Spirituality Thread - OBEs, lucid dreams, meditation, chakras etc

[CinnaSlim]

The Universe is 5% "Normal" Matter/Energy, 27% Dark Matter, 68% Dark Energy.

I think the stuff scientists don't know is more interesting than the stuff they do.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Also, they believe in consciousness and everything has consciousness from plants to humans. So people even look at the concept of consciousness all wrong, when you increase your conciousness you are trying to reach Nirvana. Once you reach Nirvana, thats it, you stop the reincarnation process. You return back to the essence and become One. This is a pure metaphysical outlook. Buddhist do not believe in a God, they believe in a soul which they consider to contain conciousness. That consciousness becomes one, its basically I can become a plant or part of the source. Their is no individuality.

LOTS of Buddhists believe in a God or multiple gods. The myth of how Buddha received his original revelations involves the work of gods. There are certainly many Buddhist cultures who have moved away from this, but it's not uniform.

Christianity is far from being metaphysical, neither Buddhist nor actual metaphysicists such as Philosophers or scientist have God at the center of their metaphysics.

Again, that doesn't make any sense under the definition of what metaphysics actually is. Can you provide an academic source for the claim that Christianity is not metaphysical?

Christianity has some mystical concepts in the Gospel of John, which secular scholars consider the Johannine community to be Gnostic and theologians like Raymond E Brown describes the Johannine community as being Hellinistic.

The secular scholars who consider the Johannine community to be gnostic are a small minority. We've had this argument already, right? There were literally no cites to support the claim that "the Johannine community is gnostic" is the leading or even a leading position, while I demonstrated the opposite from several sources.

The blood of Christ washing away your sins is a mystical concept, but Romans does a much better job explaining why we recieved salvation, and reading Romans puts the Gospel of John in much better perspective. I think Christians approach their faith very mystical, because sin is presented in a mystical way in the Gospel of John.

I think Christianity is inherently mystical to some degree, just like the whole world is. The Greek influence that attempts to eliminate mysticism is a purely secular Western thing that came in after the fact. Of course Christianity can operate within that world, but that world always misses something.

As an American, I think I always tend to be less mystical than my ancestors were or any of the religious faiths we're speaking of. And I think that's a defect of me and the society I was brought to, not the natural position I would take willingly.

It looks like you should do more reading up on metaphysics and I would be interested in spiritual practices of Buddhist you observed. But Buddhist do not believe in God and they only hold metaphysical beliefs. Even the concept of reincarnation as described by Buddhist is extremely metaphysical.

In the US I had Black, White, Burmese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Buddhist friends. I worked for an NGO in Thailand for a year and saw their version of Buddhism, as well as visiting a few nearby countries, and I've spent a ton of time in India, where I never actually met any Buddhists that I remember but have heard a lot of the Buddha mythology. I've also read up a bit on Tibetan Buddhism. The diversity of stories I can tell from the diversity of ways Buddhism is practiced in those places is ridiculous.

 

[The M.I.C.]

Interesting.

 

[Soon]

alan watts was the truth

im doing a lot of reading on the law of reversed effort and taoism right now.

Alan Watts with his New Age piff. I could only do about 10 seconds

LOTS of Buddhists believe in a God or multiple gods. The myth of how Buddha received his original revelations involves the work of gods. There are certainly many Buddhist cultures who have moved away from this, but it's not uniform.





Again, that doesn't make any sense under the definition of what metaphysics actually is. Can you provide an academic source for the claim that Christianity is not metaphysical?





The secular scholars who consider the Johannine community to be gnostic are a small minority. We've had this argument already, right? There were literally no cites to support the claim that "the Johannine community is gnostic" is the leading or even a leading position, while I demonstrated the opposite from several sources.






I think Christianity is inherently mystical to some degree, just like the whole world is. The Greek influence that attempts to eliminate mysticism is a purely secular Western thing that came in after the fact. Of course Christianity can operate within that world, but that world always misses something.

