Libertine - Guru of Hedonopia

Discussion in 'Gurus' started by Libertine, Aug 19, 2005.

  1. Bhaskar

    Bhaskar Members

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    Neither logic nor emotion can possibly comprehend the highest truth, for that is experienced in transcendance of mind, not in intellectual masturbation. The best mind is one without thoughts.
     
  2. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    I respect your right to your viewpoint, Bhaskar. However, until I discover any faculties other than the pSy that can be a medium for experience, I will continue to operate through these faculties accordingly.

    The nihilism of "transcendence" is incomprehensible due to its innate quality of absence.

    To expand your horizons through inner space, the eternal sojourn, is the path which I have chosen to take and others have chosen to follow as well.
     
  3. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    Well, I don't know about that, you might be the better judge of that, I will tell you to find a bathroom near by though. [​IMG]

    Actually my brain is going to die in less than 100 years and it did not exist 20 years ago, So I don't call my brain 'God'. [​IMG]


    I am curious now, I really want to know what you mean because, you see the point of questioning things is to reason and accept what you think is the truth, this is logic... well, atleast thats what I have learned in a philosophy class, if logic doesn't answer all things then do you accept the idea that we just have to have faith in somethings that logic doesn't answer- like God.


    absolutely right, we have to stop being dependent on our ego, our addiction to the "self" and then we can be truly ourselves, ofcourse this only happens through God's grace.



    isn't calling something subjective a redundant statement, unless you are coming out of your body and looking at things as they are and going back into it again and looking at them differently? [​IMG]
     
  4. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    Isn't science just "knowledge" about the world. Like Biology- is the knowledge of the anatomy and physiology and all the other things that are dealing with life sciences. Physics- the study of the physical laws of the universe... chemistry- the play of atoms etc? I do not think that knowledge is something that is evil or somehow creates problems... unless you are saying that we are maybe some how not ready for this knowledge, then for that I say- because to use this knowledge properly - one has to be free from things like ego, passion for power etc.


    Well, We cannot say this with 100% accuracy that there wasn't 'science' as we know it in the past... because there were scientists in places like China, there were astronomers, great thinkers and philosophers in places like greece, rome, persia, Islamic empire, India, etc. They knew about salicylic acid - the present day aspirin -just with out the acetyl group.

    Anyway, the point is, they knew some science and probably that science forms the fundamentals of sciences today. However, I am sure we can say that there existed passion for power, for expansion and plenty of selfish motives. and ofcourse with those things did destroy lives- maybe at a lower level than what we see in genocides today , but it did happen and we are suffering the samethings today as well. These things are the real problems, these are the ones that are symbolized as satan's powers.

    I don't know but religion has emerged as a way to solve problems. God- adherence to him made the muslims in the crusades (1000 Ad somewhere around that time) to respect their enemies and give them some water if they are captured. Also, there have been cases where people were killed through a belief in God but the holy men - the sufis, the saints all preached peace and have brought that to the societies they were living in.

    Its funny when you say: "humanist values are as good as those of religious". In fact, humanist values are religious, they have come from religion. If we track all the humanist values to their roots - they will have them deeply rooted in Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism etc.

    Anyway, belief in the catholic church or some strict adherence to some organized religion is different than a belief in God, if this was untrue then we would not have people who live normal lives and still hold a strong belief in God.
     
  5. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    Amen to that brother! :D the best mind is no mind, then what exists is pure consciousness free from doubts and everything is just a game.
     
  6. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    That's because you see "God" as something objective.


    Logic/Reason are the methods to discovering truths. When you say "answers ALL things" you include mysteries that have yet to be discovered and thus, you are saying that they CANNOT be discovered through those methods. Really? Which faculties do you use to figure that out? So, if we "can't explain it", alas "God did it?"...This is the primal theory that has already been discarded several times over.
    Just because the rumbling, the smoke, the fire couldn't be adequately explained back in the day, the ancients believed it was the "volcano gods"... The gap-filling has proven time and time again to be a joke.


