~Speaking of Seth~

Quote from: usmaak
All of the "second coming" stuff in Seth is one of the things that I have a real problem with.  It's Seth, so it's not religious, but so much of Christianity is based upon this concept and it just seems silly to me.

usmaak, I reject what Seth says about the second coming of Christ, but it would be interesting if a very knowledgeable female teacher turns up. We have had too many male know-alls from the Buddha onwards.

Quote from: Sena

Quote from: usmaak
All of the "second coming" stuff in Seth is one of the things that I have a real problem with.  It's Seth, so it's not religious, but so much of Christianity is based upon this concept and it just seems silly to me.

usmaak, I reject what Seth says about the second coming of Christ, but it would be interesting if a very knowledgeable female teacher turns up. We have had too many male know-alls from the Buddha onwards.

Most of them don't know as much as they think they do, either.

Quote from: Deb
I find that VERY interesting, considering the Seth material is not about religion.

Hi Deb, Hi All,

And yet, Seth does spend quite a bit of time talking about religion(s). He seems to have a lot to say about Christ, and Christianity. But he also talks about Buddha, and Buddhism, the Eastern philosophies, and he does at least briefly mention voodoo, Taoism, and witchdoctors for example. Not only this, but he also talks about the "Speakers" for example. He says things like there were less than 30 great Speakers. The Christ entity was one and Buddha was another. He also says that at another level, Emerson was a speaker.


One of the things that I've picked up on from Seth is that there seems to be an ongoing scenario that seems to play out in regards to religions. When a religion starts to die out, another religious hero is born and this new religious hero will start a new religion to take its place. Seth talks about this in detail in SS, Ch21, S585. 

In a similar vain, in talking about the reincarnational "plays" that we all participate in, he also says the following (SS, Ch 4, S522) which I think is probably related to this.

There are those who appear within these plays fully aware. These personalities willingly take roles, knowing that they are roles, in order to lead the others toward the necessary realization and development. They lead the actors to see beyond the selves and settings they have created. These personalities from other levels of existence oversee the play, so to speak, and appear among the actors. Their purpose is to open up within the three-dimensional selves those psychological doorways that will release the three-dimensional self for further development in another system of reality.



Given this then, if what Seth says here is true, I do belief that eventually at some point, as the world's religions start to decline, at some point in the future, some new religious hero will be born and a new religion will ultimately be born out of this. 

I'm just not necessarily convinced, given what Seth says about Free Will and Probable Realities, that this future religious hero scenario, will necessarily be, Seth's "Second Coming" scenario.

 
-jbseth

But why religion?  Why is it needed?  The way I see it, religion stands directly in the path of clear thinking because it's largely brainwashing.  And the way I see it, religion is something that the world actually needs to overcome to obtain any sort of enlightenment at all.

I am not a religious scholar.  I admit that I don't know a lot about other religions and my judgements are based on what I have seen and experienced during my life.  So many Christians think that they are enlightened but rarely do any of them live according to their instruction manual.  In many cases, they seem to live in opposition to it.  And in a lot of cases, the real religion is money and religion is just a way to more money.

I feel like this world would be a much better place without it all.

Hi usmaak, Hi All,

I'm kind of curious about what you think here.

Who do you think creates religions and why are they created? Have you thought about this?


If you were to remove all religions, then what would you propose be put in place of them?  What would that look like and how would it work?


-jbseth

Hi All,

If I recall correctly, from a scientific study they have discovered that the human brain is hard wired to worship. It's easy to Google. Lots of articles will come up on it.

I get why Seth covers religion. It's the basis of many people's beliefs. Personally I think there's a controlling  elite that's aware of humans need to worship, and have co-opted religion to their own ends. That control structure will also make sure whatever the real Christ said or did never sees mainstream coverage.

There were 12 savior gods that preceded J.C. They all pretty much follow the same pattern.

The Jesus that's paraded around in the churches is all about mind control and cash flow.
The Jesus in the Bible is likely astro theology, and the science of light veiled in allegorical form.
Santos Binaccia, Mr Astrotheology covers quite a bit of it on his YouTube channel.

I did find what I think likely a much truer story of Jesus the Christ in a book called
The Secrets in the Bible by Tony Bushby. It can be found as a free pdf on the net.

I do find what Seth has to say about Jesus and religion interesting. I also think religion has morphed into other forms. For instance, the left /right political divide being seen in many countries today.

Just my thoughts. I don't expect anyone to agree or not necessarily 

Quote from: jbseth
Hi usmaak, Hi All,

I'm kind of curious about what you think here.

Who do you think creates religions and why are they created? Have you thought about this?


If you were to remove all religions, then what would you propose be put in place of them?  What would that look like and how would it work?


-jbseth

I'm assuming that religions are built by people and not gods.  So my answer would be that we create religions.

As to what might replace them.  I don't know.  Free thinking?  The ability to believe something without some rigid and ridiculous structure that makes absolutely no sense?  The ability to do something without worry about what some sky daddy might think?  Not having some sky creeper watching what I do with my body parts and deciding whether I need to roast for all eternity because of my decisions?

This apparent sarcasm is not directed at you or your question.  I do see the point of the question.  If we remove the structure of religions from the world, what happens to its people?  I'd imagine they find structure elsewhere and perhaps that looks a lot like...  Religion.