As an American, I think I always tend to be less mystical than my ancestors were or any of the religious faiths we're speaking of. And I think that's a defect of me and the society I was brought to, not the natural position I would take willingly.





In the US I had Black, White, Burmese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Buddhist friends. I worked for an NGO in Thailand for a year and saw their version of Buddhism, as well as visiting a few nearby countries, and I've spent a ton of time in India, where I never actually met any Buddhists that I remember but have heard a lot of the Buddha mythology. I've also read up a bit on Tibetan Buddhism. The diversity of stories I can tell from the diversity of ways Buddhism is practiced in those places is ridiculous.

Buddhism does not believe in a God. Am I wrong?

Theologians consider the Johannine Community to be Hellenistic.

And secular scholars consider the Johannine comminity Gnostic.

I consider the Johannine to be more mystical and metaphysical than the Marcan, Lucan, and Matthean community. And you can tell The Book of Romans influenced the Gospel of John.

Please define metaphysics since you feel my definition is wrong.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Buddhism does not believe in a God. Am I wrong?

"Buddhism" isn't an entity which can "believe" in anything. Actual Buddhists often believe in a God or in many gods. I had a Burmese student who prayed to God every day. And different Buddhist traditions have had many deities. For example, there are the Brahmas, or the Eternal Buddha, or the Wrathful Deities, and many other examples.

As one Buddhist writes here:

I have met a lot of Buddhists who believe in God. I have met a lot of Buddhists who don’t believe in God... And a lot of Buddhists just don’t know.

So there you go.

Please define metaphysics since you feel my definition is wrong.

Metaphysics is the attempt to understand the basic nature of the world, existence, and being itself.

Those questions may have spiritual answers or non-spiritual answers (or both), religious answers or non-religious answers.

For example, the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the more famous Western theologians of all time.

And secular scholars consider the Johannine comminity Gnostic.

I'll ask you to produce one source, from anywhere, which claims that secular scholars today generally believe that the Johannine community is Gnostic.

My guess is that you got that idea from a disciple of Bultmann, and never found out that Bultmann's hypotheses are no longer accepted by the majority of scholars, if they ever were.

Rudolf Bultmann took a different approach to the work. He hypothesized a Gnostic origin (specifically Mandaeanism which maintains that Jesus was a mšiha kdaba or "false prophet," ) for the work....

Bultmann's analysis is still widely applied in German-speaking countries, although with many corrections and discussions. Wide-ranging replies have been made to this analysis. Today, most Christian exegetes reject much of Bultmann's theory, but accept certain of his intuitions. For instance, J. Blank uses Bultmann in his discussion of the Last Judgment and W. Thüsing uses him to discuss the elevation and glorification of Jesus.

In the English-speaking world, Bultmann has had less impact. Instead, these scholars tended to continue in the investigation of the Hellenistic and Platonistic theories, generally returning to theories closer to the traditional interpretation. By way of example, G.H.C. McGregor (1928) and W.F. Howard (1943) belong to this group.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran marked a change in Johannine scholarship. Several of the hymns, presumed to come from a community of Essenes, contained the same sort of plays between opposites – light and dark, truth and lies – which are themes within the Gospel. Thus the hypothesis that the Gospel relied on Gnosticism fell out of favor.

or again:

The arguments of Bultmann and his school were seriously compromised by the mid-20th century discoveries of the Nag Hammadi library of genuine Gnostic writings (which are dissimilar to the Gospel of John) as well as the Qumran library of Jewish writings (which are often similar to the Gospel of John).

Note not only the telling statement that the consensus is away from a Gnostic origin to the gospel, but the implication that the connection was based on vocabulary used, as opposed to fundamental theological claims.

Gnostics certainly used the Gospel of John, as did orthodox Christians. But that doesn't show that they produced it. (That would be like claimed that the Christian community produced Isaiah, because they used it so much!) If the Gnostic community had produced John, it would have been gnostic, and not orthodox, in theology.