    We have to stop being dependent on things. We have to conquer our addictions without blaming the inanimate. It comes through willpower and reason, not a spooky sky entity.



    That's what religious people do when they assume they know the origins of the universe and the answers to what "God" wants. Subjective is on subject to that particular individual, it is relative to the perception.

    Lack of evidence of a mystery is not evidence for "God". That is an assumption and a very hasty one at that. Yet, this seems to be the "redundant" method used consistently here.
     
  7. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    And which faculties did you two use to discover this? I am interested in knowing...
     
  8. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    I agree with you when you say that it is ignorant to just assume something is a wonder of God and just not explore it even if one needs to do so- but that does not mean that it is wrong to think that it is caused by God- because at the fundamental level it is.

    You see, you might find out everything about a biochemical pathway, I can just sit here and discuss with you each and every step of how Glucose is converted into energy in a tiny cell of our body. However, that does not answer the question why? - why does this happen? why do I survive? why is this making me survive? the question here is about "existence" , it is about life, it is about the physical laws themselves. You cannot answer this, not with out looking deep with in yourself and that only happens when one becomes a devotee of God and surrenders to the higher power that is basically running this universe as we see it now.
     
  9. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    :D the same faculties you used when you were asking me the question.

    by saying the "best mind is no mind" - I did not mean do not use your reasoning power- your intelligence , but what I was trying to say is what you were trying to say and what bhaskar was trying to say- the animal mind that is ignorant of the truth, that lives in doubt, that fears , that gets angry etc.

    ha, although we are all very far from reaching the truth, we will get there one day.
     
  10. mariecstasy

    mariecstasy Enchanted

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    i disagree....with your dropping of religious dogma; the bottom line of all religion is love...not one religion teaches to hate another, its simply the interpreter who becomes fundamentalist that is the problem....if people find comfort in these ideals and dogmas, then out of respect and out of love, one should embrace those people....perhaps they feel they have found their answers there...it doesn't make them stupid...many people of faith, whatever faith it is, are at peace and are wonderful people...not just wonderful christians or buddhists or hinduists....but rather wonderful human beings.
    you say basically here to open your mind, but you sound as if you have narrowed yours...finding what is best for you and thinking it the path of everyone....
    we are all gods and all create our own reality...have respect for other people's reality too, even if you disagree...
    granted we can each find our own path or dogma that is good for ourselves, but for those who don't know that, who havent realized that, or who are simply sheep.....well peace and blessings to them too...

    sorry if that came across egotistical or preachy, it genuinely came from the heart as i find this logical way of thinking to lack the heart that is essential to embrace all of humanity...instead it puts people in boxes and labels them....and we are all doing the best we can, even the ones that aren't, they just havent realized they can do better yet...LOVE IS THE ANSWER....
     
  11. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    "LOVE IS THE ANSWER...."

    Amen to that man! Amen!
     
  12. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    It's not scince in itself, but the way it is used. There ccan be no doubt that science has transformed the world. Modern industrial civilization has changed everything, and thrown up a whole raft of new problems.
    Take neuclear waste - it has to be kept safe somhow for millions of years. If this civilization undergoes some kind of collapse, what will happen? It could spell the end of life on earthy altogether.
    Only science, ie modern science, has created this situation, only science can solve it. God isn't going to appear and wave a magic wand. Medieval notions of morality aren't going to be much help either.

    They didn't know enough to be able to cause any damage. And philosophy has little to do with empirical science, although some branches of it may have contributed to the development of science in the early stages, back in the 17 - 18th centuries.

    Pre Newton they certainly didn't know even the basic lawas of motion etc.
    They didn't know much about the actual universe either. For instance, they believed it was very, very small compared to what we now know to be the case. They had no idea of the existence of galaxies right up to the last centurey. Now we know there are billions of galaxies.
    They believed too that diseases are caused by devils etc. rather than bacteria, viruses etc.

