Vishnu and Mahesh

[peteyzen]

are u stupid when u play a computer game and get killed time and time again?

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by I-Ching

So your idea is that we were God a we created a place were we would suffer from old age, desease and death ... so that we could play. Well the material world doesn't sound like a very fun playground. Your idea of God is that not only does He put Himself in suffering condition but he is also stupid!

LOL! I love your honesty, I Ching!!

You all may like this very much - if I may:

God is Love. And Love must love. And to love there
must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite
and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself.
And in order to love Himself He must imagine Himself
as the Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He Loves.

Beloved and Lover implies separation. And separation
creates longing; and longing causes search. And the
wider and the more intense the search the greater the
separation and the more terrible the longing.

When longing is most intense separation is complete,
and the purpose of separation, which was that Love might
experience itself as Lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and
union follows And when union is attained, the Lover knows
that he himself was all along the Beloved whom he loved
and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations
that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had
placed in the path to himself.

To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible
to become what you already are! Union is nothing other than
knowledge of oneself as the Only One.

Meher Baba from "The Everything and the Nothing"

[Miss Hepburn]

As I always say - would you like to watch a Romantic Comedy for the rest of Eternity or watch an Epic filled with triumph and war,
death and rebirth, love and loss, pain and redemption... and on and on...
It is very important to know the Mind of God.

...but he who does boast let him boast of this
that he knows and understands me..

Jeremiah 9:23

I like Jeremiah...

The Vedas explain that this world is a perverted reflection of the Spiritual World. It is perverted in the sense that everything in this world is based on selfishness whereas everything in that world is based on Love. In the Spiritual World God is engaged in an eternal play or Lila of Love with his devotees. The Love experienced in these pastimes is ever-increasing and infinitely full of variety. It is true that sometimes God comes to this world primarily for our benefit as his fallen devotees but he also comes to enjoy the unique pastime of killing demons. This material world in relation to the spiritual world is certainly a place of suffering where one living entity is food for another. It's created solely for the purpose of fulfilling the selfish desires (the desire to be God) of only 10% of the existing souls. It certainly does not give God any pleasure to have His eternal part and parcels suffering in this world of repeated birth and death, which is why he comes her to liberate us.

What is Parbrahm?

The quote from Miss Hepburn about sums it up:

"To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are!
Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One."

The Vedas point out the same thing, they are saying, hey.. you are not this suffering entity/self you believe yourself to be!
What you actually are, your true nature, is that which people call God, pure consciousness, awareness, Buddha-nature etc.

Buddha talked about there being suffering, but none who suffer - In the Gita it talks about the dream of doership leading to desire, suffering etc.
This is what it all comes down to, the idea that we exist as something separate or apart from reality/God.

"The separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness, infinite and immortal. Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body, which is made up of the elements;
When this physical identification dissolves, there can be no more separate self. This is what I want to tell you, beloved." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

[Chrysaetos]

Originally Posted by I-Ching

So your idea is that we were God a we created a place were we would suffer from old age, desease and death ... so that we could play. Well the material world doesn't sound like a very fun playground. Your idea of God is that not only does He put Himself in suffering condition but he is also stupid!

This world isn't as 'perfect' as our minds want it to be, that's why we come up with a soteriology to explain it.
It may not be 'perfect' but you can't say life here isn't a playground can you? ^^

But let's put it the other way.. why live in a world of ''suffering'' if god is the truth? Why are we here in the first place? Do you have an explanation for that?

Originally Posted by peteyzen

are u stupid when u play a computer game and get killed time and time again?

Great that you mention this. IMO, a video game is only good when it does not have an end!

Originally Posted by Elijah

The quote from Miss Hepburn about sums it up:

"To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are!
Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One."

The Vedas point out the same thing, they are saying, hey.. you are not this suffering entity/self you believe yourself to be!
What you actually are, your true nature, is that which people call God, pure consciousness, awareness, Buddha-nature etc.

Buddha talked about there being suffering, but none who suffer - In the Gita it talks about the dream of doership leading to desire, suffering etc.
This is what it all comes down to, the idea that we exist as something separate or apart from reality/God.

"The separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness, infinite and immortal. Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body, which is made up of the elements;
When this physical identification dissolves, there can be no more separate self. This is what I want to tell you, beloved." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

Elijah,
You made my day! I was once lost and now I am found. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Elijah

Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One

As i have already said in this thread for their to be love there must be TWO, there must onesness and DIFFERENCE. In the Gita Krishna says "Never was there a time that I did not exist nor you". He affirms our eternal individual identity.

This nonsense that you are God is nothing more than pride. Material nature is forcing the living entity to be humbled by so many miseries, yet some entity is still so foolish to think that I am God. It's like a citizen that refuses to accept the President and therefore declares that we are all the President. By saying that we are all God you are basically saying their is no God. This nothing more than covered atheism.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

As i have already said in this thread for their to be love there must be TWO, there must oneness and DIFFERENCE.

Sure there is difference, but it's all one thing, one movement, one cog.
It's like the Zen Koan; What's the sound of one hand clapping? Well the mind usually tells us that it takes two things to make the sound of clapping..
This Koan points beyond that mode of thinking, one hand clapping is now all hands clapping, one hand clapping is all that is.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

In the Gita Krishna says "Never was there a time that I did not exist nor you". He affirms our eternal individual identity.

That's what we see when we only look at things from the idea of separation.
The I and the You Krishna refers to are simply practical terms of language, what he's pointing to is the One reality that has never ceased to be.

Originally Posted by I-Ching

This nonsense that you are God is nothing more than pride.

No so-called enlightened being will tell you they are God or that they are enlightened personally/individually.
The reason for this is that there is no longer the delusion of exisiting as something separate that could be God or enlightened.
All that remains is what is, they are not it, God is not it, no-one is it, there is only that, everything is that.

There is no such thing as a Self-realised person. When there is no "person" the Self is realised. When there is no "person" the question of coming and going cannot arise.
The body is an appearance in the Self. When the body disappears the Self remains as it always was and is. Realisation is the understanding "I am not this body which comes and goes,
I am that permanent, unchanging reality in which the body and all else appears. (Papaji)

^^ This is what Krishna was teaching Arjuna. It's the same meaning the quote from the Veda carries, or Jesus:
"I am the light that shines over all things. I am everything. From me all came forth, and to me all return." - Again pointing to that one reality.