Some points at which John's theology differs radically from Gnosticism:

1) Gnostic Christian texts ignore the Old Testament and Old Testament themes. John, like the other New Testament texts, is built throughout on fundamental Jewish Old Testament themes.

2) Gnostics held the created world to be evil, created by a lesser God. John holds the created world to be good, created by God/Jesus.

3) Gnostics denied the bodily resurrection, favoring a soul-only afterlife in line with their rejection of the human body. John emphasizes the physicality of the resurrection body more than any other author.

4) Gnostic texts ignore politics and the issues of the world in general, leaning into the view that only the spiritual is important. John (like not just the other Gospels but Revelation, for that matter) holds a strong anti-empirial stance and implies a setting of potential persecution, at odds with the ruling authorities.


Just take John's famous opening alone. It makes clear that God was fully in the creation of the world and all things came into existence through God and the Word, "all things came into existence through Him, not one thing exists that was not through Him". It makes clear that the life of Jesus is the light of the human race, and the darkness did not overcome it (contrast that with 1 Enoch 42, where "Wisdom" fails to find a home in the world and gives up). It says that "the Word became flesh", and that it was glorious, not evil or corrupted (contrast Jesus's focus on the evil and impermanence of the body in the Gospel of Thomas). And it's rooted in the Jewish story ("the law was given through Moses"), rather than ignoring it like Christian Gnostics do.

Of course, a 19-verse opening doesn't profoundly refute the charge of "this was produced by a Gnostic community" by itself, but every one of those points I made is heavily emphasized within the entire body of the gospel.

 

[emerald]

Great thread.
I'm trying to get closer to God but it's hard trying to find the right path towards righteousness. I'm a decent person but I can do more.

 

[Soon]

"Buddhism" isn't an entity which can "believe" in anything. Actual Buddhists often believe in a God or in many gods. I had a Burmese student who prayed to God every day. And different Buddhist traditions have had many deities. For example, there are the Brahmas, or the Eternal Buddha, or the Wrathful Deities, and many other examples.

 

[Soon]

"Buddhism" isn't an entity which can "believe" in anything. Actual Buddhists often believe in a God or in many gods.


Metaphysics is the attempt to understand the basic nature of the world, existence, and being itself.

Those questions may have spiritual answers or non-spiritual answers (or both), religious answers or non-religious answers.

For example, the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the more famous Western theologians of all time.


I'll ask you to produce one source, from anywhere, which claims that secular scholars today generally believe that the Johannine community is Gnostic.

Sorry last post got cut off.

• Buddhism does not believe in God. All reference sources has stated this fact. Also, Buddha created Buddhism out of Hinduism using metaphysics, so essentially this is the use of metaphysics which is nature based and focuses on the Universe/Ultimate/Consciousness not God. Any Buddhist who believes in God is practicing a modified from of Buddhism, and that would me a move to acknowledge their Hindu roots. And if they believe in the divinity of Christ, they might as well call themselves Christians. I do not believe Mohammad is a prophet, the minute I do I can hardly consider myself fully Christian.

• 1. St Thomas Aquanias used a modified form of metaphysics, he still believed in sin, judgement, and God...which are spiritual concepts not metaphysical concepts. 2. Socrates believed the soul was eternal, but only consciousness would be achieved, not individuality or salvation...which is why Socrates philosophy was purely metaphysical and had no theology. 3. St. Thomas Aquanias believed knowledge would received from God and angels, metaphysics does not believe in God or angels.

Theologians like Raymond E Brown considers the Johannine community to Hellenistic.

Secular scholars explain the Johannine community had very early Gnostics views and broke away from the Church because of their aberrant views of Christ. They views got very radical later one, early Gnostics believed Christ came to reveal knowledge to liberate us from this world (John 3:32, 3:36, 8:32). Also they believed Jews did not worship the true God (John 8: 44-47), that would be very different view from the other Gospels and more in line with the concept of people worshiping lesser Gods.

