I know what God looks like - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15059206
In a dream from several years ago, I am in a freight elevator rising in a dark, massive building filled with pipes, ducts, iron catwalks and other fixtures suggestive of a power station or refinery. When the elevator stops, I exit and walk toward a small bright light at the end of a catwalk. As I approach, the light appears to be two joined luminescent cylinders. I sense a great non-living intelligence from these cylinders and believe I am in the presence of a deity.

A few years later, I saw a similar image: the interior of a Borg spaceship in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I concluded that my dream image reveals a god and/or goddess who is the bright, non-living center of a great collective conscious like that of the Borg. My dream came at the dawn of the Internet, when that divine station was empty. It is now populated with more than 3 billion people whose thoughts intersect on the World Wide Web.

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#15059209
The internet is less of a hive mind than a screaming cacophony.

Either way, it's just a dream.

You'd think a deity could afford a telephone...
#15059606
This:
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@jimjam Trump is as far from God as you can get. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Besides, we all know that God looks like this:
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Hail Odin!!!
#15059676
Robert Urbanek wrote:In a dream from several years ago, I am in a freight elevator rising in a dark, massive building filled with pipes, ducts, iron catwalks and other fixtures suggestive of a power station or refinery. When the elevator stops, I exit and walk toward a small bright light at the end of a catwalk. As I approach, the light appears to be two joined luminescent cylinders. I sense a great non-living intelligence from these cylinders and believe I am in the presence of a deity.

A few years later, I saw a similar image: the interior of a Borg spaceship in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I concluded that my dream image reveals a god and/or goddess who is the bright, non-living center of a great collective conscious like that of the Borg. My dream came at the dawn of the Internet, when that divine station was empty. It is now populated with more than 3 billion people whose thoughts intersect on the World Wide Web.

Image


When I was a young man, I had many visions of god in dreams and drug hallucinations.

Then, one day out of the blue, I had a real mystical experience. It was then that I realised that the dreams and hallucinations were just that: my imagination.

So I would say that you have not seen god.
#15059677
You are all a god. Which sucks, I like to say it's all the responsibility and none of the power.

I, for example, am a minor god of information.
#15059700
In Zen we hope that one day God will wake up and realise that I'm an illusion.
#15059705
Atlantis wrote:
You must kill the god of your visions, because that's just a fake god.



It's closer to philosophy, related to the whole god is dead thing.

"We are as gods, we might as well get good at it."
Stewart Brand
#15059733
late wrote:It's closer to philosophy, related to the whole god is dead thing.

"We are as gods, we might as well get good at it."
Stewart Brand


Not really, it's closer to mysticism, or to an intuition of the divine than to philosophy or analytical thinking.

Like in quantum physics it is impossible to know the location of a particle when you know its speed, the divine cannot be known, it can only be intuited. It cannot be the object of human speculation or analytical dissection.

Augustine talked about the divine within us, but to say that we are gods leads to hubris, which removes us from the divine, hence, the expulsion from the paradise due to the apple of knowledge.

You can't have it both ways, be and know.
#15059783
Atlantis wrote:
Not really, it's closer to mysticism, or to an intuition of the divine than to philosophy or analytical thinking.

Like in quantum physics it is impossible to know the location of a particle when you know its speed, the divine cannot be known, it can only be intuited. It cannot be the object of human speculation or analytical dissection.

Augustine talked about the divine within us, but to say that we are gods leads to hubris, which removes us from the divine, hence, the expulsion from the paradise due to the apple of knowledge.

You can't have it both ways, be and know.



I like the Pragmatic approach, saying philosophical things in non-philosophical language.

Part of what Nietzsche was doing was talking about what he was seeing. The church went from being the center of life, to something on the periphery that had no real relevance in the real day to day existence in a Modern society.

If you take things a step further; we have the power of gods now. If you brought someone here from thousands of years ago, from his perspective we travel to the heavens, bring back the dead, and can change the world.

It also speaks to the need to think globally.
#15059794
Atlantis wrote:You must kill the god of your visions, because that's just a fake god.

"If you see the Buddha in the street, kill the Buddha."
#15059917
Potemkin wrote:"If you see the Buddha in the street, kill the Buddha."


I don't think it says anything about seeing him in the streets. It's an admonition to those who seek enlightenment by meditation. Whatever form you encounter in meditation, be it a Buddha, be it a pink elephant, it's not to be taken as reality. Just get over it.

late wrote:saying philosophical things in non-philosophical language.


