Musing over What is Karma, Rebirths, and the Illusions of the Senses

by frankiespeakin 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  frankiespeakin

  I have finally had a little time to pause for some reflection, lately been either sick(flu) or fighting fatigue to get work done while sick with the flu.

  One of my favorite pastimes is to tune into JWD and read all your arguements for and against things of the paranormal nature, mysticism, evolution, and things like these. I do enjoy those that are of a scientific shaped logic and lean more heavily towards some of their well thought out replies, I see them as open minded for the most part, and know I would never be able to research to the degree they do the subject of evolution and patiently try to deal with some rather set in their ways creationist. They have brought a wealth of information to our board, that no doubt help many rid themsevles of the God(of the bible) delusion, a rather mean and nasty delusion that many JWs need to shake to make thier coming out of mind control more complete.

  While I have given up on the God delusion pretty completely, I have not become a complete materialist. I think (not know) that there are somethings, that can only be discribed as metaphysical in nature. thus the title of this thread.

  I know many have differnent ideas of what Karma is and I am no expert on this subject, I do feel it is form of cause and effect on the human psyche, that may also be carried over from from past lives to the present, or collectively to the whole species, your guess is as good as mine. I have given up any dogmatic teaching on the subject, and just speculate on the outcomes for certain behaviors these days.

  As far as rebirths I think there is some merit to the beleif and benifits of such a process, I think either it is true, or perhaps memories are stored in some way in a Collective mind of our species, after all what are these illusive things called thoughts which we see and think about inside our minds, you can't touch them, or play them on a recorder or on a radio recieverer. Still so much mystery about who or what we really are, we could be just really sophisticated hologram if every thing is one.

  And don't get me started about how everything is just an illusion of the senses.
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  tetrapod.sapien

  hey frankie!

  i always enjoy your threads man. i like the way you think!

  i have been attempting to explore some of these concepts myself lately. the skeptical side of my brain is pretty strong, but i have seen the need to balance it with things and concepts that are not so easily explained with reduction. for a lot of things, the "humans are delusional" argument does not cut it anymore. well, for the more esoteric type things, as you mentioned. i learned recently, that the pineal gland starts to calcify in adolesence, and does not produce as much soma pinoline, aka dmt as when we were children. and a lot of people feel that the pineal gland is the seat of, or gateway to, mystical experience. but we can still exercise it, so-to-speak. but in doing this, i have had to put my ever diligent skeptical side to rest so that i could fully experience the phenomena, often also aided with psychedelic substances. this has been a way cool learning experience for me, and has changed me for the better imo.

  i read a little bit about "past life regression therapy" this last summer. i didn't get deep into it, but one of the things that struck me is that people experiencing past life regression seemed to only remember previous human existances of highly novel nature. pharohs etc. i haven't read any experiences of people remembering being an ape on the african savanah, or any other animal from our evolutionary past. this sends up some flags for me. but i am still interested in the phenomena. perhaps animal consciousness is so different from ours, that the regression did not make sense to anyone who experienced that type.

  last year, i got a very abstract tattoo on my fore arm. people ask me all the time what it means. i have a hard time explaining it, but i love it. when i decided to get it, i chose it based on strong feelings i had, but nothing concrete. in other words, just emotion designed it. i had never seen the design anywhere, until i started looking at indigenous tattoos of indians from colombia and venezuela in anthropology text books. and then i saw some that looked very very similar. it had an added dimension for me, because i actually have genetic ancestory from the region. i am half colombian. the interesting thing is that it would be news to me if i had any indian in me. as far as my family knows, it was only a spanish and african mix. but i think i will get a genetic test done anyways, because you never know. so, anyways, that sort of shook me up and got me thinking. it could also just be the collective unconscious that carl jung succesfully hypothesised. we all come from the same ancestors, therefore our brains are wired similarly, and we can expect to see similar symbology across cultures that have been separated geographically.

  i am still a hung jury on rebirths. but i intend to investigate further.

  karma is something that i can jump on board with, i think. well, the way i see it anyways, LOL! ain't that always the case! actually, one of the few instances that i believe was a direct mystical experience, involved the cosmos, or the source, communicating to me, in its own way, about my karma. i wouldn't want to try to convince anyone of it's objective reality, but the experience shook me up. and i think that experiences that shake people up tend to be viewed a little more literally than those that are all happy and positive and filled with Light, so-to-speak.

  and i have read some technological singularity theorists that posit that the universe repeats itself over and over again with only small changes each time. and i wonder if this somehow could explain karma for me. but, then again, i am still not sure about the singularity concept either. and honestly, before the experience i had, i had not really thought about karma that much at all.

  ah yes. the great illusion. i like the gnostico type term that phillip k dick coined for it: the Great Black Iron Prison.

  i believe that the world illusion sometimes gives people the feeling that someone else thinks they are not smart enough, or "enligtened" enough, lol. but i think it is a fairly accurate word. and i think that as our consciousness expands, that we become aware of more and more. and i believe that this is an evolutionary progression actually. and that as time has gone by, more and more people are able to see the illusion, and more and more will. what this means, i am not sure. but i do think it is happening. why would evolution stop? we are obviously going in a certain direction as a species, right now. or for the last couple thousand years anyways, which is a drop in the bucket of course.

  i also like hypothesis of a holographic universe. it bakes my noodle. and i am still learning about all this stuff. it would also have huge implications if we discovered conclusively that our consciousness is quantum in nature.

