eternal mystery, not unlike our own selves, because we are intimately related to Him, however, you gave away at least part of the answer at the end of your own question, which leads one to believe that you are more advanced on this subject than you might wish others to know.

Aces: 3. And if that is the case, are we not simply food for his Lord God, in the form of experience? Or is God attempting to see himself by creating an endless array of mirrors through which it can experience its own reflection?

CM: I feel certain that God has much more palatable spiritual dishes to dine upon than our small human matter-based egos and life-experiences, however the last part of your question again reveals the fact that you likely know much more about these things than you are letting on.

Cheers Aces.

CM.

@CM
Thanks for your post I found it very insightful though I believe some people think NDE are the result of the brain malfunctioning due to lack of oxygen and going into a special state that most people don't experience normally. However, I have come across some very interesting information (I think there is a netflix on NDE that is fairly recent that I saw this from) some NDE are shared experiences. People have known details about the room such as colors of clothing and who was there while they were unconscious with their eyes closed normally these people claim an out of body experience. I did a quick search on shared NDE as well for anyone interested
www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence09.html

This brings some of my thoughts on brain malfunction into question.

@CMax

I asked:: 1. What, then, would be the purpose of spiritual evolution since we are already a direct emanation of pure consciousness of the supreme Lord God? Wouldn't the "end game" for the individual simply be a return to itself as Lord God?

You confirmed my understanding that the purpose of spiritual evolution would be:That being the case, the short answer to my question, "Wouldn't the "end game" for the individual simply be a return to itself as Lord God?" would be "yes".
Correct?

To the question, "..if the development of consciousness (spiritual or otherwise) is ultimately the pure consciousness that is God itself, what benefit was there ever to the Lord God..", you're basically saying, you don't know, right? (Am I interpreting what you wrote correctly?)


And to my third question, (are we not simply food for his Lord God, in the form of experience?), you wrote:

---

Thank you. Just a few more questions.

I am curious as to what a pure consciousness (God) would find gratifying about re-creating itself into myriad forms of non-pure consciousness by way of the physical world, just to have the non-pure consciousness (that would be us) eventually revert (through spiritual/consciousness development) back to itself again? We would simply end where we started, as you say, emanations of pure consciousness. [If that is the end product, and that was the beginning product, what would be the point?]

Just some curiosity questions:
1. In your opinion, in one sentence or less, what would you consider to be the crest jewel of discrimination?
2. Presuming you practice a form of spiritual travel, have you ever attempted to verify experiences as anything other than pure imagination? (Remember where we started?)

Shawn -

Simple "Brain Malfunction" is an incomplete, insufficient and ultimately incorrect answer to an extremely deep and very powerful question that is not so easily explained away by overly simplistic terms such as these that in fact do not even touch the surface of the real issue at hand.

Of course the person's brain is malfunctioning...they are clinically and officially dead!

This does not however explain the somewhat more shockingly unexplainable issue concerning how the clinically dead person can be seeing things that as far as modern science is concerned they shouldn't be seeing in any way shape or form at all.

How is this possible?

Now, it would be one thing if there were only a few scattered incidents of this type of phenomena happening, perhaps in isolated cases in remote parts of the world where for example there was information available to the clinically dead person somehow before they "died", but this is far from what is going on here.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of case studies on this subject where the persons involved could never have known anything whatsoever about specific information that was simply and literally impossible for them to either know or even access that has been documented in minute detail by them while they were "dead".

And further, how is it possible that this same type of experience could have been repeated with and shared by so many individuals across the globe when they could never ever have known anyone else having the experience?

"Brain Malfunction"?

Ha!

Sorry Shawn, no offense to you man because I know that you did not personally come up with that statement, but this is a sadly incomplete assessment at the very best.

Cheers.

CM.

@CM
How is this possible?
Did you read my entire post?Then I actually gave a specific phenomena that can't be explained by this..
I would be careful with how you respond to people when discussing such a theoretical science if you don't mean offence please don't respond to my response out of context with ridicule like "Ha!".

I'm not comfortable commenting on NDE with absolutes but I believe that clinical death which is based on specific vital signs that can become too faith to detect and actual death are different. Some believe that actual death occurs when the magnetic activity caused by electrical signals in the brain collapse. This actually can take hours after "brain death" occurs. The ideas are certainly incredible but the only thing we can say with certainty is that it is something we don't understand. Death my be a process or something that is either true or not meaning you are either alive or dead but never partly dead.

I no you didn't mean to offend but I'm more upset that you seem to have replied outside of the context of my statement indicating that what I have to say isn't worth listening to.

Shawn -

From what I can see, the critical point regarding the NDE's believe it or not has less to do with whether the person is factually 100% dead or not, and far more to do with the fact that since they are quite provably incapacitated, that there is no logical reason as to why they would experience certain phenomena under such extremely incapacitated conditions.

