David Quinn:
Empirical phenomena are part of the world of appearances, which may or may not be hallucinatory, in which no certainty can be found. Pinning one's hopes on the existence of a particular empirical phenomenon, such as an alien god, doesn't help one to understand the underlying principle behind all phenomena, which is the first step towards opening one's mind to the nature of Reality.
First you say this.
ES: It's not a worry to me. I know the mindset of some of the members of this forum: attack, attack, attack. I'm unwilling to subject myself to that attack.
David: If the evidence is good enough it should be able to withstand any attack.
I am glad you said this - now -are you gonna hang in here for this discussion and follow your own words? I am going to demonstrate to you, without question, how you have double standards in place. That is called being illogical. It means, you are in the trap of dogma.
Your self image of being a sage is blinding you from transcendant thought and experience. I will prove it - now pay attention and don't run away.
Altered states can be very insightful at times, but they can also mislead us terribly, mainly because we tend to bring our own emotional baggage and unresolved issues into the experience. The subconscious is quick to project all sorts of things out of this baggage, which the mind unwittingly takes to be real.
This is exactly what has happened to you. I know this might be painful but hang in there and for God's sake open your mind and think. You cannot expand your consciousness while locked in a repulsing mindset David.
Look, I see you as having great potential but you are in lock down mode. You are trying to preserve what cannot possibly survive - I will show you.
To think of yourself as a child of an Almighty God is rather egotistical, don't you think?
Not when looked at with cold hard logic. If you were to meet God face to face, it would still be you experiencing this and so, the answer must ultimately be found in you.
You keep shutting down possible experiences because of contradictory systems of beliefs. I will show you.
In truth, all things are children of God. All things are made in His image.
The why exclude yourself?
I find the Christrian conception of God tacky because it involves a large conscious being playing taunting games with us lowly humans.
Yup - I do not believe in the God in your head either, he never did exist. How did this God get in your head?
People whose minds are more scattered and ill-disciplined tend to have a wider variety of random, mundane thoughts popping into their brains - such as, "I'll now drive up to the local store, as there's a guy that needs a jump." - and thus there is a greater chance for strange coincidences to occur in their lives. And because they are scattered and ill-disciplined they are more likely to falsely conclude that these coincidences are magical or supernatural in nature. Particularly if they have an emotional need to believe in a supernatural god.
This is not the proof of your contradiction but wrap your noodle around this It happened about two years ago:
I was to meet for breakfast my cousin and a friend named JR. The night before I had a dream.
I dreamed I was alone in a room with a man but could not see his face. I put both of my hands on his shoulders and prayed for him. I then reached into his chest and pulled out a black shadow that had a human outline or form to it. I held this form in front of the man and said:
"Do you see this? You thought this was you, it only pretended to be you. You thought you had to be evil to get ahead in this world because you saw others being underhanded and prospering by it."
I then tossed the shadow over my head and it evaporated. I then said "Give me your hand." He took my hand and we floated upward together. I said "There are no limits to who and what you are."
I woke up and remembered this very strange dream.
The next morning JR dropped by to pick me up for breakfast. As we were driving I asked how he was doing. He said " I feel more free than I have ever felt I think." I asked what had happened.
He said " I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was alone in a room with a man but could not see his face. He put both of his hands on me and prayed for me. He then reached into my chest and pulled out a black form that had an outline of a human and he said you see this......"
I finished the dream for him.
Maybe its not just scattered minds David, perhaps you are still a youngster at experiencing what this universe has to offer. I know this clashes with your image in your mind of being a world renown sage but if you do not open your mind soon it may become to late and you will continue to be stuck in mediocrity and oblivious to the gifts that awate you.
True, observing things through the senses is a necessary catalyst for provoking the mind into seeking logical truths. However, the proof of a logical truth cannot be found in such observation.
I trust you see the difference.
Sense information can stimulate the mind into logical thought, but it can't provide the proof that a logical truth is in fact true.
You are going to use sense information from very dubious agenda ridden sources to justify what here you said, not to do.
In the end, though, enlightened knowledge of reality goes beyond all states, altered or otherwise, and doesn't depend on the presence or absence of a particular experience, profound or otherwise.
