I'm not too sure that "God" created these human bodies we all have. Here's why:

reply to post by bb23108

So I cannot just casually assume I am the body-mind. For instance, on a daily basis I enter deep sleep, beyond all waking and dreaming objects and imagery, and yet there is still awareness or consciousness. Consciousness is not dependent on objects existing in deep sleep. Of course the scientist will negate this argument with claims that awareness or consciousness is a product of the body-mind complex - but is that actually true? When someone is declared medically dead, why can the person's psyche still be sensed for a while?

How do you know there is still awareness or consciousness when you're in deep sleep? How do you know consciousness is not dependent on something? Do you even know what consciousness is? Can you prove consciousness exists? How do you know it's the "psych" being sensed? You are making great and dangerous leaps here and making a foundation to build "truth" on. See how many leaps and bounds must be made to connect these dots? We must not fill the holes with the first thing that comes to mind wherever we cannot see.

Why can one be drawn out of body-mind identification into formless, indivisible, Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality?

Now explain to me what a "Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality" is and I'll be able to answer your question. But you cannot, and neither can anyone else, because they have never experienced it except in their "mind", even to the point they think they escape the body to see it. They must use meaningless words that all but evaporate in the air to explain it, usually capitalized to pretend it is divine; and hence they wish to put the mind as higher than the body, merely to justify the state of their actual context, where they are existing in the now at every moment, where it is likely their body, their life, their movements—what they wished was a prison—sits and wastes away, as they lack the strength to command it. A shame.

All dramatics aside, I don't apply much theology in my thinking anymore. This question is over my head, or at least under my feat.

reply to post by pacifier2012

Once again. Blatant stupidity to accuse God of making inferior bodies when the book quoting him tells the story that any idiot could read and understand.... that mans body was made perfect and man ruined it by disobedience.

Why do idiots quote God and yet not read what he had written about himself??

Yes, man is becoming more stupid in these modern days. ATS reveals that perfectly.

Idiots? More stupid? My my, you are most certainly scornful towards those who do not take musty old tomes at their very word, regardless of the dubious conception of said tomes. Of course, I suppose it's too much to ask for an omnipotent ruler of the universe to maybe give an interview and explain his actions. He could come down once or twice a year and explain how he acted on behalf of the world to prevent this and support that...but no. Of course that's an unreasonable request. Who ever heard of holding a king accountable for his own actions? He must rely on his subjects to make all his excuses for him, right down to defending the plausibility of his very existence!

How silly of us to presume. It's not our place to probe the reality of our existence. Forgive us our insatiable desire to learn the truth.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
One cannot take themselves out of their own context....

Exactly. But what is one's actual context? Is it the body-mind or is it consciousness? What are you actually? What never ages or changes? Does your awareness actually age like the body-mind does?

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
Saying the body is a prison is the deepest blasphemy in my opinion. It's scorning oneself.

This does tend to be a liability with above the body-mind experiences because in comparison these physical body-minds are full of all sorts of crap, and after a struggle to live for a while, they may suffer greatly, and then inevitably keel over.

This world is an endlessly replicating pattern of birthing, living, suffering, and dying. But there is no inherent reason to shun the body-mind because from the standpoint of consciousness, the body-mind is unnecessary and not actually limiting (only seemingly limiting).

Regardless, we are here and are required to wake up here in this physical realm and to participate freely, with great love and energy - unless we want the machine of this realm to keep replicating the pattern endlessly for us.

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by dominicus

 

If God made these bodies, why not make them with all those improvements that scientists now have access to, from the very Get-go?

The Apocryphon of John gives a logical explaination for this... Technically we were made by an imperfect God according to gnostic scripture...

Things hidden in Silence

Or the imperfect Human tries to Create a PERFECT GOD to explain itself (human beingness) blame itself for its own imperfections and wishes for GOD/PARENT figure to step up and FIX us; our INSANITY RESULTANT equals children forever the child.

reply to post by dominicus


Ohhhh..... We are here to learn.
Or to teach.

It's not a prison. It's a place to learn things we can't comprehend when we are bodiless.
It's to understand what it is to suffer.
So we can better know how to relate.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

And this doesn't apply to you, dominicus? Are you not in your own bias bubble?