This is a fantastic question that really made me think this through.  I despise religion and maybe part of the reason for that is that I simply do not need it where I am in my life.  Of course there are other reasons that I've outlined in some of my prior posts.

I've seen posts/stories/articles talking about how people are moving away from religion.  Maybe humanity is starting to get past the point where it's needed?  In the groups that I frequent in places like Facebook, there's a lot of disdain for religion, and jokes about it.  But it's entirely possible that the groups I spend time in are big echo chambers.

My thought is, though, that many people studying Seth do not need religion and are perhaps are looking for something else.  As Seth became popular, I wonder if Jane struggled with concern that perhaps it would be turned into a form of religion.

Quote from: usmaak
I wonder if Jane struggled with concern that perhaps it would be turned into a form of religion.

Yes, she did. She was adamant that the Seth material not be turned into a religion.

Quote from: T.M.
The Jesus that's paraded around in the churches is all about mind control and cash flow.

T.M., yes cash collection is done openly, while mind control is a covert operation.

Quote from: usmaak
This apparent sarcasm is not directed at you or your question.  I do see the point of the question.  If we remove the structure of religions from the world, what happens to its people?  I'd imagine they find structure elsewhere and perhaps that looks a lot like...  Religion.

This is a fantastic question that really made me think this through.

Hi usmaak, Hi All,

Thanks, for the compliment, I'll take my bows. 


I've noticed that you didn't answer the second part of my question, regarding why we've created these religions.

Here's what I think.  I think that we, people, have created all kinds of, what I'll call, "belief systems" in order provide us with the answers to some fundamental questions that we don't know the answers to.

Here I'm talking about such questions as:

1) Why am I here? 
2) What happens to me when I die?
3) How do I think?


It seem to me that people have created many different kinds of "belief systems" in order to come up with potential answers to some of these questions.  It also seems to me that we tend to label many of these "belief systems" with very different names, like religions, the New Age movement, Seth, Scientology, philosophies, psychology, and science, for example.

I think that all of these things (religions, Seth, philosophies, etc.) are just various types of human created "belief systems".


Furthermore, I think that if you were to remove all of the "religions", in the world, then I suspect that you'd end up with all the other belief systems that you didn't remove. And what does that look like? All of the other remaining belief systems.

I think that what Seth was trying to tell us in SS, regarding the changing religions and religious hero's over time was this.  Until we finally reach a point of spiritual evolution where we figure out the answers to these fundamental questions, as people continue to change over time, we'll just continue to periodically replace our old and fading "belief systems" with a new one that comes along in the future.  Like it or not, I suspect that some of these new ones will give birth to what we would call a new religion.

-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
I've noticed that you didn't answer the second part of my question, regarding why we've created these religions.

I think that they were created to provide structure or a framework of beliefs.  And to ease people's fear of things that go bump in the night.  Over time we've learned that there are legitimate reasons for those types of things but in the past, perhaps there were fewer good answers and more fear whenever something out of the ordinary happened.

Of course religion often introduces new things that go bump in the night and they can be even more frightening.

And people seem to have an innate need to understand the world and how it works.  Religion provides frameworks to explain everything.  It makes fearful people feel secure.  It answers questions for which there appear to be no answers.  And it is a way to control the masses.  Set up a religion with a strict and exacting punishment system, cover as many loopholes as you can, convince people to follow it and in no time at all, you have a large group of people willing to do whatever their told because they fear the punishment.  You get warriors to fight your battles while you sit back and rake in the profits.

Perhaps this seems simplistic but I think that religion is simple.  It's a way for fearful individuals to control some aspect of their lives and it's a way for people in power to control those individuals.

There is a story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of Truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to let him organize it."

Quote from: usmaak
If we remove the structure of religions from the world, what happens to its people?  I'd imagine they find structure elsewhere and perhaps that looks a lot like...  Religion

Yes, that's exactly what happened to many scientists.  They have replaced the religions of their ancestors with a new faith--scientific materialism. 

"Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy."

This quote is from David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. 

Personally I think we're missing something important, though, if we dismiss all religious and non-religious faith as tools of control or the desire for certainty.  Many humans experience a transcendent reality at least a couple of times in their lives.  In my own case, years after the faith of my childhood had disintegrated, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.  He went through treatment, and we thought all was good.  Then a couple of years later the cancer came back.  I was living thousands of miles from my parents when I got the phone call.  I don't even remember what we said anymore, but I do remember what happened after I hung up the phone.  I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love. 

Although religions have a tendency to become separated from the kernels of experience they are built on, I do think there is something grand afoot in the universe, and religions have attempted to make sense of it.  That most of us have had bad experiences with religion may not tell us anything about the value of religion itself.  It may just be evidence that it is time for a new perspective to arise.

Quote from: leidl
I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love. 

leidl, thanks for sharing with us your experience of All That Is. The big mistake that Christianity and Islam have made is teaching that All That Is is a person. The elephant god Ganesh in Hinduism is nearer to the truth.

Quote from: Sena

Quote from: leidl
I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love.

leidl, thanks for sharing with us your experience of All That Is. The big mistake that Christianity and Islam have made is teaching that All That Is is a person. The elephant god Ganesh in Hinduism is nearer to the truth.

An angry, vengeful person.  Well, from the point of Christianity.  I know nothing about Islam.

