I'm in a spiritual crisis. What is truth?

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by iamthat

Soulfly, you say "I might add that I'm really looking for verified objective experiences and evidences. Subjective experiences (real as they might be) just don't cut it for me as reliable evidence."

What kind of verified objective experiences and evidences would satisfy your desire to know?

No response yet from Soulfly.

The problem is that when it comes to the deeper questions of life such as What is Truth and What happens after death, the answers come from our own inner experience and cannot be verified by others.

So for example, a person has a near-death experience in a hospital. This may be the most real experience they have ever had in their lives and afterwards they have absolute conviction that consciousness survives quite happily outside the physical body. But all they can do is tell others about it. There is no evidence for others to know that such an experience happened. Perhaps the person can accurately describe events taking place elsewhere in the hospital while they were clinically dead, and there are many such instances, but this is not sufficient to change the opinions of science.

So people may share their stories with Soulfly and report what they have found regarding truth, but providing concrete evidence for their experiences is unlikely to happen.

Peace

Originally Posted by iamthat

I dunno. All this subjective power is quite seductive if it helps me to control the objective world.



I don't mind standing up to the English dictionary. I am more concerned about its allies - don't mess with the Chinese dictionary!!

Peace

I can't even read a Chinese dim-sum menu, I have to go by the pictures unless there are English subtitles. I am not about to start messing with their dictionary. God (or maybe Lao Tzu) knows what would end up on my plate! They could give me anything and say that is what I asked for and how would I know what is true? It would be a dim-sum crisis.
Seeing is believing... at least as far as dim-sum goes, after that SoulFly is flying solo.

[Soulfly]

Thank you for all the answers.

I will try to clarify and add some thoughts and answer the questions some of you asked.

I do believe truth is something objective. I don't see how anyone can rely solely on a subjective experience alone. We know that our brains can deceive us. Any ideas, visions, dreams, inner enlightenment, secret knowledge.. they can just be a creation of brain chemistry.. or just thoughts.. something that doesn't exist in reality.

I do believe spiritual experiences can be objective and verified. It seems the best verification is trough anecdotal evidence. That's not ideal, but it's the best we got. Science seems to get us only to a point that there are laws of nature, there's energy. We are made of chemicals.. uhm.. good luck figuring out if there's anything more to existence.

I'll give an example of what I would consider an objective and verified experience. Let's say 3 people see a spirit guide at the same time. The spirit guide gives them a message which contains very specific detailed information, that can later be verified (such as future events or details about places or people). Now that would be on a completely another level that a subjective experience. It can't be hallucination or a fantasy, because the all saw it at the same time and got the same info and it was verified.

I have read or heard about experiences that have a similar level of objectivity and verification, but the reason I'm in a crisis is the fact that I can't see a coherent picture of reality here. Even these sorts of objective experiences seem to give a contradicting picture of reality.

The example about near-death experiences is a good one. Indeed a person can be very convinced about the reality of it, but a hallucination can feel more real that reality. If the person can verify what happened in other parts of the hospital, then now we really have something. Skeptics don't accept it, because they say there are too many variables.. it's not a controlled environment. I think this is an overly skeptical and not a very honest evaluation.

I have been reading about shared-death experiences. A true testimony: Two sisters were at the their mothers deathbed. As their mother died, they both experienced coming out of their bodies along with their mother and they saw her whole life. Later they could compare their experiences and verify that they saw the same things. This is from "Glimpses of eternity" by Raymond Moody.

These kind of experiences seems to prove strongly, that NDE's are a reality, not a hallucination. The problem is that a lot of NDE's contradict each other. Different people get completely contradictory information. Add the fact that NDE elements can be explained by science.. and I don't feel that sure about it anymore.

Ultimately I am OK with not knowing everything, but I just HAVE to know that death is not the end, but everything seems so uncertain.

Originally Posted by Soulfly

Thank you for all the answers.

I will try to clarify and add some thoughts and answer the questions some of you asked.

I do believe truth is something objective. I don't see how anyone can rely solely on a subjective experience alone. We know that our brains can deceive us. Any ideas, visions, dreams, inner enlightenment, secret knowledge.. they can just be a creation of brain chemistry.. or just thoughts.. something that doesn't exist in reality.

I do believe spiritual experiences can be objective and verified. It seems the best verification is trough anecdotal evidence. That's not ideal, but it's the best we got. Science seems to get us only to a point that there are laws of nature, there's energy. We are made of chemicals.. uhm.. good luck figuring out if there's anything more to existence.