Yes, it applies to everyone. However, I am saying there is a deeper knowing, seeing, experiencing, and uniting with the state of existence that is inherently naked and prior to all things, and can be experienced, with various ways there.

All the bias bubbles are a bunch of illusion projections, no matter what your take on what is, and the only true thing that there is, is to experience that reality that is available to everyone, by looking behind the projector.

One cannot take themselves out of their own context, even when they are dreaming, even when they are imagining, even when they think they are floating around as 'pure consciousness' prior to existence.

Unknow everything and you take everything including yourself out of all known context

Mind travel is easy. Sleeping can do it, drugs can do it, physical exertion and training can do it, and plain old imagination can do it. There's nothing fundamental about it. But nonetheless the prerequisite is always being alive and existing; only then can one have these experiences.

Mind travel and popping consciously out of your body, independent of it, and floating around are 2 big differences. Everyone for the most part can do the former. But few can do the latter.

One must first exist before he can remember pre-existing.

If I didn't exist in a body, I would be that bodiless unit of consciousness that I remember, and currently experience, myself to inherently be. There would be no need to remember. The cool part is, you won't have to wait long for this to be verified to yourself when your own Avatar eventually falls away, as is everyone's inevitability.

Saying the body is a prison is the deepest blasphemy in my opinion.

I personally know people in physical agony, daily in pain, utter existence is sheer agony, and physical death is viewed as sweet relief/release. Perhaps next time around, if there is a next time, you might want to ask for a similar circumstance so you can experience that for yourself. How quickly your opinion would change then.

It's scorning oneself. Besides, anyone can make anything of their own context. If one wishes to call his context a prison, when it is easily changeable, then he deserves his shackles.

The things is, I've seen where we all come from. Interstellar Infinite Anti-Gravity Ferraris who have forgotten that we are that, and have accepted being broken down rusted bicycles with flat tires, and all the different possible unlimited justifications to uphold that these busted arse bikes are the best there is. Its a sham.

But what is my opinion but unimaginative, cold and biased lie?

A limited view. You haven't seen the other side, so your only choice is to create a view based on what you believe is considered "this worlds facts."

Now explain to me what a "Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality" is and I'll be able to answer your question. But you cannot, and neither can anyone else, because they have never experienced it except in their "mind", even to the point they think they escape the body to see it.

Experiencing "Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality" is something that happens prior to the mind, prior to the imagination. That's how the mind deduces that the experience of "Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality" is not some fake pseudo experience that's made up.

They must use meaningless words that all but evaporate in the air to explain it, usually capitalized to pretend it is divine; and hence they wish to put the mind as higher than the body, merely to justify the state of their actual context, where they are existing in the now at every moment, where it is likely their body, their life, their movements—what they wished was a prison—sits and wastes away, as they lack the strength to command it. A shame.

Then use your "non-words" to communicate. The body continues to waste away regardless what you command or believe.

All dramatics aside, I don't apply much theology in my thinking anymore. This question is over my head, or at least under my feat.

This Being, State of Enlightenment, many of us here talk about and experience directly, cannot be known with logic/reason. So it is, over everyone's head, yet resides deep in everyone's heart

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
How do you know there is still awareness or consciousness when you're in deep sleep? How do you know consciousness is not dependent on something? Do you even know what consciousness is? Can you prove consciousness exists? How do you know it's the "psych" being sensed? You are making great and dangerous leaps here and making a foundation to build "truth" on. See how many leaps and bounds must be made to connect these dots? We must not fill the holes with the first thing that comes to mind wherever we cannot see.

So it is okay for you to assume we are the body-mind because you cannot find evidence otherwise, but in terms of consciousness, you cannot make the same assumption? It is tacitly obvious that we are awareness, beyond attention, beyond the body-mind. That we are the body-mind is not self-evident - the body-mind ages, whereas awareness does not. This much can be observed right now - one's fundamental awareness is the same as it was 10 years ago. Not so with the body-mind.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
Now explain to me what a "Divine Love-Bliss-Consciousness/Reality" is and I'll be able to answer your question. But you cannot, and neither can anyone else, because they have never experienced it except in their "mind", even to the point they think they escape the body to see it.