Quote from: leidl
He went through treatment, and we thought all was good.  Then a couple of years later the cancer came back.  I was living thousands of miles from my parents when I got the phone call.  I don't even remember what we said anymore, but I do remember what happened after I hung up the phone.  I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love.

Hi leidl,

That's absolutely beautiful, thanks for sharing that.

-jbseth

Hi All,

Hey, just sharing some thoughts.

One of the things that I've learned here over of the years is this, a person can be fooled two ways. A person can be fooled: 1) by believing that something is true, when it isn't and 2) by believing that something isn't true, when it is.

People who are gullible may end up having some experience with this first scenario, while people who are closed-minded may end up having some experience with the second. People, who are closed-minded, can also close themselves off to any additional information that could shed some light upon the thing that they believed wasn't true.


There is a middle ground scenario that some people try to take in all of this and these people who take this middle ground strive to be neither gullible nor closed minded.  It's been my experience here that there are several of the members here in this forum who seem to strive for this middle ground scenario.


So, what does this middle ground scenario look like?  When Seth says something like we each create our own space continuum, or when leidl says something like, "I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.", people who take this middle ground scenario will take a look at these ideas and experiences and say to themselves, hey, that's really interesting. I don't know what to think of that, but I'm certainly open to the possibility that these things could be true.

The thing here is this, a person that takes this middle-ground approach isn't necessarily closed-minded, just because they don't automatically accept some ideas. Nor are they necessarily gullible just because they don't automatically reject some ideas. The people who don't take this middle-ground approach, however, don't always recognize this.

I do strive to take this middle-ground approach to many of the ideas that get expressed here, but I'm not always sure that I'm completely successful at it. 

-jbseth

Quote from: leidl
Yes, that's exactly what happened to many scientists.  They have replaced the religions of their ancestors with a new faith--scientific materialism. 

"Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy.

"This quote is from David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. 

Personally I think we're missing something important, though, if we dismiss all religious and non-religious faith as tools of control or the desire for certainty.  Many humans experience a transcendent reality at least a couple of times in their lives.  In my own case, years after the faith of my childhood had disintegrated, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.  He went through treatment, and we thought all was good.  Then a couple of years later the cancer came back.  I was living thousands of miles from my parents when I got the phone call.  I don't even remember what we said anymore, but I do remember what happened after I hung up the phone.  I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love. 

Although religions have a tendency to become separated from the kernels of experience they are built on, I do think there is something grand afoot in the universe, and religions have attempted to make sense of it.  That most of us have had bad experiences with religion may not tell us anything about the value of religion itself.  It may just be evidence that it is time for a new perspective to arise.

Hi leidl, Hi All,

leidl, I really like what you wrote here. The entire thing.

-jbseth

Hey jbseth and all,

jbseth, thank you for being open to hearing about my experience.  It never even occurred to me that my story might be implausible to people here, despite the fact that nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since.  I just accepted it at face value at the time, and I don't even remember puzzling over what its implications were.  But upon reflection, the startling thing is not that something like that happened; it is that it things like that don't happen more. 

"The emotion of love brings you closest to an understanding of the nature of All That Is."
—NotP Chapter 5: Session 774, May 3, 1976

If the nature of All That Is is best described as love, then the nature of the natural world, as part of All That Is, is also love.  Our nature is love.  Love is pouring off reality all the time.  I don't claim that anything special was being directed at me at all.  Perhaps my brain was shocked into stillness, and I caught a glimpse of the reality we're all surrounded by every moment.  People who have NDE's often experience an all-encompassing love, maybe because their brain is still, also. 

People have been getting glimpses like this for millennia, and it is probably part of why religions say God is omniscient, omnipresent, and loving.  I'm an atheist about the Old Testament God, who is vengeful, and agnostic about the New Testament God, who...confuses me.  But I'm cool with All That Is.  I'd like to feel the reality of it more, and expect it is quite possible. 

In case it isn't obvious, I try to be a middle-grounder, too.  I'm open to both science and religion.  Except in their dogmatic forms.   

Quote from: leidl
It never even occurred to me that my story might be implausible to people here, despite the fact that nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since.  I just accepted it at face value at the time, and I don't even remember puzzling over what its implications were.  But upon reflection, the startling thing is not that something like that happened; it is that it things like that don't happen more.

leidl, I find your story very believable. It may be significant that your experience occurred in the context of you learning of your father's illness and impending death.

"Life implies death, and death implies life — that is, in the terms of your world. In those terms life is a spoken element, while death is the unspoken but still-present element "beneath," upon which life rides. Both are equally present." (from "The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (A Seth Book)" by Jane Roberts, Robert F. Butts, Chapter 7, Session 779)

https://amzn.eu/ilInj7b

QuoteI don't even remember what we said anymore, but I do remember what happened after I hung up the phone.  I walked out of the house into the back garden, and felt love pouring off the laurels and plum tree.  The grass, my row of scraggly raspberries, the overgrown quince...they were all luminous with love.

The other significant thing in your marvellous description is that All That Is manifested in Nature (trees and grass). This brings to mind the philosophy of Spinoza:

https://www.discovery.org/a/baruch-spinoza-was-no-science-hero/

Quote from: jbseth
There is a middle ground scenario that some people try to take in all of this and these people who take this middle ground strive to be neither gullible nor closed minded.  It's been my experience here that there are several of the members here in this forum who seem to strive for this middle ground scenario.