I'll give an example of what I would consider an objective and verified experience. Let's say 3 people see a spirit guide at the same time. The spirit guide gives them a message which contains very specific detailed information, that can later be verified (such as future events or details about places or people). Now that would be on a completely another level that a subjective experience. It can't be hallucination or a fantasy, because the all saw it at the same time and got the same info and it was verified.

I have read or heard about experiences that have a similar level of objectivity and verification, but the reason I'm in a crisis is the fact that I can't see a coherent picture of reality here. Even these sorts of objective experiences seem to give a contradicting picture of reality.

The example about near-death experiences is a good one. Indeed a person can be very convinced about the reality of it, but a hallucination can feel more real that reality. If the person can verify what happened in other parts of the hospital, then now we really have something. Skeptics don't accept it, because they say there are too many variables.. it's not a controlled environment. I think this is an overly skeptical and not a very honest evaluation.

I have been reading about shared-death experiences. A true testimony: Two sisters were at the their mothers deathbed. As their mother died, they both experienced coming out of their bodies along with their mother and they saw her whole life. Later they could compare their experiences and verify that they saw the same things. This is from "Glimpses of eternity" by Raymond Moody.

These kind of experiences seems to prove strongly, that NDE's are a reality, not a hallucination. The problem is that a lot of NDE's contradict each other. Different people get completely contradictory information. Add the fact that NDE elements can be explained by science.. and I don't feel that sure about it anymore.

Ultimately I am OK with not knowing everything, but I just HAVE to know that death is not the end, but everything seems so uncertain.

The only thing that convinced me beyond a shadow of doubt was my own experience, and that came about after a decade of broad intellectual investigation and a considerable amount of meditation. It was my own subjective experience that sealed the deal.

Originally Posted by Soulfly

Ultimately I am OK with not knowing everything, but I just HAVE to know that death is not the end, but everything seems so uncertain.

Not sure anybody will have anything that can give you that certainty. Anecdotal is always going to be just that, their experiences or their accounts of experiences, but not your experiences. Even one's own experiences can be questioned. The one suggestion I would have based on what helped me is to spend some time investigating and understanding what life is and how it works. The experience of life may be real, but everything physical it is based on is made up of things that cannot normally be considered to be real. What is the death of the physical body if material physicality itself is illusory?
It may also help to investigate this you who's end you are fearing. Understanding what that who is, how it came about, and its illusory and ephemeral nature, helps one not feel so attached to it and not fear its end quite so much.

My understanding is that I am not a soul, in a body, that is in this world. That is the illusion. This body, is part of and in a world, which is entirely created by and within my own consciousness. That is what is real, at least for now. When I am done with this illusory body and world, I shall move on and perhaps create another one similar or very different.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Soulfly

Thank you for all the answers.
....
I have read or heard about experiences that have a similar level of objectivity and verification, but the reason I'm in a crisis is the fact that I can't see a coherent picture of reality here. Even these sorts of objective experiences seem to give a contradicting picture of reality.
....
Ultimately I am OK with not knowing everything, but I just HAVE to know that death is not the end, but everything seems so uncertain.

It sounds like you are looking for some kind of model, a mental framework which will accommodate all such phenomena and allow for any apparent contradictions.

For myself, I have created such a mental model based on many years of studying a wide range of the available reading. This model includes subtle planes of consciousness (etheric, astral, mental, etc), which provides explanations for phenomena which would otherwise be inexplicable. I often have to tweak it if I learn something new, but overall this model works for me. I am not saying it would work for everyone.

As JASG says, it requires a lot of broad intellectual investigation. Sometimes corroborating evidence is simply not available. There is only anecdotal evidence. This may not be satisfactory, but I often find that the more I read, the more overwhelming the anecdotal evidence can be.

For example, if one person says that they consciously left their body in an OBE and went exploring the neighbourhood, we might question that. But when hundreds of people all independently describe similar experiences (as collected by Robert Crookall) then we might consider this to be a real phenomenon despite the absence of any verification. And ideally we would eventually experience this for ourselves, and then any doubt would be removed.

I do think that all the answers to these questions are out there and available - we just have to sift through all the information. But I agree with Ketzer that none of us can say anything to give you the certainty you seek.

Peace

[Neil22]

if you want the highest truth on a regular basis you need to do these three things. Study the great masters regularly , get a teacher you trust as on a much higher level then you, and three , do good works . As much as possible . if you do these three things ,things will change for sure. they will become much clearer and you will have many breakthroughs.