How can you actually say what someone else has experienced? This is very presumptuous and close-minded of you. You are sounding like a materialist here. The words I chose are simply attributes of Reality. I could have simply said God or Conscious Light.

In any case, I am not trying to convince you - just pointing out that you are putting a bit too much faith in your mind for all your answers. And you still have not addressed my question about what does the room ACTUALLY look like. If one's body-mind cannot even say exactly what a simple room looks like, how can it be trusted to be our basis for reality?

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
... they wish to put the mind as higher than the body, merely to justify the state of their actual context, where they are existing in the now at every moment, where it is likely their body, their life, their movements—what they wished was a prison—sits and wastes away, as they lack the strength to command it. A shame.

And where have I said the mind is superior to the body? It is a unified complex, the body-mind, to be lived and enjoyed fully - by recognizing the Reality in which we all arise.

Why are we not perfect?

Your eternal self landed yourself this body. Maybe angels picked it for you and you had little choice. Why do we keep coming back to bodies that are predicted to hurt?

Say you had never been exposed to a world where people knew what an "immune system" was, and nobody ever told you what a good one or a bad one was. What if you never were exposed to media that showed you that that twist of crystals that trap chains of light, called DNA, was what your personal body encryption device was? What if you had never been taught to have feelings of rejection for bodies that you have now?

Who told you those acts, like war, were disgusting? Who colorized your world into pluses and minuses, good and evil? Short life bad, long life good? Haven't you had previous lives already? Haven't you figured out that not all long lives are good lives, and not all short lives are bad lives? Take away good and bad, which are figments of your imagination learned from obedience training from lots of lives and lots of rules learned in this life, and you have action and consequence loaded with a lot of magnetic wants. You want the other thing. Well that's why you're stuck, projecting the health outside of yourself, creating the distance.

Consider it took your imperfect body to conceive of what perfect might look like. Why are we puny mortals? Well, why do we keep coming back to puny mortal form? I did some searching and accepted this imperfect life because up there, we love ourselves even in the middle of relative problems. Up there, we know how good it feels to be in a life wealthy, and powerful, and be surrounded by beautiful people. See because we've all done this before. I was hoping to get a rich life, but the angel at the door had a higher consciousness, letting someone else go for that, heir to wealthy parents -- yes there is crowding at the door of the wealthy even up there. People die out of rich lives too; they come up and go, wow, that was a fun life, let me do it again, and jump into the next body intending to be wealthy again. Attitudes account for a lot.

That doesn't mean our minds have lived enough to drop it all and accept the perfection that One God-mind can bring.

I don't take the alien-as-God thing. There are accounts of people involved with aliens, and claims of even the aliens have an idea of what God is, and it isn't them.

You need to get your mind power strong enough to understand your ailments to get past it. Speaking of your mental attitude, you're jealous of the reptiles for their long life? When you get to your infinite being attitude again, maybe the diversity will be understood, that it comes from an accumulation of little love/hates, and that hate part is your problem. Then you get to a mental threshold, you find out...aliens are working hard to make you believe they are god.

Then get totally into the mind of the universe, you realize we are manifestations of more than just DNA. What is DNA? It's an acid. What's an acid? It's a thing we invented to describe something. As if DNA does everything, what about that protoplasm, how did that get there? Then we find out it's not our DNA, but our protoplasm that's sick. Just when you thought you understood where the error was in your body... you're still stuck on the material bar code. Wait until you figure out that light-lock patterns on your codes affect your health too.

I'm going on forever, this is a never ending argument because you still have the power to choose what to believe.

We are definitely not designed in the image of god. Here are a few excerpts from en.wikipedia.org...