This is a great message for me and it is something that I keep forgetting.  I always err on the side of what you see is what you get when I am not thinking about it.  Sometimes in the process of living, I forget to at least be open to the possibilities. 

Quote from: usmaak
This is a great message for me and it is something that I keep forgetting.  I always err on the side of what you see is what you get when I am not thinking about it.  Sometimes in the process of living, I forget to at least be open to the possibilities. 

Hi usmaak, Hi All,

Boy, I can says the same thing for myself. This is a great message for me as well.

This is also something that I occasionally forget as well.  Sometimes I err on the side of what you see is what you get when I get all caught up and I'm involved in the process of living. Sometime I forget to be open to the possibilities. 

-jbseth
                     
                  
                  
                     
                     
                     
                        

Quote from: leidl
jbseth, thank you for being open to hearing about my experience.  It never even occurred to me that my story might be implausible to people here, despite the fact that nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since. I just accepted it at face value at the time, and I don't even remember puzzling over what its implications were.  But upon reflection, the startling thing is not that something like that happened; it is that it things like that don't happen more.  "The emotion of love brings you closest to an understanding of the nature of All That Is."

—NotP Chapter 5: Session 774, May 3, 1976

If the nature of All That Is is best described as love, then the nature of the natural world, as part of All That Is, is also love.  Our nature is love.  Love is pouring off reality all the time.  I don't claim that anything special was being directed at me at all.  Perhaps my brain was shocked into stillness, and I caught a glimpse of the reality we're all surrounded by every moment.  People who have NDE's often experience an all-encompassing love, maybe because their brain is still, also.

People have been getting glimpses like this for millennia, and it is probably part of why religions say God is omniscient, omnipresent, and loving.  I'm an atheist about the Old Testament God, who is vengeful, and agnostic about the New Testament God, who...confuses me.  But I'm cool with All That Is.  I'd like to feel the reality of it more, and expect it is quite possible. 

In case it isn't obvious, I try to be a middle-grounder, too.  I'm open to both science and religion.  Except in their dogmatic forms.

Hi leidl, Hi All,

Thank YOU for reminding me of something very important. Not only did people probably create religions because they were trying to answer questions like, why am I here and what happens to me when I die, but they also probably were looking for answers to questions in regards to the transcendent events that they experienced as well.  Most Excellent. 

Your comments reminded me of the fact that when I'm not all caught up in life itself, I try to play this middle ground, with things that I hear about, and see, and do. Over the years, I've discovered for myself that the more that I remain open to other things that people talk about, the more of them seem to occur in my life. This has reminded me that when I don't remain open, that mental door that keeps them coming through to me, seems to close somewhat on them. I just took your comments and the earlier discussion we had on Seth and his statement about how we each create our individual space continuum, and decided to share with myself and others here in the forum about this reminder about striving to stay in this middle-ground position.

To be clear here, I didn't think that your story was implausible. As I've just said, the more I remain open to these kinds of things, the more I seem to both hear of them and experience them in my life.  My mother had a NDE, when I was very little. When I got older, she would sometimes talk to me about it.  She told me that wherever she was in this experience, she said that she felt completely and totally surrounded by this incredible love. She didn't want to leave it, she said that it was wonderful. While I haven't had a transcendent experience like yours, I can definitely believe that it may have been something like my Mom's.

I'm with you, I'm a complete atheist to the God of many religions. Not only that but I'm also completely repulsed by some of the practices that have been done in the name of many religions. Not only things like telling people that they'll burn in hell for eternity if they don't believe in their specific religion and its dogma, but also other things like the inquisition, the witchcraft burnings, the killing of the Cathars, the wars during the middle ages between the Catholics and Protestants, This doesn't exclusive belong to the Christians however, there are also other examples such as in the practices of the Aztec's, who it was said, would purposely war on their neighboring Native American tribesmen just so that they could capture slaves alive. These slaves were then used as sacrifices to the Aztec Sun God, by having their hearts cut out of them.

Given the fact that people seem to have had transcendent types of experiences throughout eternity, I do believe that there is something else that's going on here, besides the things that religion tell us and their various practices and dogmas. I personally, really like Seth's, "All That Is" concept. I think it seems to provide much better answers to many of the things that religions try to answer, including things like peoples transcendent experiences.


-jbseth

Wow, I have to say I love the way this topic has headed. Beautiful.

Quote from: Deb
Wow, I have to say I love the way this topic has headed. Beautiful.

I lost touch my last Seth friend a couple of years ago in one of those "not everyone is meant to be in your life forever" types of events. It's nice to find a group of people that like to talk about this stuff.  I'm learning a lot.

Quote from: Sena
"Life implies death, and death implies life — that is, in the terms of your world. In those terms life is a spoken element, while death is the unspoken but still-present element "beneath," upon which life rides. Both are equally present." (from "The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (A Seth Book)" by Jane Roberts, Robert F. Butts, Chapter 7, Session 779)

This quote is curiously comforting, Sena, thank you.  To think of life and death as both equally present, rather life being now and death being what happens when life ends, makes death less remote and scary.  Death is a process we are deeply immersed in, right in this moment.  Something like 300 million cells die in us each minute.  I've read we lose our entire body weight in dead cells in a year.   Sort of a slow motion death and birth going on all the time.  We don't even have to leave linear time to feel the reality of life and death existing simultaneously!

