Direct experience. |
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For a long time I have been trying to pinpoint the specific cause/reason why people believe in spirits or gods. I was recently talking with a friend about an acid trip he had where he said he was visited by 3 spirits to see if he was ready to be a part of some kind of higher consciouness movement. While I had my own interpratation of what he was seeing I tried to take seriously what he told me to get at the heart of it, though he was never able to tell me what the spirits were(what they looked like, what they were made of, where they were), or what it is that made him interperate what he was experiencing to be spirits. I've had a number of discussions with people about God like this where they experienced something that absolutely blew their mind and because they were unable to understand it, yet found it enriching, attributed the experience to something non-material. Often when you start talking with a person about such an experience they are unable to give any specific reason why they believe this. |
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Last edited by StonedApe; 01-09-2011 at 10:08 PM.
157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
Direct experience. |
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Personal experience, and I mean in waking life. |
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Could either of you elaborate on your direct experience? And also what it is that you believe in. |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
I've made this point in the past, but it bears repeating. |
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One word for you... OK, many words: matter is just electric signals that your brain interprets. This may sound very Matrixy, but it's a scientific fact. Matter isn't really there, it's only your brain perception of probability clouds of "events". Knowing that, non-material is actually the only thing there is. |
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Last edited by Mayatara; 01-11-2011 at 02:27 PM.
dreaming my life away
Whenever I see "it's a scientific fact" on this forum I know there's a huge chance of the words to which it refers being complete bullshit. Those of us here with scientific knowledge and qualifications rarely need to preface our posts with "this is a scientific fact". |
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Last edited by Photolysis; 01-11-2011 at 03:02 PM.
I appreciate your corrections. I wasn't indeed very "scientific" with my choice of words. But for your information, I am a biologist, so I'm not a scientific illiterate and I know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying there's nothing out there, I'm saying there is much more than what you can perceive with your senses or even machines created under certain "physical" assumptions. |
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dreaming my life away
I aprreciate your perspective photolysis, but I was expecting that kind of response. I want to hear about people's direct experiences and hear why the interpret that experience to be some kind of |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
I wonder why no one ever answers "Because I feel like it." |
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StonedApe: I thought that I was a pantheist but then I realized that I am Panentheist. The reason I adjusted my position is because of personal experience. For me, God is just a word for everything. If you look up panentheism, you will find that panentheists say that there is a transcendent reality beyond matter and energy, time, etc... Why do I believe this? Because I experience it every night in my meditations. Someone could say that my experiences are false and only theirs are true, but they have no authority to make that claim about my experiences. That is their opinion and they have a right to their opinion and to believe in the Universe that they want to live in. |
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As has been pointed out to you, I think you need to seriously rethink your philosophy, because at the moment it is self-contradictory. |
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I don't think that you are crazy, but I also don't have any way of knowing that what you see is really what you interprate it to be. This is why I'm trying to get very specific descriptions of peoples experiences. I have had certain mystic experiences myself, but none that has led me to believe in any kind of spirits afterwords while I have a few friends who have. When I press them for details, it starts to sound like they are making shit up and don't really know what happened. |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
I interact with the spirits, yes. They are not ghosts or anything like that. I practice energy healing and they stand behind me and put their arms into my arms and move them around to where the healing is needed. I remain passive and allow them to work. Miraculous healings happen this way, I am not doing the healing, however, I am kind of like a physical anchor for their energy to flow through into another person. They show me images and tell me what the person needs to be healed. I then tell this to the person. It sounds all new-age but it is very ordinary for me. I can see them with my eyes open or closed when I get into the right mind-frame. |
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I understand what you mean, but maybe I'm weird because I've actually taken the opposite perspective. |
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I just remembered the one time three friends and I saw an actual fairy! We were camping in the forest in Florida at a Gathering. It was full moon and there was a drum circle. One of the people was this girl and we had a mutual crush on each other. There was another couple and we were all hanging out, dancing and having lots of fun and love was in the air. Just then out of the sky we saw something glowing float down and land on the grass. We all ran over there and looked at it and it was a little woman with butterfly wings. We all saw it and we were all amazed. She didn't seem to notice us as she was self absorbed and maybe we were invisible to her or something. We just stared at her for about ten minutes. She was the color of moonlight. She was flowing with energy like a cobweb in the breeze. But I got bored after I got over my amazement. I wanted to get her attention. I gently blew on her. And what happened? Instead of getting her attention, she disintegrated into flakes and all the flakes floated away and disappeared. I was crushed. I thought that maybe I killed her but actually I felt that she just returned to her world, where-ever that was. |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
I only see these spirits when I am in a healing session. Otherwise I don't see them. They don't have a sense of humor that I can tell. They are very impersonal yet filled with compassion and caring. They are selfless. They also work on me when I am healing myself. They open my crown chakra and stuff. |
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Last edited by Dannon Oneironaut; 01-12-2011 at 06:53 AM.
I would define real things as being things that I percieve with my sense organs, whereas I can experience things in my mind that are not real, though still meaningful and beautiful, often more meaningful and more beautiful. Even these things are real in some sense, there are signals going through my brain that cause them. |
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Last edited by StonedApe; 01-12-2011 at 07:07 AM. Reason: making myself sound like less of a jackass
157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
The problem with defining what is real and what isn't is that it is philosophy, and philosophy is bullshit. When we have concepts of what reality is that means that we don't know what reality is because: reality is not a concept. reality just IS. And we cannot say what reality is without settling on concepts that limit reality. The reality that can be said is not reality. Babies don't distinguish what is real and what isn't real. Everything is real to a baby. It is our conceptual mind that dissects our experience and defines some things as real and other things as unreal. Either everything is real or nothing is real. And everything is nothing and nothing is everything. One thing is for sure though: the one who is having the experience is real. |
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Zazen is just seated meditation, just focusing on the breath to work on concentration and awareness. I feel like when I do it I can cultivate chi, or vril(haha I just googled vril and it is a way crazier/new agey concept than I thought, have some reading to do now), or in other words become aware of the energy I'm taking in with each breath and not waste it uneccesarily. I'll have to try meditating on what you said in the last paragraph, even just reading it brings a bit of that formless awareness. I generally just do open eye meditation and focus on the breath and its relationship with the body, I've been meaning to try some exercises of sorts but haven't found any I like so far. Do you meditate with eyes open or closed? |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
I would say words are words and when compared to reality they are nearly nothing, however I gain a lot of pleasure from them and think that through using them to understand reality I can gain a wider perspective on it. Though maybe I just like losing myself in their noise. |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
Generally when doing formal medtation I have eyes closed. With concentration techniques, however, I start with eyes open and concentrate on a symbol on the wall or my eyes in a mirror or a candle flame. I concentrate until my vision gets all weird. I keep going. Then I close my eyes and concentrate on the same object visualized inside. I then get rid of the object and concentrate on my own formless awareness. This is refining attention. This leads to Rigpa. |
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