Other examples of "poor design" include:

Barely used nerves and muscles, such as the plantaris muscle of the foot,[5] that are missing in part of the human population and are routinely harvested as spare parts if needed during operations. Another example is the muscles that move the ears, which some people can learn to control to a degree, but serve no purpose in any case (,[1] p. 328).
The common malformation of the human spinal column, leading to scoliosis, sciatica and congenital misalignment of the vertebrae.
Almost all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, but humans cannot because the gene for this enzyme is defective (Pseudogene ΨGULO).[6] Lack of vitamin C results in scurvy and eventually death. The gene is also non-functional in other primates and in guinea pigs, but is functional in most other animals.[7]
In the African locust, nerve cells start in the abdomen but connect to the wing. This leads to unnecessary use of materials.[4]
Intricate reproductive devices in orchids, apparently constructed from components commonly having different functions in other flowers.
The use by pandas of their enlarged radial sesamoid bones in a manner similar to how other creatures use thumbs.[4]
The existence of unnecessary wings in flightless birds, e.g. ostriches (,[1] p. 326).
The route of the recurrent laryngeal nerve is such that it travels from the brain to the larynx by looping around the aortic arch. This same configuration holds true for many animals; in the case of the giraffe, this results in about twenty feet of extra nerve.
The prevalence of congenital diseases and genetic disorders such as Huntington's Disease.


There is so much more on the website. Please read.

Originally posted by Sandalphon
Why are we not perfect? Your eternal self landed yourself this body. Maybe angels picked it for you and you had little choice. Why do we keep coming back to bodies that are predicted to hurt?

You will not 'BE' perfect until your soul group says so. Your soul group is ALL of your past lives together cheering you forward and onward. You will at some point become whole all of you and your experiences will balance every single one of your other life trials. You have no Patience (and that is the WORD). This is all about soul PROGESSION nothing more. You do not realize you are participating in the "human school fast tract" evolution of Spirit/Soul GROWTH.

Meh...I think we're just here for the recreation.

(conversation from the other side)

Whaddaya wanna do?

I dunno...I'm just tired of all this infinity.

Yea, me too. I can't even remember what it's like to feel anything anymore.

I know...like pain...and fear...

Well, I was thinking more of like happiness and pleasure, but yea...same thing.

I wanna be scared outta my wits again. You know? Just freakin' feeeel my mortality. 'Till you can
just TASTE IT!

Mmmm...Yea, I hear ya....but gimme that co-mingling of energy again. Bio-procreation....just feeling
another spirit so close you are almost touching. Now that's what I call a ride!

Hey?

Wha...

Let's go again.

Where....when?

I don't care...you decide.

Awwrighty then...let's do it.....but together....or at least let's try to be together

Okay...we can be soul-mates....just don't try that co-mingling thing with me (smile)

and two points of light suddenly flicker and vanish

Are you trying to use logic against creationists? That doesn't work.

reply to post by dominicus


i had a dream that i was offered immortality via technology, only thing was that this biomecha suit shatters your head when it is installed, and you will have a "cyber head" preserving only the inner layer of the synapses....

interesting read... i have questioned many times, that who is to blame for this apeshaped trap...

reply to post by SinMaker

We are definitely not designed in the image of god. Here are a few excerpts from en.wikipedia.org... Other examples of "poor design" include: Barely used nerves and muscles, such as the plantaris muscle of the foot,[5] that are missing in part of the human population and are routinely harvested as spare parts if needed during operations. Another example is the muscles that move the ears, which some people can learn to control to a degree, but serve no purpose in any case (,[1] p. 328).

I agree, the design of the human body is not optimal, weak, slow, fragile, inefficient, easy to be killed in the wild, ignorant, small percentage of brain used, etc. However, I have found, at least in myself, the portion of me that was created in the imagine of God, The Consciousness/Awareness/Observer, and as that, I have experienced the source of that.


reply to post by rival

Meh...I think we're just here for the recreation. (conversation from the other side) Whaddaya wanna do? I dunno...I'm just tired of all this infinity. Yea, me too. I can't even remember what it's like to feel anything anymore. I know...like pain...and fear... Well, I was thinking more of like happiness and pleasure, but yea...same thing. I wanna be scared outta my wits again. You know? Just freakin' feeeel my mortality. 'Till you can just TASTE IT! Mmmm...Yea, I hear ya....but gimme that co-mingling of energy again. Bio-procreation....just feeling another spirit so close you are almost touching. Now that's what I call a ride!

