Jamie wrote:




Honestly, I don't really get the feeling your looking at these Ideas from an objective point of view. I would not expect anyone who has preconcieved notions about religions to care whether or not I talk to angels, if you haven't been to the mountaintop then stories about the mountaintop are quite boring.

By mountaintop I just mean witnessing something that could not be called any other name besides angel or demon....Dark entity light/entity is just politically correct nonsense IMO. It insinuates that dark is evil somehow, talk about superstitious language..

Most people are fairly closed minded to the idea and I understand that. I personally find it silly that people refer to DMT entities as elves and expect to be taken seriously by others so there are two sides of the coin...


What I want to know is.....how is the explanation that everything is energy come close to being a satisfactory explanation.????

This is just like saying everything is matter, which is also true but obviously there is more to the story. To say everything is energy is a generic and abstract way to classify the psychedelic experience.

I personally believe that the energetic realm, the spiritual realm, whatever you perfer to call it operates by it's own set of rules similar to how the material world operates according to the laws of physics..

Many people as satisfied with the explanation that the material world is comprised of matter and are happy to leave it at that. Then there are those who perfer to find out more about material reality by studying quantum physics. The same goes for the energy world.

I for one am inclined to find out the truth of the matter...no pun intended. If that truth includes demons, angels, the Torah, and a male god then so be it, I am not out to try and form energy to my version of what it should be, energy formed me to have the opinions I have.


Also- I don't see what about the idea of Gods(plural) is so hard to conceptualize...especially since your saying we are all Gods(plural)

I agree in principle, anthropomorphic deification springs from our need to identify with a supreme level of consciousness, which also has human attributes and characteristics. Which is silly. IMO, the Indivisible Being is beyond any conception we theorize about, desire to believe, or project a biased anticipation upon perceiving.

The old G-d of our ancient monotheistic scriptures is not the transcendent Cosmic Singularity, as Eliyahu & Hyperspace Fool clearly enlightened us about, it is somewhat a collectively and cluster of aspects of the One Being, as is so within Hinduism. The European Christian God is more like Zeus, minus the rest of the whole Greco-Roman pantheon of companion deities.

I also agree with your interpretation of time as being nonlinear, or even unreal in the sense of the Absolute state, the eternal. And you are definitely not crazy. I too feel that the Omniverse, as Brother HF enthusiastically refers to this totality of existence, always was/is and always will be. It may be continuously changing and morphing into new dimensions. An endless shifting of energy-patterns and myriad paradigms.

Beginnings and endings are merely polarities of the manifestation of duality. In the exact moment of now, we exist in an infinite vacuum in time. Arguably, our body and mind experiences a sequential reality but our inner pilot our internal observer, is behind the effects of the relative phenomena of the many planes and dimensions. In our minds, we are free if we seize the moment.

So, you are spot on, it can only be said that YHWH... IS... there is no "reality" to the past nor the future. We are here now and this is it. All paradigms intersect at this very moment. Sequential cognition does not exist beyond the boundaries of the time-space-continuum, and honestly... I believe it is fairly unimportant on a soul level.



Agreed. I ascribe Einstein's belief in a Unified Field of Energy. Being=energy, even as conversely, Non-being or No-thingness=The Void. We are inarguably interconnected parts of the whole totality. So yeah, right on man! We are the same energy that exists everywhere and too... as the shadow and mirrored opposite twin of the sheer emptiness of the unborn Void.

Insubstantial and substantial are One whole, essentially. All polarities are extensions of the Indivisible awareness. This is why I so love the idea of the Eternal Tao. Infinitely morphing into new paradigms, yet, unchanging and limitless. A paradoxical thought, eh? A force which is apparently existent and simultaneously, nonexistent.

So you are right, we are Gods plural, as seemingly isolated individuals. We are God reflections, made up of YHWH energy. It lacks the absurd super persona of the Biblical Lord of Lords. 'Tis a magnificent energy pattern, blooming throughout countless paralleled dimensions and limitless forms. I believe that much of this Omniscient energy exists insubstantially, formless potentiality, as the Clear Light of the Void. What has been called "THAT", although it ought to be called "THIS". How about "THAT/THIS"?

Hypothetically, it is THAT/THIS which give rise to the initiation of quantum fluctuation and the physical manifestation of the universe, which we are just now beginning to understand with deeper insight.

