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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: t2 who wrote (15935)	9/9/2003 4:07:30 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

"Are they just beliefs or real personal experiences gained from some sort of meditation?" My beliefs are simply the ideas I believe to be true and to accurately mirror reality. As I said, my beliefs have been influenced by all my experiences--just as have yours. That includes meditation, standing on my head, jumping out of a plane, and eating sardines. My beliefs are the conscious ordering of my experience into meaningful opinions about the truth of things. "I guess the answer then is 'No'." The full answer was: "not in the sense of being certain of anything". There are, however, less stringent ways of using the word "enlightened...so your "no" is not a particularly helpful amendment to my choice of words for MY answer. "So your goal is want to keep the boundries intact. That is quite odd" One of the problems in much mental illness is the inability of people to differentiate and respect boundaries. This inability can blur or obliterate both conscience and empathy. Healthy people have healthy boundaries. They know where "self" ends and where "other" begins, and they are able to respect boundaries and forego intrusiveness. "Most spiritual people want to have that experience of union with the Whole" Well...I was not aware of that, t2. Perhaps you can help me to understand that idea. What is it you mean by the "whole"? Do you mean everything that is not you? Do you mean the dog star, Sirius? Do you mean my sisters and brothers, and spiders, and plastic bags? What is experience of a union with the whole suppposed to be like? Are you speaking metaphorically of a sense of inter-relationship and interdependence between living things--or perhaps between all things? Is your "union" a metaphorical one? I am sure there are many things that do not want any "union" with me. Is the "whole" you refer to absent all these creatures who do not desire union with me? Perhaps by the "whole" you do not mean the whole of existence, but merely the whole of some subset of existence. But in any case, on what basis would anyone want to experience this? How do they know it would be a good experience even were it possible? You, for example: If you experience "union with the whole" (whatever that means)--what will you experience? Will you feel sad? Aching? Longing? Confused? Comfortable, Content, Bored? Ecstatic? Then will you just keep feeling that way and not want to experience anything else? Or will you cook a special meal and have a nice bottle of wine, and maybe wash out the tub? Tell me what is this "union with the whole"; and explain to me why one should do it while one is alive rather than after one is dead?