Spinoza was one of my first loves in philosophy.  He talked about God constantly in his writing, yet was reviled for being an atheist.  My relations with my family: same.  :-)  Well...they love me, but revile what they perceive as my atheism. 

It's all about how we define God.  What I love about Seth's All-That-Is approach is that it is self-defining, and all inclusive.  Reading my earlier post, I see that I mentioned I'd like to feel the reality of All-That-Is more.  That was a nonsensical statement.  All-That-Is, by definition, includes me, yet  I am speaking of it as if it is out there!  As long as I believe it is out there, I will create that experience.  ATI will feel remote to me. 

Quote from: jbseth
My mother had a NDE, when I was very little. When I got older, she would sometimes talk to me about it.  She told me that wherever she was in this experience, she said that she felt completely and totally surrounded by this incredible love. She didn't want to leave it, she said that it was wonderful.

Thank you for sharing this, jbseth, I can't imagine what it would feel like to grow up with a story like this in the family.  So many people who experience NDE's say something similar to what your mother did, about not wanting to leave the feeling of love.  They too seem to believe that this source of love is something outside them, something they can be separated from.  Has anyone has ever read of an NDE experience where someone realizes they are not separate from this love, and are happy to go back to their bodies with a new realization of their oneness with ATI and its shared nature of love?  If so I hope you will post.

Quote from: usmaak
It's nice to find a group of people that like to talk about this stuff.  I'm learning a lot.

Me too.  I've noticed I learn more when I participate in a thread than when I just read. Trying to articulate my point of view can help me see it with new eyes, help me see my own contradictions.  And if I don't catch them...some one else will, for sure. 

Quote from: leidl
Spinoza was one of my first loves in philosophy.  He talked about God constantly in his writing, yet was reviled for being an atheist.  My relations with my family: same.  :-)  Well...they love me, but revile what they perceive as my atheism.

It's all about how we define God.  What I love about Seth's All-That-Is approach is that it is self-defining, and all inclusive.  Reading my earlier post, I see that I mentioned I'd like to feel the reality of All-That-Is more.  That was a nonsensical statement.  All-That-Is, by definition, includes me, yet  I am speaking of it as if it is out there!  As long as I believe it is out there, I will create that experience.  ATI will feel remote to me.

leidl, it is sad that your family regard you as an atheist when you are clearly not. An atheist is someone like the silly Richard Dawkins.

Your experience of nature was what is called a mystical experience. The following is an extract from the Peter Skafish thesis on Jane Roberts:

"Since neither religion nor science could provide adequate means for illumining her
ecstasies and their consequences, she could only conceptualize them by wresting away from
religion and its injunction to passivity its affirmation of experiences of the soul, burglaring
from science both the intellect and the chronic discomfort with the purportedly true that it
induces in its practitioners, and concatenating them together into a unique method for
answering the questions before her. "In a way, I was just as bad," she says, as all those who
had written her to confess that they had hidden their psychic, visionary, and mystical
experiences from spouses and family out of shame and fear, for "I questioned myself and
my experience" instead of forgetting the old, mechanical physics science ascribes to the real,
and accepting the data contradicting it that had come to her apart from her five senses."

https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Skafish_berkeley_0028E_11602.pdf

Quote from: leidl
Reading my earlier post, I see that I mentioned I'd like to feel the reality of All-That-Is more.  That was a nonsensical statement.  All-That-Is, by definition, includes me, yet  I am speaking of it as if it is out there!  As long as I believe it is out there, I will create that experience.  ATI will feel remote to me.

I think when we want to feel a greater connection to All-That-Is, we are really talking about an expansion of our definitions of ourselves. This idea of expansion is to somehow experientially include the reality beyond our personhood as our greater identity. I have had the experience of becoming "massive" during meditations, and I believe Jane has described that same phenomenon. That seems like a symbolic way of experiencing that expansiveness. I had a mystical experience after walking out of a theatre where I had watched Picnic at Hanging Rock, an Australian movie. Most people would consider it "dark". Early in the movie, a young woman with a beatific look says something to the effect, "Everything happens at exactly the right time and at exactly the right place." She later goes into a cave, never to be seen again. It seemed that she had an expansive awareness of the "rightness" of the world and an acceptance of things that would horrify most others. I walked out of the theatre on the Balboa peninsula, and watched the seagulls flying overhead, the breeze, and the ocean waves, and I felt an unusually expansive intimate connection to that interplay of nature with itself, with me. I felt a sense of identity with those elements of nature, as if looking into a mirror.   

Quote from: leidl
Thank you for sharing this, jbseth, I can't imagine what it would feel like to grow up with a story like this in the family.  So many people who experience NDE's say something similar to what your mother did, about not wanting to leave the feeling of love.  They too seem to believe that this source of love is something outside them, something they can be separated from.  Has anyone has ever read of an NDE experience where someone realizes they are not separate from this love, and are happy to go back to their bodies with a new realization of their oneness with ATI and its shared nature of love?  If so I hope you will post.

Hi leidl, Hi All,

Hi, leidl, I can't say that I've come across a NDE story quite like that. However, I have come across several NDE stories where people have come back with what they felt was a mission. In many cases, this mission was to share their stories and to make people aware of their personal NDE experiences.