So both theologians and secular scholars have noted how radical the Johannine community were, they could not ignore this fact. Even Ignatus criticized the Johannine community for their docetic views. To say that Johannine community did not become secessionists is to ignore history. Also, you would the first person to deny the metaphysics and mysticism that is strong in the Gospel of John, because even theologians acknowledge this and I feel a Christian's metaphysical and mystical view of their faith is because of the Gospel of John, Paul's Romans heavily influenced the Gospel of John.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

You keep posting claims and expecting everyone else to accept your claims as truth. You're not citing any sources and you're providing very little logic. You're not countering my sources or logic at all. It's hard to take your argument seriously.

Buddhism does not believe in God. All reference sources has stated this fact.

That's funny, because I just cited a whole bunch of sources that show the opposite. While you didn't cite anything at all, I cited specific Buddhist deities and claims by Buddhists, both ancient and modern.

Obviously, there is a diversity of perspectives in Buddhism. Your attempt to claim otherwise is a real No True Scotsman fallacy.

1. St Thomas Aquanias used a modified form of metaphysics, he still believed in sin, judgement, and God...which are spiritual concepts not metaphysical concepts. 2. Socrates believed the soul was eternal, but only consciousness would be achieved, not individuality or salvation...which is why Socrates philosophy was purely metaphysical and had no theology. 3. St. Thomas Aquanias believed knowledge would received from God and angels, metaphysics does not believe in God or angels.

Again, you're making up definitions for metaphysics as you go along. The dictionary definition, the encyclopedia accounts, the wikipedia accounts, and most especially the philosophy department accounts all contradict your claims. So please cite where you're making this up from.

Sartre himself even said:

I do not think myself any less a metaphysician in denying the existence of God than Leibniz was in affirming it.

The Stanford philosophy department account of metaphysics, besides including that line, also discusses Kant, Aquinus, and Leibniz as metaphysicists who believed in God, and discussed how metaphysics does deal with questions of God.

If these problems about space and time belong to metaphysics only in the post-Medieval sense, they are nevertheless closely related to questions about first causes and universals. First causes are generally thought by those who believe in them to be eternal and non-local. God, for example—both the impersonal God of Aristotle and the personal God of Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophy—is generally said to be eternal, and the personal God is said to be omnipresent. To say that God is eternal is to say either that he is everlasting or that he is somehow outside time. And this raises the metaphysical question of whether it is possible for there to be a being—not a universal or an abstract object of some other sort, but an active substance—that is everlasting or non-temporal. An omnipresent being is a being that does not occupy any region of space (not even the whole of it, as the luminiferous ether of nineteenth-century physics would if it existed), and whose causal influence is nevertheless equally present in every region of space (unlike universals, to which the concept of causality does not apply). The doctrine of divine omnipresence raises the metaphysical question whether it is possible for there to be a being with this feature.

Wait...the "impersonal God of Aristotle"? Man, that throws a wrench in your argument. Not to mention all the talk of metaphysics discussing the existence and nature of God, when you try to claim that it automatically rules it out.

Secular scholars explain the Johannine community had very early Gnostics views and broke away from the Church because of their aberrant views of Christ. They views got very radical later one, early Gnostics believed Christ came to reveal knowledge to liberate us from this world (John 3:32, 3:36, 8:32). Also they believed Jews did not worship the true God (John 8: 44-47), that would be very different view from the other Gospels and more in line with the concept of people worshiping lesser Gods.

You still haven't cited once who these "secular scholars" are, nor any evidence that they form the majority. I, on the other hand, already cited evidence that they are marginal now that we know what Gnostics actually believed (for example, Gospel of Thomas), and how remarkably different it is from the Gospel of John.

