Hi Cooterhein: It is hard to explain. Heaven and hell are inside of us and all around us, at least the way we see it. Hell is created within oneself through ignorance of who and what we really are and secondly through want. I believe that all of creation exists within one consciousness - God’s. I think there is no other. No you, no me, just God. Every particle in the universe is part of one huge organism, which is God Himself.
Thanks for explaining this. I would ask where these ideas came from, but I think you answer that later on.
Well, I need to be clear that these are my beliefs, but I think that Jesus is the tenth or eleventh incarnation of God. He is one of the three most important to modern humans. The other two would be Rama and Krishna, although they came some time before Jesus. The things Jesus make perfect sense when you compare them to what Krishna said. It’s just a continuum…Other westerners who would share that line of thought would be people like Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Jung, Huxley and Richard Alpert.
Krishna’s only vaguely familiar to me. I wasn’t aware of his claims to Godhood. Although- if we’re all just a part of God- would you say Jesus or Krishna or Rama were any more God than you or me?
Richard Alpert is another name I immediately recognize- he was a character on Lost!
Many of the earlier experiments are noted in detail in a book by Amit Goswami, Ph.D, Professor of physical at the Institute of Theoretical Sciences at the University of Oregon. The book is called “The Self Aware Universe.” It explains it all in great detail, and notes a number of these experiments.
I’ll see if I can track that down at some point. Probably not until after Christmas, though. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
I think that’s the confusing part Cooterhein. We seem to be creating the realities we experience as we go, but you might recall that I mentioned that I do not believe there are individual consciousnesses. Only one consciousness.
I’ve done a little bit with philosophy, but I don’t think this has ever come up. It was more focused on western philosophy. I think you gave me enough info on the Upanishads that I can track down more info on my own; thank you for telling me as much as you have, though.
Couple of other issues you brought up starting with post 95: The whole situation where God creates people who fall into sin, total inability, etc. I don’t believe that was a mistake. God did intend for human history to play out the way it did, and Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was a part of the plan from eternity past, along with the Fall, the Flood, Armageddon, all of it. I think the vast majority of Christians will say this, but then we’re all faced with the prospect that it’s a very sick game that God is playing. So we have to respond to that by affirming God’s sovreignty and showing that the things He did make a certain amount of sense.
There is a doctrine known as “the best of all possible worlds,” and while you won’t see too many Christians (even among Calvinists) who argue for it specifically, the same general concept is there to a certain extent when Christians address this issue. A large part of our task has to do with demonstrating that the way God decided to make and run the universe is
not completely stupid, which it would be in the event that He bypassed many other options that are possible and clearly better but went with the stupid one anyway. There’s several ways to do this. I think you’ve seen a couple of them already.
There’s a couple of other issues that I think are related to this, and I should probably address them while I have the chance. First, as I’ve said earlier, I don’t think I can advocate free will in the sense that we have “the ability to do otherwise.” If God knows what we will and won’t do and He’s never wrong, we do not, in reality, have multiple possibilities. I still want to affirm a certain kind of free will, though, in that we are not coerced- in general, yes, but where it relates to the problem of evil in particular.
This is also related to an idea that was articulated in something sci-fi related at some point, and I’m paraphrasing here: “I have to question the story logic of an all-powerful all-wise God who creates faulty humans and then punishes them for His own faulty workmanship.” Put another way, it’s the question of how God can justly punish sinful people who are totally unable to please God without His direct assistance, which He does not give them. (Especially relevant if you don’t support libertarian free will). There is one answer that I kind of like, though.
Suppose the whole thing went the opposite way. Suppose we were talking about someone who is totally incapable of being anything expect perfect and sinless. We also call this person “God” (or perhaps it’s three persons in a triune godhead). Despite being totally incapable of anything but perfection, we still feel like we can and should praise Him for those attributes. Likewise, those who have total inability in the opposite way deserve punishment for what they do. That still leaves the issue of God’s responsibility for creating people in this way, but that’s where we’d probably have to back up 3 and 4 paragraphs in this post and address that issue separately.
I think that’s one of the traditional ways of handling this kind of issue. That’s my setup, at least, even if I was a little short on answers and explanations. Let me know if that works for you, or if there’s a different way you want to go about exploring this.
Apologies for not re-posting all your material, btw. I did read and appreciate your kind words at the end of it, and I’m glad you’re exploring these issues. This might be the kind of situation where apologetics is at its most challenging, and I’m as interested as you are in seeing how Catholics might do it differently from me.