In that sense and at that angle of observation, one could rationally argue for a point in the interwoven fabric of illusory time, when the material paradigm exploded into dichotomous being. Thus forming the multiverse in all it's myriad diversity. But it is still initiated, become and exists innately/immanently, as THAT/THIS which transcends any division or progressive sequencing of Divine intention. It is as it is. It behooves us to marvel at it multiplicity and unity. A seamless, yet complex effulgence of expanding energy.



My brother, we share the same name. Though, each is pronounced through alternate interpretations of the Judeo-Christian traditions. Being born a Catholic Italian, my name is spoken as John Elijah.

I truly honor and respect your very specific experiences. I can't put words into jamie's mouth, nor would I dare to presuppose I ever should put words in anyone's mouth. I have a hard enough time filling my own with expressions that don't come off as "religious", crunchy-flaky or fanatically extreme. But I can only answer that one from my own heart, see it from my own windowsill... and hope to be both, harmonious with all of your valid perspectives and also true to my own subjective vision of reality.



Your path is a respectable way to understanding the meaning of life. Thanks for the thread and the fascinating links. I also have seen demons, angels, elves, jesters, extraterrestrials, sages & magicians, transcendent spiritual masters, Avatars, etc... all delineated in their knowledge and arch-typical significance to our own human consciousness. I intentionally release the manifestation of these beings as they from within my mind.

For most of these immaterial "entities" exist upon the astral and causal planes and I seek the Quintessence, effulgently radiating these thought forms for reasons, which we as subjective observers, can never feasibly know. It just does as it wills... as it is. I surrender my subjectivity in order to merge with the One. So, experiencing immersion within the Supreme El. So too, I exercise focused intent to bypass much of the complex hierarchy of said entities, inter-phasing within the blinding light and wholly shattered by the core tone of the vibrating Word.

I have also witnessed the level within myself which is eternally fused or perhaps woven into the Sacred Web, the all-pervasive Over soul of unified Omniscience. The Christ. The Buddha Mind. Brahman dreaming all of us into being. We, the extended thoughts of the Divine Balance. Thus Spake Zarathustra! We truly are flashing points of soul awareness, shining within The Grid. Each of us dreaming of awakening in this present lifetime, each of us children of Light and passing embodiments of Godliness. Many Gods, One hyper-reality within us all, the echo of an ageless, endless song, The Awakening of the Omniself.


Om Shanti and Shalom

Rising Spirit,

Your post is like an oasis for my very being..

Thank you my fellow elijonian..for finding the words that I myself was too frustrated to find.

-E

Yes to the first.

As to the second, I found it of use, but found a more pure version of it (IMO) that I still use, but I don't want to discuss it.

You found a more pure version of Kabbalah than what is offered in the Torah huh? Wow good find. Yeah I would definitely keep a treasure like that to yourself...

Kind of amazingly, I have to second AKL here. We often agree on parts of these debates, but here, I have to agree with everything he said.

Especially the shoutout to Mary Shelly & Philip K. Dick!

I also include apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls and even the Nag Hammadi stuff into the mix when I think about the Bible.

I also read the Torah in Hebrew. Even learned Qabbalah in its birthplace and worldwide center... the mystical village of Tzvat in the northern Galilee. While I would not say that this stuff is worthless, on the contrary it has some very powerful juice to it, I find it unsuited to our current hyperspeed times.

It is designed to hide and keep secrets by couching them in ingenious code in plain site... underneath the allegories, Sumerian creation myths, and histories of a very influential family. However, for the most part, these secrets are all out of the closet now anyway. You can find literally hundreds of books that will give you the straight dope on this stuff without having to wade through years of intensive study. Until very recently, you had to be 40 years old, a man, married, with children, and an observant Orthodox Jew to receive initiation into Qabbalah. This is not the case now, but it is still a path that is just too long to walk in our short attention span theater world.

Anyway, I am not sure about the actual existence of the various biblical characters. I am convinced many of them did exist in some form or another, though... Much of the historical parts of the Bible have been somewhat backed up by the archaeological record. Cities it mentioned that we thought were lost or never existed have largely been found now.

The point is that it generally doesn't matter... from a mystic's point of view anyway. Fundamentalists have a shit fit over this stuff, but I am more interested in the experiential aspects of it. I have no use for faith. I want to know... and even more than that, I want to live it.