    Wow, wasn't that nice of the muslims! Not to allow their prisoners to die of thirst. A real moral breakthrough.
    And how much oppression, how many wars have been started as a direct result of people's belief in these religions? They wouldn't even have been fighting if it wasn't for dysfunctional religion which labels one 'christian' and another 'muslim' and sets their wholly incompatible ideologies at war with each other.

    I don't think humanist values have come from religion - they come from the spirit - the spirit of humanity.
    Religion tends to believe in 'moral absolutism' to quote the new pope. Ie god has laid down moral codes which can never be changed by humans. So in the eyes of a catholic for example, a gay person who spends all his time just trying to do good for others is nonetheless a 'sinner' whose whole existence is really an offence to god. A straight person, who owns a weapons factory on the other hand is accounted 'righteous' if he just goes to church once a week and mumbles his way through a few pretty meaningless prayers.
    The whole thing is fraught with hypocrisy, and is unable to adapt to changing conditions, or to common sense.
     
  13. Jedi

    Jedi Self Banned

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    How do you forget hugo grotius? The concept of natural law- one of the first humanist laws respecting the individual and the society at the municipal level and also considering each nation as an individual at an international level bound by the law for self determination?

    Besides, 'the spirit of humanity' is religion or atleast was religion during the times when people like hugo grotius, John locke, etc came to be.

    but if you mean "the spirit of humanity" - as these things were made for all humans, then BBB you might want to check the history.

    The people who gave rise to these humanist values only did it for the white male property owners. The nonproperty owning males, the women, other races, other nationalities! were excluded. Although this was all in universal language- they did not consider the other people human!.

    This was not what religion supported, yet it happened, why? - human ignorance, the human intentions of power, of passion for getting ahead and keeping others beneath you. True religion mitigates all this and ends suffering.

    it is funny when you see one of the humanist giants- Mr. John Locke - writing about happiness and pursuit of property was actually a slave trader making profits off of the slave trade from africa.
     
  14. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    Locke is not a philosopher to whom I would give the time of day. But really, he is more a founder of empiricism than humanism, the roots of which go back at least to the rennaissance.

    Religion is a set of human formulations about god, the spirit etc and our relation to it, and also our proper standards of conduct. It defines for us our values, if we believe in it. Who can say how much actually comes from the spirit, and how much is simply the prejudice of past ages enshrined as the word of god?
    'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' it says in the Bible. But nowerdays people don't believe in witchcraft, or the necessity of pleasing god by burning it's adherents. But if we were to be absolutely fixed in our moral view by religion, we'd have to throw away the common sense that tells us that the withcraft fear is false, and go ahead and burn witches anyway.
    In India, there was the practice of sutee - widow burning, again, the practitioners of this foul act thought they were doing just what god wanted.
    Therefore, I say Libertine is right to say we should question our beliefs and assumptions.
    Some religions have supported wars etc in the past, and still do so to-day. The human individual is to be sacrificed on the alter of some outworn and out-dated construct, which has probably been changed through time beyond recognition of those who originally formulated it. But it's ok to encourage others to throw their lives away on behalf of a god they don't actually have any real knowledge or direct experience of. After all, that's what he's told us he wants. Jihad. Crusade.
    Religion is often just a brainwashing tool in the hands of those who hold power.
    We have to see the difference between religion and spirituality. One may experience something of the spirit, and that may help one to see what is right and what is wrong, and where the fuzzy areas are. That is quite different from accepting what some book or some teacher says. Often religion can actually be one of the major barriers to such direct experience.
    And don't forget, there is no consistency between religions when it comes to moral questions. What a christian thinks perfectly ok and in line with god's will is often anathema to a muslim. And vica versa.
    So we either go on with conflict or find new values.
     