One of the most incredible NDE stories that I'm aware of is the NDE story of Anita Moorjani, which is written about in her book, "Dying to be Me". I would definitely say that Anita is one of those people who feels that she has a mission to tell her story, and I for one, I'm glad that she did and does. Her story is amazing.

An idea has been running around in my mind lately about the "transcendent" experiences that people sometimes have. This idea is this, maybe people have to be at a certain level or stage of consciousness in order to experience them. That is, they have to be at some level "other than" our normal everyday level of consciousness in order to experience them. For example, what I'm trying to say here is this. When we're at a theatre and watching a movie, we aren't at our normal level of consciousness. Instead, we're so fully engrossed in the movie, that we momentarily forget about who we are. Likewise, something similar happens to us when we go to sleep and dream, or when we meditate, or when we daydream. I suspect that in some cases, these other than normal levels of consciousness may be very subtle. In fact, they may be so subtle that we may not even recognize them.


I think that this idea has probably come to me from something that Jane has written about in her book, Psychic Politics". In this book, in Chapter 24, titled "Stages of Consciousness", Jane has some interesting things to say about this topic.  I'm going to both quote and paraphrase some of what she says here just to make it easier.

She starts out by talking about a transcendent experience that she recently had. I think that this transcendent experience was really pertinent to this topic and very beautiful and so I'm going to quote some of it in the spoiler below.  In regards to this transcendent experience, Jane says the following.





After having this transcendent experience, she tells us that the next day, she sat down at her desk and some additional material came to her. She says that this additional material was related to her experience of the day before.  Then she proceeds to write about the "Stages of Consciousness". Under this section she writes about four stages of consciousness, Stage One to Stage Four. From what she writes here it's pretty apparent that our normal stage of consciousness would be Stage Zero, though she doesn't write about this stage.

In talking about these stages of consciousness, she mentions how in our society once you begin to glimpse these wider abilities, people are afraid that the self you know would be swept away or annihilated by them. Instead the "old self" assimilates this new information and becomes the "new self". She says that sometimes the self becomes frightened because of its own beliefs and so it sets up barriers to psychic growth that are in direct proportion to this sensed psychic expansion. She says that the state of consciousness that we consider to be normal is only a threshold to natural progressions. She says that to one extent or another each person tries to outgrow that normal state of consciousness and in doing so, her stages of consciousness, one through four become apparent.

Stage one is the stage where unofficial information begins to be perceived. Such as in automatic writing and in Ouija board usage. Following this, each stage gets progressively deeper.

Following her discussion of these four stages, she begins to talk about the codicils and where they fit in. She says that they aren't visible at our normal stage of consciousness and in fact at this level, they seem to contradict much of the known facts. She also says that the codicils made perfect sense to her when she was in the same stage of consciousness in which she received them. She says that at that level of consciousness they are accepted as fact to those (Seth, Sumari, Seven and Helper) who operate at that level habitually.   Jane tells us that Seth Two seems to operate at an even a more distant level.

These comments that were made by Jane, in this chapter of her book, "Psychic Politics" make me wonder if perhaps the transcendent experiences that people have, may likewise operate in a similar fashion. That is, like the codicils, we have to be at a certain stage of consciousness before we can experience them. Furthermore, perhaps it isn't possible to experience these transcendent experiences at our normal level of consciousness.

This might explain why it is possible for some people to experience that incredible feeling of love, like that experienced by leidl, my mother and Jane. Perhaps people need to be at a certain stage of consciousness, in order to experience that feeling of love. 

-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
These comments that were made by Jane, in this chapter of her book, "Psychic Politics" make me wonder if perhaps the transcendent experiences that people have, may likewise operate in a similar fashion. That is, like the codicils, we have to be at a certain stage of consciousness before we can experience them. Furthermore, perhaps it isn't possible to experience these transcendent experiences at our normal level of consciousness.

jbseth, thanks for drawing our attention to Jane Robert's book "Psychic Politics". This was published in 1976, two years after NOPR. Another quote from the book (Chapter 7):

"The present model for physical life precludes any
easy mixing of the living and the dead, any casual encounters
between those in flesh and out of it as a common occurrence.
This was not always the case, for at one time the dead and
living mixed far more openly. Man's consciousness chose to
focus upon ever-increasing specifics in terms of time, how­
ever, and gradually closed out the reference points in which
such encounters could occur.
In the previous wider reference there was enough
leeway for corporal and noncorporal experiences to intersect
in space under certain conditions. The closer time reference
chosen closed this gap, requiring on the part of the dead a
specific focus they could not easily achieve in order to make
their presence felt.
The path of the living and dead become divergent.
Earlier, however, the dead continued to instruct—parents
returning to their children, and dead travelers returning to
their tribes, telling of their journeys. In this way, for mil­
lennia, knowledge was passed on through the centuries. Man's
consciousness was more flexible and accommodating, yet
while it operated in that manner, the possibilities for more
specific experience and more precise focus remained latent.
Man gradually altered the focus of his consciousness, per­
ceiving as real only those phenomena that fell within a
particular range, bringing into actuality levels of physical
experience to which he had been blind earlier, and gradually
becoming opaque to other stimuli which he had once per­
ceived clearly.
Encounters with the dead then became blurred,
occurring in dream states; which always represent other areas
of consciousness dimly perceived but not accepted as official
reality."

Hi Sena, Hi All,

Sena, thanks for sharing that information from Chapter 7 of "Psychic Politics" with us. I like what it says.  