So because I select few got bored with Infinity and decided to come down here to explore/experience, now all of us have to come here? ANd lets not forget, this place isn't all pussy willows and butterflies. Majority of folks are born into hardship , third world countries, dictators, and wars. If we are all here because a select few decided to come down and "experience," well then thanks for that (sarcasm), and a vast number of people would love to show you 2 middle fingers


reply to post by Sandalphon

Who told you those acts, like war, were disgusting? Who colorized your world into pluses and minuses, good and evil?

Yes, I know of the nondual state, beyond good & evil. Thing is, that its very easy to proclaim that state/philosophy on a message board, but a whole other matter to be beyond it when you witnessed first hand a starving african child w/ flies all over his body, who's parents died from aids, or losing a loved one out of nowhere in the middle of the night, or seeing a hungry homeless man beg for food because of the economy.

Speaking of your mental attitude, you're jealous of the reptiles for their long life?

What I'm saying is that these bodies aren't an optimal design considering all the genetic switches that geneticists are discovering, and looking at nature for example. God is beyond an OT version who considers limiting mans lifespan to 120 and under, and then at the same time gives a free will and intelligence to figure out how to then flip the switch to go up 700+.

I'm not jealous of anyone. I simply see this world as a slow and poor design compared to what we're really capable of and were we are going eventually anyway. And so I have doubts that God created these human bodies.

Originally posted by Sandalphon
Who told you those acts, like war, were disgusting? Who colorized your world into pluses and minuses, good and evil? Short life bad, long life good? Haven't you had previous lives already? Haven't you figured out that not all long lives are good lives, and not all short lives are bad lives? Take away good and bad, which are figments of your imagination learned from obedience training from lots of lives and lots of rules learned in this life, and you have action and consequence loaded with a lot of magnetic wants. You want the other thing. Well that's why you're stuck, projecting the health outside of yourself, creating the distance.

It seems to be a common notion around ATS (and also with all sorts of other self-proclaimed non-dualists elsewhere) when people have some kind of mental insight into the teachings of nonduality that this means that there is no good or evil, right or wrong, and even having any emotional feelings because such concepts and feelings are thought to be dual in nature.

So some so-called non-dualists, once sufficiently abstracted from the body-mind, consider themselves to be free of all suffering, the play of opposites, etc. This abstraction into the mind apart from the body is not true awakening to Reality altogether.

Reality includes the whole body-mind, its feelings, pains, sorrows - the whole ball of wax. But Reality is not limited by the confines of the body-mind nor all that it experiences - but this is NOT to say that Reality does not experience all of this.

It is understandable why people have for eons looked to escape the body-mind - because in and of itself the body-mind is headed for inevitable suffering and death. So the body-mind is shunned, thought to be disgusting and sinful, and finally perhaps abstracted from via various techniques (particularly in the east) - even to the point of entering higher worlds and allowing the body-mind to die. But such realization is partial at best because the search to separate from the body-mind is not to completely transcend the egoic search to separate from Reality.

Anyway, I digress here. I mainly wanted to say that to state that there is no good or bad is likely just someone being naive, and also a sign that someone probably has simply mentalized a notion of non-duality, and less likely combined it with a more or less successful attempt to abstract from the physical body-mind.

Ultimately non-duality is realization of Reality altogether. It is not some abstracted state that somehow excludes the body-mind and then says that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, etc. Such a statement assumes that Reality is not Feeling - but just some kind of awareness that only observes.

Reality is Absolute Feeling, Love-Bliss-Consciousness - and the morality of love is Its law. So there is right and wrong, good and evil, etc - love is right, not to love is wrong. This is heart-obvious but perhaps not to the abstracted mind apart from the heart.

And this is exactly why Jesus and other great spiritual adepts would have their disciples learn the law of love first and whole bodily (with heart, soul, mind, and strength) in order to fully prepare themselves with real surrender to the Divine - before such great matters of non-duality would be given to them. Nowadays the teachings of non-duality are readily available, but as pointed out here, are subject to naive misunderstanding of what Reality actually is and encompasses.

Originally posted by dominicus
reply to post by Sandalphon

 

Who told you those acts, like war, were disgusting? Who colorized your world into pluses and minuses, good and evil?