That's a contradiction. Philosophy is about "wisdom". The philosopher is somebody who "likes wisdom." It is not somebody who is wise or enlightened.

It's as Nicola de Cusa explained, god is bigger than the human mind. Something big cannot be contained in something small. The human intellect cannot fathom god. In fact, a man-made god fashioned according to human logic is not worth having.

That's why most religions prohibit representation. Prohibition of images in Islam, "thou shall not have any god besides ... " in Christendom, and slay the Buddha you encounter in Buddhism. In other words, due to the duality of signifier and signified (in linguistics), the concept of an object and the object are two separate things. Therefore, the human concept of god is necessarily different from god. Consequently, fabricating a concept of god in itself is blasphemy. Later followers of their respective religions just didn't understand the reason for the prohibition of representation or the making of images/concepts of god.

Western philosophy went wrong with Descartes. He should have said: "I think, therefore, I'm not".

The act of reflecting on something distances us from that something, and the rise of a train of thought distances us from the pure state of being "tathagata" just being.

If you take things a step further; we have the power of gods now. If you brought someone here from thousands of years ago, from his perspective we travel to the heavens, bring back the dead, and can change the world.


You are talking about science fiction not of the divine.
#15059919
Atlantis wrote:


1) That's a contradiction.

2) Philosophy is about "wisdom". The philosopher is somebody who "likes wisdom." It is not somebody who is wise or enlightened.

3)It's as Nicola de Cusa explained, god is bigger than the human mind. Something big cannot be contained in something small. The human intellect cannot fathom god. In fact, a man-made god fashioned according to human logic is not worth having.


4) Western philosophy went wrong with Descartes. He should have said: "I think, therefore, I'm not".

5) The act of reflecting on something distances us from that something, and the rise of a train of thought distances us from the pure state of being "tathagata" just being.



6) You are talking about science fiction not of the divine.



1) No, that's called pragmatism.

" Similarly, pragmatists keep trying to find ways of making anti-philosophical points in non-philosophical language. For they face a dilemma if their language is too unphilosophical, too “literary,” they will be accused of changing the subject; if it is too philosophical it will embody Platonic assumptions which will make it impossible for the pragmatist to state the conclusion he wants to reach."

2) I see philosophy as a way of trying to understand the world. You can do that in a lot of different ways.

3) "They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using."

4) Are you sure you're not putting Descarte before de horse?

5) Meh, you think this, zen you think that...

6) I was talking about stuff we can do now. You simply didn't care for the perspective, and I can hardly blame you for that. It sucks, but if you're a god, you're stuck with it.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm
#15059929
Atlantis wrote:I don't think it says anything about seeing him in the streets.

What does "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" mean?

"Dyung Le, Long time Buddhist practitioner

The context of this phrase is from a old Zen koan attributed to Zen Master Linji, (the founder of the Rinzai sect). The whole saying is "If you meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet a Ghost, kill the Ghost" (Vietnamese “Phùng Phật Sát Phật, Phùng Ma Sát Ma”). My interpretation of this Zen parable is different from what has been enunciated.

During meditation, everything we encountered is a construct of the mind.

Advanced meditators often get into a state where they start to see ("visualize") various phenomena (light, flying, scenery, etc.) Very often they see deities, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, holding forth with teachings, or appearing to give blessing, etc.

Since Zen meditators seek to be free to all emotion, thoughts, concepts, etc., and the Buddha itself is but a "concept", if you "see" the Buddha, make sure to get rid of him. Do not get attached to him. He's no different than a ghost, both are construct of your mind.

It should be noted that this saying is entirely within the Zen context. In other Buddhist schools (Pure Land for example), practitioners seek to "meet the Buddha" and would be overjoyed to "see" the Buddha in their dreams! It should be noted that this happens within the context of a dream, not during meditation, so there is no conflict between the two schools."
#15060011
Potemkin wrote:What does "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" mean?


It means that you see the words but not the contents, you see the finger that's pointing to the moon instead of the moon. Refer to what I said about signifier and signified above.

Linji said 逢佛殺佛 (literally "every Buddha kills the Buddha"). Nothing about "in the street" or "on the road". That's just the translation. Ie., words about words. Nothing more.

You never killed the Buddha. Keep on trying. You won't get there by copy-pasting words.
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