  15. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    Actually, I'm wrong about that - I guess it shows a kind of eurocentric bias to say it. Confucianism, which dominated Chinese culture for millenia is also a humanist system. The confucian values are all human values. It is a knowledge of man which leads to their cultivation.
    But this is not in any sense creating a disharmony with the 'will of god' (Confucians don't really have such a concept - they would more likely express it as something like 'the way of heaven and earth').
    There are basic human values, and these are intrinsic in human beings, if obscured. There is no need of a list of fixed rules, applicable to all people in all times, as many religious would have us believe. 'Jen' or human-heartedness is there in everyone quite naturally. All that is needed is to cultivate it.
     
  16. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    Jedi, I respect you, I really do. But, this just sounds like a cop out to me. We don't know "why" something happens? There are several reasons why things happen. And there are several ways to find these things out. You are ultimately trying to lead to some "sole purpose" of existence, and I fail to see things that far. I see nature as the whole of existing things, an energy that cannot be created or destroyed.

    I will not lie to you and make up some bullshit to that I "know why" about everything, but that is why we continue to discover things. You go from one end of the spectrum of physicality to automatically introducing a foreign concept "God" (without evidence) that I am supposed to just embrace. And I cannot do that.
     
  17. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    I read the remainder of your post, indeed. But, I am still stuck on this. Have you ever read any religious text? Bible, perhaps?

    If so, where do you get your concept from?

    If all religion is love, I had much rather find a new and improved way of finding love--such as humanism, without the spooky deities, hells, and dogmatic rituals.
     
  18. sylvanlightning

    sylvanlightning Prismatic Essence

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    My T'ai Chi teacher said of religion: 'Religion is realization of Self.'
    I see that behind any mental set of beliefs based on dogma is a set of mystical experiences based on experience. In doing a quick google search on love being the essence of religion, I found this passage from the Urantia book... this is a mystical way much like the rosicrusian or gnostic viewpoints. Hope you enjoy the following; Peace.

    *
    The Urantia Book -- Part III. The History Of Urantia
    PAPER 103: Section 9.
    The Essence Of Religion


    P1140:7, 103:9.1 Theology deals with the intellectual content of religion, metaphysics (revelation) with the philosophic aspects. Religious experience is the spiritual content of religion. Notwithstanding the mythologic vagaries and the psychologic illusions of the intellectual content of religion, the metaphysical assumptions of error and the techniques of self-deception, the political distortions and the socioeconomic perversions of the philosophic content of religion, the spiritual experience of personal religion remains genuine and valid.

    P1140:8, 103:9.2 Religion has to do with feeling, acting, and living, not merely with thinking. Thinking is more closely related to the material life and should be in the main, but not altogether, dominated by reason and the facts of science and, in its nonmaterial reaches toward the spirit realms, by truth. No matter how illusory and erroneous one's theology, one's religion may be wholly genuine and everlastingly true.

    P1141:1, 103:9.3 Buddhism in its original form is one of the best religions without a God which has arisen throughout all the evolutionary history of Urantia, although, as this faith developed, it did not remain godless. Religion without faith is a contradiction; without God, a philosophic inconsistency and an intellectual absurdity.

    P1141:2, 103:9.4 The magical and mythological parentage of natural religion does not invalidate the reality and truth of the later revelational religions and the consummate saving gospel of the religion of Jesus. Jesus' life and teachings finally divested religion of the superstitions of magic, the illusions of mythology, and the bondage of traditional dogmatism. But this early magic and mythology very effectively prepared the way for later and superior religion by assuming the existence and reality of supermaterial values and beings.

    P1141:3, 103:9.5 Although religious experience is a purely spiritual subjective phenomenon, such an experience embraces a positive and living faith attitude toward the highest realms of universe objective reality. The ideal of religious philosophy is such a faith-trust as would lead man unqualifiedly to depend upon the absolute love of the infinite Father of the universe of universes. Such a genuine religious experience far transcends the philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one's fellows.