The idea that because of a simple brain malfunction that a person would be able enter a state where it could be possible for them to not only view the entire room where their body was lying on an operating table, but give 100% factually provable information about things they should never be able to describe is in my opinion certainly shocking enough as a mere possibility, let alone a reality, which in virtually uncountable genuine cases it appears to be.

What type of brain malfunction could cause such an amazing event that they would be able to see, hear and understand things completely without the aid of any of the physical senses whatsoever?

Is this not somewhat shocking?

Brain malfunction or not, from my point of view this is an area that deserves far deeper attention than it has ever previously been given from a scientific viewpoint, and further, it only stands to strengthen the assertion of the Theists, that the human soul is in fact 100% real.

Cheers Shawn, and God Bless.

CM.

@Christopher
Of course NDE claims are fascinating. So are many phenomena. That is because most of the time as of yet they can't be explained by science. Its certainly in the realm of possibility for someone to enter a special state of mind and draw inferrances such as the following claim "I floated above my body, I saw my mother and my wife there, my wife was wearing (description of the outfit I saw her prepare to wear today). I saw the heart monitor flat-line and people attempt CPR and check my pulse then they got a defibrillator and began to attempt to revive me me. I could describe some natural conclusions from the specific accident (lets assume a car accident) so I could describe them doing a blood transfusion. I may be still getting information in my stasis state.via sound.

I'm not saying this phenomena is explained by this false scanareo I invented but there are people who describe things incorrectly with an NDE claim. There are people who are pronounced dead and do not claim an NDE happened. I personally believe NDE are a significant experience and probably often a spiritual experience as well. I would say again, my scenario above doesn't encompass all NDE and some may be considered unexplained by science but tread lightly and be aware of the counter argument which is simply an approach of very fair skeptic questioning.

Your right it deserves more research.

There are claims that the soul weights exactly 22 grams and they are backed by some research. I personally believe in the soul but there is mystery surrounding the spiritual world. Its been a long and enlightening walk. I just want you to have as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions.

Go and be blessed,
Shawn

Sorry, Shawn, I cannot let this one slide. The "weight of a soul study" has been debunked continually for about 100 years. Go ahead and claim the should exists all you like, but when you start making claims such as these studies are "backed by some research", I have to stop you there.

See www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp

Besides, did you ever think about how ridiculous the claims about a soul having weight are? So it is now material? It loses all weight at death and floats off into space? Pure nonsense.

@Bo
Sorry I wasn't clear with my point. I totally agree I was only pointing out that people make all kinds of claims and do all kinds of research about the soul and we are still left with quite a mystery. Some of it seems ridiculous to me and I agree with you this was an example of one that is ridiculous. The research done was horribly uncontrolled which led to very likely errors.

Even our best funded careful research has had problems. CERN published that anti-neutrinos/neutrinos moved at tachyon (faster than light) speeds then had to recently revoke their statement after they found instrumentation errors.

@ Christopher - you ask me to answer your questions and provide specifics and then you of and answer every one of them for me. You really are not interested in what I have to say - so why pretend you are. It is a classic Christian problem - not being able to listen to any viewpoint different from their own.

That the "self" is an illusion is such well-settled science is completely beyond debate. I run a real risk when I talk about things that are current in science as christians are woefully poorly served in their knowledge of science. They have no interest in it as every time they look to see what it says that may implicate their "faith" the "faith" comes out wanting.

I will do you a favor: read "The Ego Tunnel - the science of the mind and the myth of the self" by Thomas Metzinger for a really accessible survey of the current state of the science in this area.

That will get you in the ballpark in terms of where I get my information. But if you want the full picture please add the following to your reading list:
1. The Self Illusion - by Bruce Hood
2. Braintrust - by Patricia Churchland
3. The Belief Instinct - by Jesse Bering
4. Subliminal - by Leonard Mlodinow
5. Free Will - by Sam Harris

That is some of the "science" behind what I said. What do you have behind your arguments? Yes, I know - you have your own gut feelings about what YOU think is correct. Close, real close, but methinks the balance tips in favor of the current state of the science.

I will go so far as to say that the revolution that is happening right now in neuroscience and the study of the mind and the illusion of the self is comparable in its world shattering effects to Galileo's stunning finding that the earth was not the center o the universe.

I am looking forward to the christian dance around the facts that will have to take place to accommodate their "story" into these scientific findings. It may make the response to Galileo and the ongoing struggles with Evolution seem a mere trifal in comparison.

Basically, what you have articulated is where science was about 300 years ago - the little homonucleus - the little man behind the controls (typically seated right behind the eyes in your brain) who, like an air-traffic controller - keeps all systems running.

Until you know what you are talking about - or arguing against - please stay out of the deep end of the pool.