I also don't see time as a linear thing. And I agree with you about creation in that something that always was, IS and always will be... something eternal and infinite, can have no beginning. This is the definition of an omnipresent deity. But, as much as I believe the Universe is one with, infused by, and created out of this eternal thing... my concept of G*d is also transcendent to the Universe we know, and thus I find origination and creation plausible in the sense that I originate and create dreamworlds dozens of times every night. The timelines within those dreams are not real, and there are historical aspects to them that are completely fabricated at the time of my creating them... but there is an ostensible beginning point from my perspective outside of the dream, and I am clearly the originator of many of the dream worlds I travel in.

Anyway, I am sure now we have some things to disagree upon... but I was surprised to find that we really agree on an awful lot.

Nice to see you Albert.

The interval 0->infinity has a beginning but is infinite. The interval 0->1 is also infinite in that it contains infinite numbers, and it has a beginning AND an end. I think that eternal could easily be seen as meaning "never-ending" which does not discount the possibility of a beginning. We should also distinguish between "eternal" and "sempiternal". Most people don't know the difference, but it's akin to the difference between 1D time and 2D time. There are always transcendental levels of "infinity" that make any given level of infinity look relatively finite. Logic tells us that 0->2 must contain twice as many numbers as 0->1, and yet they are both infinite.

Infinity is something that humans cannot wrap their mind around because we are finite, and our egos keep us that way. My belief nowadays is that talking about infinity and talking about god are one in the same thing. There have been times, while on LSD, that I was able to hold infinity in my mind and experience it and grasp it fully. When I turn the minds eye inside out, I see that infinity exists within me as well as in the external world. To me it seems that being able to encompass infinity requires that I be infinite. Alternatively, if the infinity inside and the infinity outside are equivalently external to the mind's eye, then I am merely the infinitesimal boundary between them. I am nothing, perhaps.

Nice post hixidom!

I have often defaulted to the infinity = G*d concept because it is clean and not full of weighted historical jibber jabber. Even wrote a lyrical prose piece about this years and years ago... I wonder if I can't find it now.

Thanks for that mathematical reminder of the various kinds of infinity. We all know this stuff, but it is easy to forget. I still think that ultimate infinite is not merely composed of a theoretically infinite set of numbers, but is infinite in all directions...

Anyway, I have no problem with the idea of an origination or creation moment even with infinite objects. The dreams I create nightly are infinite in that they will have as much detail as I care to look for without end, and contain past and future elements that extend outward from the time of the dream's inception... but they clearly all have beginnings and ends for me as an observer and originator.

Thanks again man. Enjoyed that.

"ultimate infinite" is such a strange concept to me. If a person thinks that it exists, he could never be sure until he fully understood the concept, which he can't do unless he were "ultimate infinite" enough to encompass it. If I can model "ultimate infinite" in my mind, then my mind must be at least "ultimate infinite". Alternatively, by principle, I can't think of anything that my mind can't grasp. So it seems odd to me when people say things along the lines of "There's a god so infinite that I can't even fathom it". To me, there seems to be a paradox in there somewhere. It's like me saying "I can't fathom this sentence."

Well if we abandon all bible and related texts as boring and dogmatic then we can do the same with every other ancient text ever written. Why not just ignore thousands of years worth of accesible knowledge so we can find a new and more exciting way to describe and define the human experience and the spirit realm using all fancy new words and everything??

Why not? because it would be a counterproductive waste of time... No need to re-work what is not at all broken to begin with. Learning spirituality takes discipline and sometimes that means you have to read stuff that might not be as exciting as watching a documentary on the history channel IMO.

I totally disagree. Having studied sacred texts for years the Bible and the books that it stems from are rather primitive texts in a spiritual sense. Many others have a science to them and are vastly superior in terms of actually benefiting the reader. The TaoDeJing is one such text, there are countless others, Sutras are particularly good.

Recognizing the problems with the Bible is not the same as abandoning it. This is a book that will never disappear, and is probably the least endangered collection of words and phrases on the planet bar none.

Clearly, both AKL and myself have studied the thing, and neither of us said it was totally without merit.

Speaking for myself, all I can say is that this is a collection of texts that doesn't give up the goods very easily. You have to dig and struggle with it to get it to reveal its secrets. Even if the good stuff therein is your 100% hands-down bag... you can read any of the dozens of great commentaries and explorations of the book to cut to the chase a bit. Even the Orthodox Jews who read the Torah in portions ever year again and again... by and large refer to the Midrash and the Talmud when they are really studying. The writings of the Hasids and Qabbalists of more recent centuries are even more explicit.

But to be honest, the books written about the Bible's secrets from the last 20 years or so are even better.