Yes, I know of the nondual state, beyond good & evil. Thing is, that its very easy to proclaim that state/philosophy on a message board, but a whole other matter to be beyond it when you witnessed first hand a starving african child w/ flies all over his body, who's parents died from aids, or losing a loved one out of nowhere in the middle of the night, or seeing a hungry homeless man beg for food because of the economy.

And why shouldn't you feel great sorrow when encountering suffering people such as these? Yes, realization of Truth is not limited by the events of life, but this does not mean that one would or should not feel it or be sensitive to it. To be otherwise is cold, distant, separate, not full of love and compassion. Do we actually think the Divine Reality does not feel?

reply to post by dominicus

. . . I've concluded that these bodies are prison cells to the soul.

OK then, what would be the alternative, I mean to having bodies?
I doubt that you have pre-body memories of actually doing things, seeing how you didn't have a body to be able to do things with.
I think that we always existed, as some sort of individual consciousness 'persons'.
We as a collective consciousness decided to change things by creating a material universe and these persons (but not beings) could have physical bodies to fulfill the desire to have a 'real' existence.
Of course the universe is a hostile environment by nature and everything is not always so peachy keen.
That is why some persons elected to be spirit bodies to help those with physical ones, to overcome those traumas that are inevitable in the only universe we were able to create at the time.

reply to post by bb23108

. . . I do not believe in God as the Creator-God, though I am certain the Divine Person exists.

I think it should be obvious that god exists. That may only be true in a general sense though, if you are talking about everyone in the world accepting it.
I personally don't know anyone who doesn't believe there is some sort of god, however they may define what that means.
As for myself, I have met god and had a short conversation with him and touched him.
Well that was the god that I know personally, and there were other times I have had encounters but just that once in that sort of way.
The point being, I am convinced of the reality of god, though all the details of what he is all about is not included.
There is a collective human experience that can be seen, for example as mythology, which I would imagine is based on a whole lot of encounters that are similar at least a bit with mine, so we know it maybe on a subconscious level if nothing else, but it is almost fundamental to being human.

reply to post by jmdewey60

OK then, what would be the alternative, I mean to having bodies?

The alternative to these weak, fragile, limited bodies, is the inevitability that's coming regardless, designer babies and gene modification. The more the limits of body are lifted, the more it may be that we will reconnect to, and re-embrace our soul and spirituality.

I doubt that you have pre-body memories of actually doing things, seeing how you didn't have a body to be able to do things with.

I don't blame you for believing that way. If some one would have told me 15 years ago that they remember existing prior to a body, I would have seriously doubted them, or at least said maybe/possibly.

But at this point, if we were to make a bet, I would bet you everything I own, house, cars, all my savings, job, my very living breathing life, and access to everyone I know, that there is an existence prior to the body.

Would you be willing to the bet the same things, for your take, that there is nothing there? Hardly.

Consciousness does not need a body to observe, be aware, remember. Its a matter of time before science acknowledges that.

I think that we always existed, as some sort of individual consciousness 'persons'.
We as a collective consciousness decided to change things by creating a material universe and these persons (but not beings) could have physical bodies to fulfill the desire to have a 'real' existence.

Make up your mind. First you doubted, but then you say you're practically advocating exactly what I'm saying and have remembered. That we are consciousness experiencing physical avatars.

These bodies are just really highly advanced "suits." And out scientist are very close to being able to build one from scratch. They can already 3D print living organs and brains in petri dishes.

reply to post by dominicus

The way I experience God, is as an Infinite, Omni-Present Consciousness, that Me-as-Observer/Awareness, is inherently linked to like a drop of water falling into an ocean.

How do know that is God?
Why would it have to be God?
Why couldn't it be something else, like what you are as a human being, and everyone else who are human beings, who also have a nonphysical component to them that maybe not everyone is necessarily consciously 'tuned into'?
"God" I think is something else where if there was such a thing as generic gods, they would have a connection quite similar but on another frequency.
You could have on one level (I think), the "Observer/Awareness", and on another, action, doing things we cannot, being bound by the limitations of the material world, as an inextricably integral component of our beings.