Beingofone drums his fingers waiting for David to take his own words to heart. I hope you do not see me as a 'threat' as this would be your ego experiencing cavitation in death throws.
I can assure you, I am on your side.
I'm not necessarily saying it does cover all cases (in other words, I'm open to the possibility of paranormal phenomena), but I do have high standards when it comes to evidence for these things. In my experience, the paranormal agenda is mostly driven by very flakey people who are easily satisfied with dubious evidence. When you have intelligent people like Susan Blackmore, James Randi, and Derren Brown who have all investigated the subject with a scientific thoroughness and yet come away empty-handed, it doesn't look good.
Here it is - now we have three 'enlightened' scientists of which you said:
David:
"Empirical phenomena are part of the world of appearances, which may or may not be hallucinatory, in which no certainty can be found. Pinning one's hopes on the existence of a particular empirical phenomenon, such as an alien god, doesn't help one to understand the underlying principle behind all phenomena, which is the first step towards opening one's mind to the nature of Reality."
So its okey dokey to now use empirical hand picked 'scientific sages' to debunk what does not align with your dogma? I think you are being very flakey, holding double standards, in contradiction, and easily satisfied with dubious evidence.
Its really a mystery to you why they came away empty handed? You can't figure this simple 'scientific' (choke) result? Gee golly wiz Dave, what a mystery that world known sceptics cannot find any evidence?
Any ideas why that these who built their reputations on scepticism cannot find any evidence? Hmmm - lets all scratch our wooden heads and ponder this vague mystery that sages cannot seem to figure.
So now you want to be the cynic and scorner huh? Is this what you have set your mind to be? The critic and sceptic? Is it not much more preferable to be the one who understands?
David, you have such great potential and you stumble over microscopic mouse droppings.
You could reach millions if you would just open your mind and heart. I am not asking you to be gullible - but open, there is a huge difference.
Also, scientific research has shown that most people have a very poor understanding of the laws of probabilities and severely underestimate the power of chance.
Now I ask you, what are the probabilities of my friend JR and I being in the same dream together talking to each other?
Will you just give this real, true life experience a wave of the hand? I suppose, over a three year period you will have deduced I am not given to wisdom? Am I the one being illogical here David? Do you think I am given to flights of fantasy?
Then how do I manage to use logic to make almost every point if I am deluded?
Are you going to open your heart and mind? You have one of the pure hearts, you are simply hung up on past understanding and think you have 'arrived'. This is the illusion of your ego as it wants to survive and it can only accomplish this feat by holding you back from true transcendance of all limiting concepts.
Let it all go, all images of yourself. Let it rain.
Reality has both the form of everything and the form of no thing. It is all things, yet no thing in particular. It is formless, yet manifests as everything that we see.
You say these words but you do not believe them. You do not believe your own philosophy. Until you know what it is to actually have faith in what you have concluded, you will continue to be on a merri go round.
If what you said above is true - why in the world would you go out of your way to dis nonordinary experience? That does not compute at all.
To my mind, the evidence for consciousness surviving death falls into the same category as the paranormal - i.e. it's essentially an agenda pushed by flakey people on dubious grounds. Until there is compelling evidence from a credible source, it is nothing more than wishful thinking.
You are being unbelievably thick, you know that? You are difficult to bring to enlightenment because you think you already undersatnd everything. You toss away logic, I have shown you time after time, when it does not suite your superimposing over reality what you want to see to sound 'sagely'.
There is evidence everywhere, including in what you say yourself, hello?
Reality has both the form of everything and the form of no thing. It is all things, yet no thing in particular. It is formless, yet manifests as everything that we see.
-- David Quinn
I just don't accept dodgy evidence - for anything. Give me something compelling by a credible source and I will be open to it.
Bull - you will accept what you want to see and until you can transcend your blinders that is all you will accept. Including people with an agenda to disprove what they want to as if they were 'enlightened'. Yup - James Randi is now enlightened and so we must trust him blindly.
Wake up David. Even the Buddha has to break with the ascetics and they thought he had left the path of truth. They rejected him because he no longer hung out in the forest eating berries