"that babies in the womb exhibit facial expressions as a reflex in preparation for birth, obstetrician Stuart Campbell said."

quote from your article.

I had children, my little used to smile all the time, I said....oooh look how smart my baby is!, the doctor then explained to me it is a reflex and it also caused by gas.

btw, what does this have to do with God is I?

I do not believe in god. God has no place in me nor in anyone else. God has about as much significance for me as invisible elephants.

Originally posted by TheThinker
I do not believe in god. God has no place in me nor in anyone else. God has about as much significance for me as invisible elephants.

I understand, but don't get caught up in the common concept of god. I could say that I believe in god in the same breath that I say I don't believe in god. God is just a word that represents the definition that every individual connects it to. Sometimes the definitions are similar and sometimes they are completely different.

I, for example, believe in an all encompassing force that does not even have conciousness of its own existance and thus actually controls nothing. You could call it god or a force or the void or hunga bunga or ARG1537 or quantum physics if you like, but they are all just symbols that represent what YOU want them to.


Edit: Well....maybe not physics as that is a concrete thing, but I mean the philosophy of quantum physics.

[Edited on 6-2-2004 by Jonna]

Originally posted by worldwatcher
"that babies in the womb exhibit facial expressions as a reflex in preparation for birth, obstetrician Stuart Campbell said."

quote from your article.

btw, what does this have to do with God is I?

You misquoted:

"Smiling, however, cannot be interpreted as preparation for birth but may be a reflex, Prof Campbell said.
He said: "What's behind the smile, of course, I can't say, but the corners turn up and the cheeks bulge ... I think it must be some indication of contentment in a stress-free environment."

As for what it has to do with the topic? I would say that it has a lot to do with the question of wether the soul is created by man and that therefore man is a god.
If emotion is present before birth, where does that emotion come from? Possibly it is passed down from the mother's environment and then through into the womb or possibly it comes from God, Heaven, Truth or whatever your spiritual nature prefers to call it. I guess the definition of a soul would help:


soul P Pronunciation Key (sl)
n.
The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.

The soul is believed to be separable from the body at death, why not at birth?
As I stated previously: Why is it logical that just because man creates the physical, he creates the spiritual?

Originally posted by ZeroDeep


I believe that the Human Consciousness holds the answer to some of lifes most dogmatic questions.
Does anyone else believe that " GOD ", is simple " I "

Deep

I believe that God is withing my own being, as a force that is sometimes unexplainable.

I understand that there a lot of religions or types of practice in spirituality. I have read some of them and understood partly some of them.

I feel God within, and when I pray, I know that I am communing with God. God is not an He, She, or I, but I would rather refer to "it". This force is God, it is there in the background. When I sleep at night, my dreams show me different things that probably I could not think about during waking hours.

I feel like I don't control those specific dreams, the ones that reveal personal truths. God calls me to listen, this is how I feel from those dreams.

Each spiritual practice has its methods of revealing God. They all point to the same source, this I have found out. God is wholly within, and feelings that you may think originate on the outside are nothing but expressions of your true self.

Yes, God is I.

Originally posted by TheThinker
God is not "I"

I do not believe in god. God has no place in me nor in anyone else. God has about as much significance for me as invisible elephants.

I don't understand the point behind this kind of post. The first sentence is fine since you are giving YOUR opinion on the subject at hand. (ie:God is not "I")

But then you continue about how you don't believe in God and God has no significance whatsoever to you. That in turn makes your first sentence completely worthless and invalid based on the fact that obviously God, as a concept or theological idea or whatever, means nothing to you. That being said, any input from you that is related to this thread is therefore meaningless, so why even bother posting anything?

Understand, I'm not trying to say you should believe in God or even ponder about the consept at all. It is obviously not worth your time, or even the philisophical debate about such subjects is pointless as far as you're concerned. That is perfectly fine, as it's totally your choice. It just seems silly to bother saying anything at all though if that is truely how you feel though.

I already posted this quote in another topic but i think it is revelent here too,God made us in his image
WE ARE NOT GOD

One of the classical statements about the nature of God's existence was made by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) in his Dialogues on Natural Religion :
Look around the world and contemplate the whole and every part of it:
you will find it nothing to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain.
All these various machines, even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature,
resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance - of human design, thought, wisdom and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble,
and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone,
do we prove at once the existence of a Deity and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.

Originally posted by Merkeva
I already posted this quote in another topic but i think it is revelent here too,God made us in his image
WE ARE NOT GOD

text

Saying God was a technological advanced being, which menkind at that time named God because they couldn't understand the technology, an creation to his image would simply bea creation to the equal of another race. And there you have it, after millions of years religion developed, with hundreds of thousands of pages written about Gods, and at the same time we became technologically advanced. With this in mind we are Gods for primative beings on other worlds, and therefore God is just a name for a happening and a race. So we would be Gods, but different from the other Gods, but still equal because we are also technologically advanced. Therefore God is in all of us, we are created to his equal... the best of his race is within us...

We have the same capabilities as the Gods, but just a different race of Gods.

Lets get away from this idea that god was an alien,when i say "god" i mean the source of all things.He/She/it created the universe layed out the plans and the rules so to speak.The fact that we can begin to grasp the universe,its rules ie. Laws of phisics and understand how some aspects of this universe function,implies that our mind intellect is similar to that of the creator, we speak the same language in a way.Our bodies,flesh do not resemble god,we do, our minds our conscienceness.But at them same time we can only hit the tip of the iceberge,God is much more complex than us,Hell if u think we are gods of kind come back to me when u make a universe.