I also cited in detail why the Gospel of John isn't gnostic, with specific lines. You didn't counter any of that. You made a couple general claims that aren't specific to gnosticism at all.

So both theologians and secular scholars have noted how radical the Johannine community were, they could not ignore this fact. Even Ignatus criticized the Johannine community for their docetic views.

You are making that up. Ignatius never references the Johannine community at all, and certainly not as docetic.

It's funny that you keep citing Raymond Brown earlier, when Brown himself is unsure of whether Ignatius even knew about the Johannine community, but would have found many of his thoughts very much in line with theirs if he did. In fact, Brown claims that Ignatius and the Johannine community had the same high Christology, but mainly would have differed on practical issues of church structure. Book after book shows that the anti-doceticism of Ignatius and the anti-doceticism of the Johannine community were perfectly in line.

It's not just that the Gospel of John isn't docetic (see 1:14, 2:1, 4:6-7, 7:3-10, 11:33, and of course the communion narrative and his death), it's that the epistles of John are the most anti-docetic documents in the entire New Testament.

To say that Johannine community did not become secessionists is to ignore history. Also, you would the first person to deny the metaphysics and mysticism that is strong in the Gospel of John, because even theologians acknowledge this and I feel a Christian's metaphysical and mystical view of their faith is because of the Gospel of John, Paul's Romans heavily influenced the Gospel of John.

What are you claiming that I said now? You seem to be putting words into the mouth of both myself and others.

I already said that Christianity in general, not just the Gospel of John, is naturally mystical. The Gospel of Mark is all sorts of mystical, as are many other Christian sources. And its all metaphysical, just like the rest of the Bible. That doesn't make them gnostic. Or docetic. Or anything else you're making up.

 

[Soon]

Or anything else you're making up.

I define metaphysics as defined by Buddha and Socrates. Not like how Satire did who lived centuries later. Once you go from nature or the Universe to God you no longer dealing with metaphysics, you dealing with theology. Once you go from dealing with superstition to dealing with faith, you go from mysticism to spirituality. Hinduism is filled with mysticism, Christianity is filled with spirituality.

As far as the debate of the Johannine community, even the most conservative theologian calls them Hellenistic.

Honestly, there is not much else I can say.


Also...I consider metaphysics, mysticism and spirituality to all be different, so I can't even address the rest of your points.

Buddha did not believe in God and that is the doctrine he preached, since you say otherwise all I can do is go back to Wikipedia to do further research.

Also, thanks for your insight, we just have different outlooks.

 

[Malik1time]

I tried to astra project but i always end up sleeping.. i heard 1 method to count 1-100 in my head to stay awake but it aint working any tips?

 

[CinnaSlim]

I tried to astra project but i always end up sleeping.. i heard 1 method to count 1-100 in my head to stay awake but it aint working any tips?

Try it when you are less sleepy. Sleep for 6 hours (or whenever you get up) than stay up for about an hour and try it then.

Check out Ryan Cropper and Gordon Xavier on YouTube.

 

[Malik1time]

Try it when you are less sleepy. Sleep for 6 hours (or whenever you get up) than stay up for about an hour and try it then.

ok will do have you done it? Im seriously interested in this like ive been watching videos all day on it.

 

[CinnaSlim]

ok will do have you done it? Im seriously interested in this like ive been watching videos all day on it.

I haven't. I don't practice enough. (I did get to the vibration stage once but that's it.) I just watch videos on the topic and read up on it but Im lazy and inconsistent when it comes to practice lol. Another tip is if you are really tired you can try lucid dreaming instead of projecting.

 

[Malik1time]

I haven't. I don't practice enough. (I did get to the vibration stage once but that's it.) I just watch videos on the topic and read up on it but Im lazy and inconsistent when it comes to practice lol. Another tip is if you are really tired you can try lucid dreaming instead of projecting.

appreciate it.na i wanna fly loll lucid dreaming u cant fly