Laird
Member
Nope - what I wrote is consistent with what I have thought for a long time.
Ah... you can always be relied upon to play the straight man, David.
Nope - what I wrote is consistent with what I have thought for a long time.
I agree that there's "usefulness" in considering that there is a hierarchy of spiritual beings with a degree of absoluteness. I tend to think that there is also usefulness to considering that the meaningfulness of such beliefs comes from the "correctness" of the beliefs rather than from the usefulness of the beliefs.
What do all you here think about these thoughts of mine?
1) Some people suggest that people have another component that remains in the spirit world.
2) The structure of time may be more complex than we tend to assume.
I think Alex gave the pure materialists plenty of opportunity to put their case, so very few people want to plough through more of their nonsense.Royal rumble... Dead Radin, Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Passio, panic and a skeptical scientist who is popular.
That might be a very good idea - because these contradictions between different accounts might get thrashed out.You should do interviews with spiritual people debating each other, sounds childish but as I see it we can learn a lot more
Can't you unpack this a bit - tell us what and who you are talking about!There's a woman I just started following who had pictures with all the top... ummm researchers and goes on to explain how many are not exactly what they preach. At best they are researchers, most don't meditate for example. She had pictures with David Wilock and Nassim Harim, I was interested
David, I thought there was an agreement political discussions would be taken off line. I think you have a responsibility as a moderator not to be the instigator of contentious political comment. It not only deflects the conversation away from the focal spirit of Skeptiko, it introduces, in then instance of Trump, the most radically contentious theme imaginable - and not suited to this forum. In case you want to argue the toss, I am on my 27th book on American history, politics and Trump since 1 December last year. This is not a debate we need on an open forum discussion about an unrelated subject. If you want to set up an alternative discussion I would be happy to participate. But I won't respond to what I perceive to be numerous errors or misrepresentations above. Do we go off line and invite folk to join the discussion -or kill it now?I like the Trump administration a lot. I think he is doing everything possible to contain NK and Iran without going to war with them. This is very hard, and he could have used a war to boost his popularity with many of his critics - he resisted that temptation, even in the early days when his presidency still seemed a bit insecure.
Some time back, there was much talk here on the forum that many politicians may have ended up being blackmailed to do things they would not otherwise have done. This was scoffed at as being extreme - but does it really look so wild as we see the Epstein scandal unravel? Does President Obama's willingness to do a deal with President Putin, really match up with the actions of his team in later years - attacks (explicit or otherwise) on Syria and Libya - and destabilisation of The Ukraine - why did he veer away from his earlier peaceful policies? I cheered for Obama when he first got in, just as I cheered for Trump more recently, but Obama changed.
This ability to control the actions of US presidents, may well have contributed to the West's seeming wanton desire to attack and wreck the Middle East and other places. Look back at the absurd history over the last 50 years or so.
So getting back to my original point, I would say that heads of state like Trump may be about the best you can get, but nobody would claim he is akin to a god, and as below so above - reality may be controlled by multiple intelligent entities, with varying morality and large but finite abilities to control our physical reality. A god who needs to throw out multiple designs to see which will work, doesn't sound infinitely knowledgeable to me.
David
David, I thought there was an agreement political discussions would be taken off line.
For me, it's unknown whether these big questions are fundamentally answerable or not. Perhaps our useful, meaningful, provisional answers are the best we can do for now. Perhaps we will have different useful, meaningful, provisional answers in the future that scratch more of our itches when it comes to these questions as we experience them today. But then perhaps we will have different itches that would need to be scratched ...
hinking about this some more.....has there ever been a competent medium (competent=thoroughly tested and proven) that has had to tell a client trying to communicate with the deceased that the connection isn't possible because the deceased has reincarnated? - Because you'd think that would happen from time to time; especially if the deceased died an untimely death.
That's not a rhetorical question. Genuinely interested.
Agreed, and I'll start out with what are the qualities of readiness. Just give me that. The reincarnation question can be as simple as what occurred prior to this birth as in Jim Tucker children recounting a previous life. Perception here about reincarnation appears linear but to understand it requires being able to view it outside of time and space which are aspects serving its fundamental purpose. It has a purpose of some device. My curiosity is then who/what makes such a determination of qualification and why. Is reincarnation involved with my qualification? It is almost circular thinking. I cannot know this answer either, but I ask it just the same.I have found that 'spirits' of the higher order are disinclined to set us straight about things they see we are not ready to work with. I have been flat out refused answers to questions posed and when I have asked why the answer is always the same: You are not ready for this.