    P1141:4, 103:9.6 When theology masters religion, religion dies; it becomes a doctrine instead of a life. The mission of theology is merely to facilitate the self-consciousness of personal spiritual experience. Theology constitutes the religious effort to define, clarify, expound, and justify the experiential claims of religion, which, in the last analysis, can be validated only by living faith. In the higher philosophy of the universe, wisdom, like reason, becomes allied to faith. Reason, wisdom, and faith are man's highest human attainments. Reason introduces man to the world of facts, to things; wisdom introduces him to a world of truth, to relationships; faith initiates him into a world of divinity, spiritual experience.

    P1141:5, 103:9.7 Faith most willingly carries reason along as far as reason can go and then goes on with wisdom to the full philosophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the limitless and never-ending universe journey in the sole company of TRUTH.


    P1141:6, 103:9.8 Science (knowledge) is founded on the inherent (adjutant spirit) assumption that reason is valid, that the universe can be comprehended. Philosophy (co-ordinate comprehension) is founded on the inherent (spirit of wisdom) assumption that wisdom is valid, that the material universe can be co-ordinated with the spiritual. Religion (the truth of personal spiritual experience) is founded on the inherent (Thought Adjuster) assumption that faith is valid, that God can be known and attained.

    P1141:7, 103:9.9 The full realization of the reality of mortal life consists in a progressive willingness to believe these assumptions of reason, wisdom, and faith. Such a life is one motivated by truth and dominated by love; and these are the ideals of objective cosmic reality whose existence cannot be materially demonstrated.

    P1142:1, 103:9.10 When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits wisdom; when wisdom chooses between right and wrong, truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading. And thus are the functions of mind, soul, and spirit ever closely united and functionally interassociated. Reason deals with factual knowledge; wisdom, with philosophy and revelation; faith, with living spiritual experience. Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love ascends to goodness.

    P1142:2, 103:9.11 Faith leads to knowing God, not merely to a mystical feeling of the divine presence. Faith must not be overmuch influenced by its emotional consequences. True religion is an experience of believing and knowing as well as a satisfaction of feeling.


    P1142:3, 103:9.12 There is a reality in religious experience that is proportional to the spiritual content, and such a reality is transcendent to reason, science, philosophy, wisdom, and all other human achievements. The convictions of such an experience are unassailable; the logic of religious living is incontrovertible; the certainty of such knowledge is superhuman; the satisfactions are superbly divine, the courage indomitable, the devotions unquestioning, the loyalties supreme, and the destinies final -- eternal, ultimate, and universal.



    P1142:4, 103:9.13 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
     
  19. mariecstasy

    mariecstasy Enchanted

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    i have read the bible...there is the old testament and there is the new testament....its in what you choose to read....Christianity is supposed to be about Christ's words....and that is what i choose to read when i read the Bible...and you are not able to find words of hatred in his words...
    the old testament, oh hell yeah its full of anger and hatred....
    i see where you are coming from....but i do also think its been twisted for each observer, for them to have a reason to feel they are better than others....its a shame, i agree..and i also see why you feel the way that you do....

    and i am sorry that out of my whole post, you choose to find something to get stuck on.....but i suppose i did the same to you;)
     
  20. Libertine

    Libertine Guru of Hedonopia

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    Not able to find hatred in Christ's words...hmmm...

    He failed to condemn slavery.
    He failed to condemn racism (remember "dog woman")
    He failed to make any significant change in the world, although being "God" he certainly could've made a remarkable difference.
    He insulted and damned those who disagreed with him and didn't want to hear his preaching.
    He NEVER resorted to violence out of anger...oops...except that one time he beat the hell out of the moneychangers with a fucking whip...anger management, anyone?
    He sent himself to have himself killed to appease himself for being angry at us for wanting knowledge instead of servtitude?

    Sounds a little schizo to me.
     

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