I-Ching

Originally Posted by I-Ching

There is no need to imagine anything. There is a great deal of information give about God in the Vedic scriptures. We can see God by through our ears by submissively hearing from the Vedas. God’s form, qualities and activities are all described.

Without direct experience, all you have is imagination. So without the direct experience of God, I'm left with the imagination that comes up in reading the text. Sorry, experience must be valued before words. How else will you know if you're right or wrong? The experience gives the truth, the words are dead and cast illusions.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

It is natural that the lover wants to please the beloved. Our relationship with God is not exploitative, when the hand serves the stomach the whole body is nourished including the hand. If hand wants serve itself then it is simply diseased. In the same way that because we are part and parcel of God, when God is pleased with you then you also experience pleasure. Our constitutional position is that we are servants, if we are in illusion we serve our senses and if we are not we serve God, but in either case our nature is to serve.

The hand can act out of self interest and achieve the same result. In order to nourish itself, the hand must still feed the mouth and the mouth must swallow, and the heart must pump and the lungs must breathe. All of that can function out of self-service, to realize that it is serving the self to act cooperatively.

If I am a servant to anything, I strive to be a servant to truth and weeding out idle speculation or wishful and fanciful thinking.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

By the president analogy I mean that because the President is an important person you cannot meet Him face to face.

I might not meet him face to face, but I see pictures of his face. And I don't serve the president, he is supposed to be the servant of the people. My view of the position is that it is ultimately castrated, as is evidenced by the lack of fulfilling on the campaign promises. Many of the promotions of the office do not differ than the prior president. We are still increasing domestic surveillance. Copyright issues are atrocious. There are forces at play stronger than the office of the president.

I don't live my life as if the president played a significant role in it. Who does? So your analogy is weak. Precisely because the president is so far removed from my experience, I have no reason to waste thought, time and energy on him.

Or perhaps your analogy stands up. Because your view of God is so held off from experience there is no reason to waste thought, time and energy on it.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta said “Don’t try to see God, act in such a way that God wants to see you.”

Without the ability to ask God directly what would be pleasing to him, I am left with what would be pleasing to me. And it pleases me that we as humans learn to love and accept each other, to learn to live cooperatively with each other and with the other life on this planet.

I have no need for a narcissistic God that wants people to worship him without interacting with them directly.

I'm more than happy to have a positive and affirming relationship with anything which wants to present itself clearly. I will not sacrifice my integrity to worship imagination and fancy. And if God doesn't find that pleasing, then he needs to renounce his position as a supreme and benevolent being.