I see from Chapter 7 of this book, that this information came directly to Jane, from the book, "Psychic Politics" that Jane psychically picked up, from her "psychic" library. How awesome is that. 

As I was reading this information, I noticed that it sounds quite a bit like some of what Seth talked about in Chapter 5 of his book DEAVF1. This is the chapter that's titled, "The "Garden of Eden." "Man "Loses" His Dream Body and Gains a "Soul". Check it out.

DEAVF1, Ch 5, S899:

(Long pause in a steady, rather fast delivery.) Man's dream body is still with him, of course, but the physical body now obscures it. The dream body cannot be harmed while the physical one can—as man quickly found out as he transformed his experience largely from one to the other. In the dream body man feared nothing. The dream body does not die. It exists before and after physical death. In their dream bodies men had watched the spectacle of animals "killing" other animals, and they saw the animals' dream bodies emerge unscathed.

They saw that the earth was simply changing its forms, but that the identity of each unit of consciousness survived—and so, although they saw the picture of death, they did not recognize it as the death that to many people now seems an inevitable end.

[Men] saw that there must be an exchange of physical energy for the world to continue. They watched the drama of the "hunter" and the "prey," seeing that each animal contributed so that the physical form of the earth could continue—but the rabbit eaten by the wolf survived in a dream body that men knew was its true form. When man "awakened" in his physical body, however, and specialized in the use of its senses, he no longer perceived the released dream body of the slain animal running away, still cavorting on the hillside. He retained memory of his earlier knowledge, and for a considerable period he could now and then recapture that knowledge. He became more and more aware of his physical senses, however: Some things were definitely pleasant and some were not. Some stimuli were to be sought out, and others avoided, and so over a period of time he translated the pleasant and the unpleasant into rough versions of good and evil.

-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
The dream body does not die. It exists before and after physical death.

jbseth, thanks for that very useful reference. It seems to me that the "dream body" is what is referred to by some writers as the "astral body":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_body

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318464

Quote from: Sena
jbseth, thanks for that very useful reference. It seems to me that the "dream body" is what is referred to by some writers as the "astral body":

Hi Sena, Hi All,

Yes, that does appear to be true. However in TES6, Seth has quite a bit more to say about this topic and it appears that there is much more to this according to Seth.



First off, in TES6, Session 258 Seth tells us that what we call dimensions, "represent states in which reality is perceived". He also says that, "You perceive reality in three dimensions, and that we have a glimpse of reality in a fourth dimension". Along with this he says, "There are many dimensions however in all directions."

Furthermore, in this same session he tells us that, "these dimensions merely represent various capacities of consciousness. All these dimensions exist at once, and even within your system, but your consciousness cannot perceive them."

Then a little further down he says, "Nothing but the various stages of consciousness separates the dimensions, you see, but the separation is quite effective nonetheless."

Then again, a little further down in this same session he says, "Other systems exist with the same space occupied in your own, but you cannot perceive them."



Now, while all of this discussion by Seth seems to support the point that I was trying to make in my posting of reply #78 above, Seth then takes this discussion and turns it toward a discussion about dreams, the dream self and the various other what he calls "personality structures" that also exist.



In TES6, Session 259, Seth says, "There is no need to get too complicated, so we shall deal only with fourth and fifth-dimensional personaility structures for now." 

"You do exist therefore in both of these dimensions. The ego cannot participate directly in such an experience. There is a compliance on the part of the ego, however, that allows it to step aside so that it does not block inner awarenessof the other –dimensional existence."

Then, a little further down Seth says:

"Now I do not like the term astral bodies, simply because of the sometimes weird connotations connected with the phrase. There is a kind of idea, or mental body, a counterpart in many ways, but not always, to the physical body, which is the structure the self takes in what you may call for now fourth dimension.
Certain dream experiences are valid out-of-the-body experiences, in that you do indeed travel in this mental vehicle. It does have a form, somewhere between matter and nonmatter."

"In physical existence usually you simply do not perceive it. There is a psychic structure also that has a form. This is the self as it appears within what you may call for now fifth-dimensional reality, but it does not exist at all in terms of matter. On occasion you travel in this form."


Here, Seth seems to be talking about 2 different types of bodies or forms. One a "mental" body or form is the structure the self takes in the fourth dimension and then there's another one, a "psychic" structure or form that the self takes in fifth dimensional reality.


In TES6, S260, he talks about this a little more when he says, "The mental body, sometimes called the astral body, it the next one that you will inhabit. You inhabit it now, of course."

Then, in TES6, Session 261, Seth talks about three forms. Here's what he says:





-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
When you enter a different dimension the abilities of the body form change, and for all intents and purposes it is a different body form, which we will call a mind form. It still seems physical in shape, but you can walk through physical matter with it, and you can truly levitate with it within your solar system, but you cannot go beyond in this mind form.

You can travel anywhere within your solar system however with it. In the first form it is possible to perceive the past, present and future on a limited basis. In the second form this perception is on a larger scale, the scope of consciousness being further opened. Now this is the form that you will use if you meet appointments with others within the dream state.

Solar system?  That seems like a kind of weird thing.  Why not beyond the solar system?  There is matter well beyond it.  It's just a strange rule to have in place.  An arbitrary boundary set in physical matter.