No offense to those who consider the "Good Book" to be the entirely true word of G*d. Many people even consider the Torah to be the actual name of G*d. It was supposedly given as one long word with no spaces, no vowels, and no indication of when the Hebrew letters were supposed to stand for numbers. This is one of the reasons you can read this book well over 600 ways that make sense. It is kind of a holographic cipher.

I have found a lot of value in the Bible, and by no means want to suggest it is worthless. But there are also a ton of inconsistencies, contradictions, outright errors and truly repulsive things about the Bible as well. Any book that would have G*d telling his followers to commit genocide is a bit too much for me to take seriously. The Bible has this occur 3 or more times. When I first read the passage about killing all the Midianites, man, woman and child... I had to go back and read it again a few times because I didn't want to accept that that was really what it was saying.

Or how about the scene where G*d rewards Pinkhas for murdering two people while they were having sex. Literally skewering them together with a single spear thrust like some craven, backstabbing, evil prude. He gets rewarded.

No no. The Bible had a good run, grant you. But I find it archaic and with a marked tendency to cloud people's better judgement while not actually teaching them the really cool stuff.

I mean where is the real dope? Noah's son Shem and his son Ever started and ran a school of prophecy. A University designed to teach you to become a prophet! That is some cool ass shit... If the Bible was the syllabus for that, I would be stoked. As it stands, however, I get more useful knowledge out of other books.

EDIT: This is in response to AKL's post.

I would like to add to that the works of ancient Greek philosophers. Not to mention that ancient texts are always useful as historical reference. Keeping track of historical beliefs and ideals is important especially as our beliefs and ideals progress over time.

Hyperspace Fool:

Well you kind of Half agreed with Albert, so my comments were only half directed at you.

Albert wrote:



As a side not I personally believe all the so called genocide in the torah has a deeper meaning and is more of an allegorical representation than a historical depiction of actual events.

I do indeed believe that the Torah in it's entirety is indeed the Name of God. Each the letters were not IMO because each letter is meant to be deciphered not only individually but in relation to eachother....

The stories of the Torah are nothing more than the Garments, the outer layer. The outer layer serves to protect the inner layer in a sense. In other words the Torah remains perfectly intact to this day partially because it was handed down in "Story" form.

When the stories are analyzed on the kabbalistic level they often reveal an utterly different meaning...

"Honestly, I don't really get the feeling your looking at these Ideas from an objective point of view. I would not expect anyone who has preconcieved notions about religions to care whether or not I talk to angels, if you haven't been to the mountaintop then stories about the mountaintop are quite boring."

You completely missed the point of what I was saying and instead made assumptions about me having preconceived notions(implying that I am unable to see the truth here or something) or that I have no experience.

I was not saying that angels do not exists, nor am I making claims relative to the nature of them, people speaking with them or anyones experience of them. I dont understand why you took it that way.

My point was that in relation to god WITHIN the context of this discussion the idea of angles is just an abstraction..they are of little relevance in that context..that does not mean they are of no relevance in general.

What it means is that energy exists..I dont care if it is an ant or an archangel..if they exist within the multiverse/cosmos/god energy construct w/e they are a part of that energy, just like every other one of us. They are no more god than you or I so having spoken with angles or not does not really weigh in for me on what god means, for me at least.

I try not to associate ideas of god with hierachys or anything like that because god for me is a state of unified coherance..not individual levels from a subjective vantage point.

Sure, creation is filled with all kinds of different beings but I just cannot understand how one line of them can have more relevance within the context of god than any other one. Maybe one species can conceptualize god to a higher degree, but even then conceptualization is a sort of catch 22 because it is still state bound in that it is a subjective activity.

Jamie,

That makes sense..

I suppose I can be over sensitive at times..

My origianl point is just that I feel like a relationship with "God" however you want to label it should be a give and recieve relationship..

IMO the way some people speak of being god it's like they have no recognition that it is still a two way street a give nad take realtionship with the universe at large..

Some folks refer to themselves as God in a crowlely like sense that it entitles them to everything and therefore they owe nothing back to creation in terms of effort, self discipline or giving in any form...

Peace.

My opinion is this:
Clever as it is, and it is, the bible is a work of man, like all other books.

What need does God have for a book?

Isn't that insulting to the idea of God, just like salvation, judgement, punishment, intervention etc? Why would a creator create in a way that requires action to correct and address issues that could have been avoided by creating more perfect creations?

I have a personal relationship with the divine, I pray daily, my prayers are answered so well that about half my prayers are thank you prayers. I also pray sometimes to tell the divine "I love you" in my own voice.