Back to the orginal subject I think that this might shead some light on the subject:

Quoted from From the KYBALION

The Hermetic Teachers impart their instruction regarding this subject by bidding their students examine the report of their consciousness regarding their Self. The students are bidden to turn their attention inward upon the Self dwelling within each. Each student is led to see that his consciousness gives him first a report of the existence of his Self-the report is "I Am." This at first seems to be the final words from the consciousness, but a little further examination discloses the fact that this "I Am" may be separated or split into two distinct parts, or aspects, which while working in unison and in conjunction, yet, nevertheless, may be separated in consciousness.

While at first there seems to be only an "I" existing, a more careful and closer examination reveals the fact that there exists an "I" and a "Me." These mental twins differ in their characteristics and nature, and an examination of their nature and the phenomena arising from the same will throw much light upon many of the problems of mental influence.

Let us begin with a consideration of the Me, which is usually mistaken for the I by the student, until he presses the inquiry a little further back into the recesses of consciousness. A man thinks of his Self (in its aspect of Me) as being composed of certain feelings, tastes likes, dislikes, habits, peculiar ties, characteristics, etc., all of which go to make up his personality, or the "Self" known to himself and others. He knows that these emotions and feelings change; are born and die away; are subject to the Principle of Rhythm, and the Principle of Polarity, which take him from one extreme of feeling to another. He also thinks of the "Me" as being certain knowledge gathered together in his mind, and thus forming a part of himself. This is the "Me" of a man.

But we have proceeded too hastily. The "Me" of many men may be said to consist largely of their consciousness of the body and their physical appetites, etc. Their consciousness being largely bound up with their bodily nature, they practically "live there." Some men even go so far as to regard their personal apparel as a part of their "Me" and actually seem to consider it a part of themselves. A writer has humorously said that "men consist of three parts-soul, body and clothes." These "clothes conscious" people would lose their personality if divested of their clothing by savages upon the occasion of a shipwreck. But even many who are not so closely bound up with the idea of personal raiment stick closely to the consciousness of their bodies being their "Me" They cannot conceive of a Self independent of the body. Their mind seems to them to be practically "a something belonging to" their body-which in many cases it is indeed.

But as man rises in the scale of consciousness he is able to disentangle his "Me" from his idea of body, and is able to think of his body as "belonging to" the mental part of him. But even then he is very apt to identify the "Me" entirely with the mental states, feelings, etc., Which he feels to exist within him. He is very apt to consider these internal states as identical with himself, instead of their being simply "things" produced by some part of his mentality, and existing within him-of him, and in him, but still not "himself." He sees that he may change these internal states of feelings by aIl effort of will, and that he may produce a feeling or state of an exactly opposite nature, in the same way, and yet the same "Me" exists. And so after a while he is able to set aside these various mental states, emotions, feelings, habits, qualities, characteristics, and other personal mental belongings-he is able to set them aside in the "not-me" collection of curiosities and encumbrances, as well as valuable possessions. This requires much mental concentration and power of mental analysis on the part of the student. But still the task is possible for the advanced student, and even those not so far advanced are able to see, in the imagination, how the process may be performed.

After this laying-aside process has been performed, the student will find himself in conscious possession of a "Self" which may be considered in its "I" and "Me" dual aspects. The "Me" will be felt to be a Something mental in which thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings, and other mental states may be produced. It may be considered as the "mental womb," as the ancients styled it-capable of generating mental offspring. It reports to the consciousness as a "Me" with latent powers of creation and generation of mental progeny of all sorts and kinds. Its powers of creative energy are felt to be enormous. But still it seems to be conscious that it must receive some form of energy from either its "I" companion, or else from some other "I" ere it is able to bring into being its mental creations. This consciousness brings with it a realization of an enormous capacity for mental work and creative ability.

But the student soon finds that this is not all that he finds within his inner consciousness. He finds that there exists a mental Something which is able to Will that the "Me" act along certain creative lines, and which is also able to stand aside and witness the mental creation. This part of himself he is taught to call his "I." He is able to rest in its consciousness at will. He finds there not a consciousness of an ability to generate and actively create, in the sense of the gradual process attendant upon mental operations, but rather a sense and consciousness of an ability to project an energy from the "I" to the "Me"-a process of "willing" that the mental creation begin and proceed. He also finds that the "I" is able to stand aside and witness the operations of the "Me's" mental creation and generation. There is this dual aspect in the mind of every person. The "I" represents the Masculine Principle of Mental Gender-the "Me" represents the Female Principle. The "I" represents the Aspect of Being; the "Me" the Aspect of Becoming. You will notice that the Principle of Correspondence operates on this plane just as it does upon the great plane upon which the creation of Universes is performed. The two are similar in kind, although vastly different in degree. "As above, so below; as below, so above."

[Edited on 19-2-2004 by DaTruth]

DaTruth,

Where could I ger more Information regarding the " KYBALION ?"

For those those dont understand the Concept of " God as in I ", Understand the concept of " Pure Consciousness ".
Pure Consciousness is the " still mind " devoid of all content other than its own existence. A state of Consciousness Many mystics, from Christianity to Buddhism have boasted.
Thier is no, yesterday, tommorow only " Now ". The mind simply is content with its own self.

Deep

Perhaps the original poster would find solipsism an interesting Gedankenexperiment.

Originally posted by Tesla
We only limit ourselves.

The devil has no power unless we give it to him.

For some reason when I read this the Lord of the Rings came to mind. The only way that all seeing eyes had power was threw the magician and is minions. Sorry to get off topic...Just a thought

Perhaps the original poster would find solipsism an interesting Gedankenexperiment.

Sorry to bump

What are you talking about ?

Never heard of the above. Care to elaborate further ?

Deep