Hey all,

Quote from: LarryH
I think when we want to feel a greater connection to All-That-Is, we are really talking about an expansion of our definitions of ourselves.

Larry, this sounds like truth, and I appreciate your articulating it. 

Quote from: LarryH
I walked out of the theatre on the Balboa peninsula, and watched the seagulls flying overhead, the breeze, and the ocean waves, and I felt an unusually expansive intimate connection to that interplay of nature with itself, with me. I felt a sense of identity with those elements of nature, as if looking into a mirror.   

That's beautiful.  :-)  I've been curious about that film since it was on the art house circuit in the late seventies, but haven't worked up the courage to watch it.  I wonder if Peter Weir intended the girl's words to be the spiritual truth you took from them, or if he was implying something more like fatalism.  If it was the latter, nice job creating a vision of reality bigger than the director's!

Quote from: jbseth
An idea has been running around in my mind lately about the "transcendent" experiences that people sometimes have. This idea is this, maybe people have to be at a certain level or stage of consciousness in order to experience them.

Yes, this makes sense, as long as we acknowledge that transcendent experience doesn't necessarily indicate one is operating at some kind of a higher level.  As mentioned previously, I think it likely that after hearing the news about my father's cancer returning, my brain was literally shocked into stillness.  From what I've read about using psychedelic drugs, which I've gotten mostly from Michael Pollan's book How To Change Your Mind, psychedelics make the mind less active rather than more, and the less active it gets, the more profound the experiences of the user can be.  (Sometimes that means profoundly terrifying.) 

The goal, of course, is to achieve these states naturally, through progressively deeper realizations of the nature of the self.  Seth makes it pretty clear that using drugs for this purpose can have lasting negative effects. 

My point is just that I think under certain circumstances, probably including profound despair as in the case of Eckhart Tolle, a spiritually undeveloped person can find themselves in a transcendent place.  I agree, jbseth, that film has the ability to do this as well.  The film Paterson altered my state of consciousness temporarily.  (If you're into quiet, offbeat films about bus-driving poets, this might be one to watch. I loved it, and it has Sethian undertones.)

Quote from: jbseth
In talking about these stages of consciousness, she mentions how in our society once you begin to glimpse these wider abilities, people are afraid that the self you know would be swept away or annihilated by them. Instead the "old self" assimilates this new information and becomes the "new self".

Very helpful.  Thank you, jbseth.  I will take this with me.

Quote from: Sena
...at one time the dead and
living mixed far more openly....The closer time reference
chosen closed this gap, requiring on the part of the dead a
specific focus they could not easily achieve in order to make
their presence felt.

Well that's an interesting tidbit, Sena!  I would have have guessed that the stronger egos of modern man were the thing preventing the dead from mingling with the living.  But no, it is the dead being unable to achieve the specific focus necessary.  My guess is that if I manage to develop that focus, after this body dies I still won't be able to get the attention of my physicalist friends, though.  Their beliefs will make that impossible. 

I don't have time to read the rest of this thread right now, but will be back to read later, and am really benefiting from all the ideas being tossed around here.

Quote from: usmaak
Solar system?  That seems like a kind of weird thing.  Why not beyond the solar system?  There is matter well beyond it.  It's just a strange rule to have in place.  An arbitrary boundary set in physical matter.

Hi usmaak, Hi All,

Yeah, I picked up on a couple of limitations too.  Seth didn't explain the how or whys of some of these limitations. Maybe he did elsewhere.

I did get that early on he mentioned that these dimensions (third, fourth, fifth) represented various capacities or stages of consciousness. Maybe this these limitations have to do with the limitations of these various stages of consciousness.

He also mentioned that the mental body had a form that was somewhere between matter and non-matter, while the psychic body does not exist in terms of matter. Maybe these limitations also have something to do with the makeup of these various body types.


-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth

Then again, a little further down in this same session he says, "Other systems exist with the same space occupied in your own, but you cannot perceive them."

jbseth, thanks for your quotes from TES6. This seems to be Seth's version of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics.

The following is an extract from "Is There Life After Death? The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When We Die" by Anthony Peake:

"In Everett's version of events there is not a one in six
probability that a dice will fall giving a particular number but a one in one. The universe just splits
into six copies of itself and in each universe a different number comes up. In trying to explain away
a self-created universe, Everett has simply turned the egocentricity on its head. We all exist in our
own universes not because we bring them into existence but because we all have our own private
universes anyway. Not only that but there are literally trillions of versions of each of us all living all
possible versions of our lives.
The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics is an enlightening, if not disturbing,
revelation. However, in the same way that the Copenhagen Interpretation has been seen to be
possible through the SUNY experiment so it is that evidence of these other universes has been
implied by the work of Oxford University physicist David Deutsch. Deutsch sensationally believes
that the presence of these universes can be detected by experimentation."

https://www.anthonypeake.com/product/is-there-life-after-death-the-extraordinary-science-of-what-happens-when-we-die/

Quote from: Sena
In Everett's version of events there is not a one in six
probability that a dice will fall giving a particular number but a one in one. The universe just splits
into six copies of itself and in each universe a different number comes up.

I really like this.  It's a good way to explain it in simple terms that anyone can understand.

If only I could find a way to always land in the universe where it comes up how I want it.

Quote from: usmaak
If only I could find a way to always land in the universe where it comes up how I want it.

Yes, that is the challenge facing us.