I pray to my heavenly father, my heavenly mother and my mother earth, but I do not divide the first two, but recognize that as a human my deities, my divinities, are going to "wear" or even "be" projections of human qualities. Much as the god of a horse would be a horse.

I do have my prayers answered, but I do not know there is a god, I merely believe it, and in believing that I do not recognize any religious deity or persona as the god I believe in. I do have experiences that tell me that I should believe, profound things to me, but I have no photos of god, nor a phone number or email, nor a message from God.

http://youtu.be/4hZb5ufq124
I like this song, it reminds me of how I feel about this.

It IS kind of a strange concept, but no more so than that of an infinite variety of smaller infinities. They one springs from the other.

If we must accept that there are an endless slew of different sets that all contain infinity in them... it is not a conceptual leap to imagine that the sum total of all infinite sets is the grand ultimate infinity.

Even if we can not fully grasp all that that entails, we can hold a concept of it in our minds. As it is, we can not fully grasp any of the smaller infinities either. We develop a logical framework and demonstrate that it must point towards something that has the characteristic of infinity.

Of course, as you described infinity in your previous post... everything is infinite... every thing. If 0->1 is infinite, than every blade of grass, the distance between rings of electrons, and the interval between 2 adjacent nanoseconds is also infinite.

This doesn't bother me in the least, as I already saw plainly that all is infinite... on all levels... micro and macroscopically. And again... infinity = divinity

Thus, our somewhat feeble minds are (at the very least) an infinite collection of smaller infinites... a subset of the grand ultimate infinity. And, I don't discount the idea that my very own mind might, in fact, be the ultimate infinity. Solipsism is un-refutable logically or philosophically, after all.

Can a "smaller" infinity grasp or contain an infinitely larger infinity? Grasp... sure. Contain... who can say?

You used the phrase "fully understand." This is also a strange concept, no? To fully understand something, you would have to understand ALL of its connections and relations... which would bring you naturally to the grand ultimate infinite. In order to understand anything fully, you would have to understand everything (which is the ultimate infinity, no?).

So, then... does it make any sense to talk about fully understanding something?

I think it might, but even if it was impossible... it would be just as impossible to fully understand a butterfly as it was to understand the ultimate infinity.

Perhaps our minds understand other infinite things by recognizing our Self.

Perhaps we understand these things the way a mirror manages to contain images of things that are much larger than itself.

At any rate, I think a waterfall must understand something of the nature of the mountain lakes and glaciers that feed it. Maybe not in total... but certainly in essence. It understands the same water. It understands the cycles and relative flows... which would cause it to intuit or deduce the connection to rain... which could lead it to understand the complete cycle of water... IMHO.

Anyway, this is a fun little mind training any way you look at it. Thanks for bringing the varieties of infinity into this. Perhaps you could talk a little bit more about sempiternal for us? This is a term that I have almost no familiarity with.

It is a fun exercise. I feel that psychedelics have changed the way I think about infinity, and thinking about infinity almost always puts me back in a psychedelic mindset.


I agree that the sum of infinite sets is not hard to conceptualize, but I wouldn't call it the ultimate infinity either. Closer to the ultimate infinity would be the sum of infinite sets of infinite sets, and even closer would be the sum of infinite sets of infinite sets of infinite sets... The end of that progression is something that the mind can converge on but can never reach. There's a cognitive asymptote there that, like you said, points toward something.

My understanding of the difference between eternity and sempiternity (and it is a vague understanding) is that sempiternity pertains to all of time, whereas something that is eternal exists outside of time. For example, to experience throughout all time would be to be sempiternal, but to be able to step outside of time and see all of sempiternity as one big picture is to exist in eternity. Another way to think of it is that something that is eternal is timeless.

That is basically what I was getting at. The sum of infinite sets is itself an infinite set... therefore when talking about the "grand ultimate" sum of all possible infinities, it would seem to naturally include all the sums of sums of sums ad infinitum.

Can the mind truly conceive of such a thing. Well, on some level... as we are in, in fact, talking about it. I think the more important question is if we can truly experience it. But even this is not all that important as we have already demonstrated that it is infinite at every level, every sub level... basically anything you can observe or know can be perceived as infinite if you know how to look. Thus, we are all about sums of infinite sets... it is what we are. Whether we can reach the "grand ultimate" or not is a matter of conjecture.

Thanks. I have experienced both on various entheogenic journeys. I will have to take some time to research a bit more fully about the practical uses of the term.