So you did originally ask the question and although the answer was your not ready. Are you being guided into where you should investigate. Yeah, why not, you seek and it is given to you, in time. It seems you are coming into, at least, a intellectual understanding. If mathematically minded physicists can discover and comprehend completely incongruent realities of the very small. Why not you or I coming to an understanding of difficult concepts about the unobstructed universe.I am revisiting White's The Unobstructed Universe, which was published in 1940. Its a conversation between White and friend and recently deceased Betty via another friend. Betty is trying to explain to White and co how things work from her POV. She described the physical plane as the 'obstructed universe' and her metaphysical plane as the 'Unobstructed Universe'. She affirms that all is consciousness and then attempts to explain why the difference between the obstructed and unobstructed states.
I read the book for the first time decades ago. It is conceptually difficult because envisioning the metaphysical analogues of space and time is not an easy task - but each time I try I am a little less conditioned.
Part of the problem with looking through the wrong end of the telescope is that we lack the language and conceptual framework to understand that is what we are doing. I go back to valued 'channelled' or 'communicated' writings often just to shake up my thinking and loosen the grip of materialistic thought on my mind -its a kind of spiritual delousing bath I have to do several times a year.
It has a purpose of some device. My curiosity is then who/what makes such a determination of qualification and why. Is reincarnation involved with my qualification? It is almost circular thinking. I cannot know this answer either, but I ask it just the same.
No skeptic in their right mind would debate Bernardo Kastrup. I have heard of no invitations either.Royal rumble... Dead Radin, Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Passio, panic and a skeptical scientist who is popular.
If we keep getting back garbley-goock doesnt that imply something?
Oh! And it turns out on average people are quite similar, so its possible to get hits 1/3rd the time with cold reading. This is infocoming from julie bieschel, i believe, but would have to check to be sure if you have any doubt about that number.?
Michael I have read your account of GBS, but it was last year or so you recounted it and my memory fails me. What does GBS stand for?This is my understanding. Some of us are driven by basic desire and are not amenable to any kind of planned life. Others understand that an incarnation is a step on the path of evolution of consciousness, and they are playing a part in that. There are spirits/souls of higher evolution who oversee incarnations and who do make plans in cooperation with (re)incarnating souls.
I have good grounds for believing that my contraction of GBS in 2008 was known back in the mid 1980s, and that it was something I had agreed to. When I was lying on the lounge room floor in 2008, having become quite suddenly paralysed, I was very calm and I had a sense this was, finally, what it was all about. GBS has transformed my life - crap on the physical plane - but amazing otherwise. I have asked myself whether, if I could go back and change things, whether I would. No, I am a much better person for my experience and I would trade the limitations and cost for that. I know in that deep intuitive sense, one has lying on a floor beyond volitional movement, that this was my destiny. Did I agree to this before I was born? I did.
Well, it is entirely possible that one's soul can be "simultaneously" - from the corporeal / embodied realm perspective - being reincarnated here on Earth and yet still remain in the psychic / disembodied realms of the afterlife. The two reasons are...
a) The timelessness of the nonphysical forms of existence. The events there need not be strictly historically correllated with the earthly timeline; they almost certainly do show some flow and change as the events here, yet probably not in the form of singular, unidirected, one-event-in-a-moment, first-cause-then-effect sequence. More likely scenario is that different streams and clusters of changing psychic events can be accessed in accordance of the views, needs and wishes of the person(s) coming into contact with the nonphysical realms.
b) Incarnation in the form of earthly embodiment does not necessarily require leaving the psychic realms completely. It is quite probable that a soul's experience of embodiment is not a literal "insertion" into a body (to describe it so...), but rather a kind of perceptual distraction. To understand what I mean, imagine playing a videogame here in the physical realm. When one plays a videogame, one don't enter it in a literal sense: one still sits in a chair in front of one's PC or, or on a sofa in front of a TV with a console attached - yet one's attention can be distracted so fully that one may start feeling AS IF one lives within the game. The same can work with embodiment and disembodiment: we may be playing an ultra-high-immersion game here in the corporeal part of the world, intense and captivating enough for us to perceive it, transiently and illusively, as a reality, even as "the" reality... while in fact remaining in the spirtual dimension.
What do all you here think about these thoughts of mine?
P.S. Oh, and good to be here again, after a long absence. :)