  anyways, thanks for stimulating my mind. what are your thoughts? i'm curious.

  anyways, i have to go to bed bro. i'll check back tomorrow. happy trails! ;)

  tetra
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  skyking

  I never use to wonder about the paranormal when I was in the BORG, never believed it for a second then. Now however my mind has been opened up to the idea and I see there maybe reasons for it other than Demons. Every time I post anything about ithis I get slammed by other posters. There is proof if people want to look at the proof. What I have found people only like proof when I supports what they like. We need to open minded because if I was not opened minded I would still be knocking on doors.
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  frankiespeakin

  Tetra,

  didone of the things that struck me is that people experiencing past life regression seemed to only remember previous human existances of highly novel nature. pharohs etc. i haven't read any experiences of people remembering being an ape on the african savanah, or any other animal from our evolutionary past.

  That always strikes my funny too, I have a GF that claims she was some english royalty in a past life, clearly to me it reveals her already aparent egotisitcal nature, and no doubt a play on her vanity. I suppose the marjority who proclaim their past lives where of some notable personage, have fallen pray to vanity, wishful thinking, or pride.

  I do know of those that have no such recollection of notable persons in thier past lives, but claim to remember past live so It's not everyone doing it. I have regressed while in an altered state to 3 or younger and while doing it they say my face became very smooth ,round and looked like a toddlers face even made the type of motions a person that age would make, I've seen other regress back to not more than a few months old and watched their feet and legs curl up just like a baby's, they acted so like a baby, I was impressed.

  I have regressed back to a fishlike creature but only for a short while, most regressions usually occur when you have dealt with repressed psychological material from the life you have right now, and then latter will show up. It may be our psyche need to handle first things first, before moving to past lives.
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  frankiespeakin

  Sky,

  Every time I post anything about ithis I get slammed by other posters. There is proof if people want to look at the proof.

  These type of subject will sometime get you slammed, but I don't really care, nor do I take it personally. If you have what you consider to be enough proof why worry if others reject your statements as non true, I would only spend very little time trrying to convince them.

  But with all the hoaksters, fruads, and just plain deluded persons telling about what they have experienced or lying about what they have done we should expect to be put to the test by those with critical thinking sharpened by being mislead once big time by the Borg. Itiis quite natural, and so I welcome them to ask good questions for they keep fraudulent claims to a minimum on the board.

  And I have to admit some of the evidence or all of it is not conclusive but simply leads one down a particular road of reason, which all depends on the persons point of view.
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  exjdub

  frankiespeakin,

  I have to also say that I enjoy your threads, they always make me think and explore. I remember a thread you started a while ago about awakening the Kundalini. Very interesting topic, as this one is. The problem is that I don't generally have an opinion to offer as I am still exploring and have not come to too many conclusions yet, although it is not a problem for me as I have enjoyed the journey. I always appreciate it when someone brings up a topic that makes me think.

  Tetrapod:

  I enjoy your posts as well, although I know I don't say it enough to the people that post things that I enjoy. You are another mind expanding author of threads and I appreciate your take on matters.

  exjdub
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  frankiespeakin

  The world is illusion or Maya, I am not totally sure what the buddhist teaching really means, (but for those curious here is the Wikipedia info on it :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

  My thoughts on this are just reading it at face value is that this is a true statement.

  Colors do not exist outside the mind and neither do the sounds we hear, they are all just vibration fequencies to which our minds asigns either color interpetation, or sounds we think we hear. Pretty amazing to say the least, is how the mind gives us color visually so that when we come across a light frequency with in a certain range we get this visual color inside our minds. The same is true with what the mind interpets as sound, alls it is is compressed air waves which our ear is able pick up and then it is converted through a process of steps into what we call sounds heard inside our minds.

  Sense of smell basically mind interpetations again, with no concrete absolutes.(to a carrion eating buzzard a dead and rotting stench is yummy but to you or I yucky.

  Sense of touch pretty much just mind interpetation. And lets not leave out the sense of taste, yup another mind interpetation.

  To illustrate the point or make it easier to digest just look at all the different creature we have on this earth. They all sense things differently, there is no absolute way to sense things and call it the only correct way.

  To the senses of a spider the world is vastly different from that of our senses. Or take the whale or seagull to them the world is vastly different from each other as it is from the world that our senses indicate.

  When we were very young and were sad or happy we felt the whole world was sad or happy, it took us time to finally dawn on us, that these were just points of view, and that the way we were viewing the world at the time, was not the way the world was it was just the way we felt at the time which colored our whole world view.

  So that being said, I can see how the statement "The world is illusion" at face value is true.
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  Narkissos

  Nice thread, nice posts.

  I believe we are all writing on the sand.

  Knowing is cutting out pieces of "something" (being, reality, whatever) into separate "things" (of different categories like space and time, objects and events, etc.). Any "light" this process sheds on "anything" invariably results in obscuring "something else".

  And the (non-)essence of this "light" is negation. We cast it wherever we look. Only against the negation of language do "things" appear -- offer an appearance or (sur)face -- as they seem to be.

  Sometimes I think of languages and minds as beingworms: an army of "nos" splitting and breaking the unnamed like the worm does the earth; making it looser, smoother, more mobile or fluid perhaps; how our language-based technique does alter the so-called "material world" may be just an "aspect" of this process.

  Or bubbles of "I am not" in the ocean of "being" -- the "outside of language" which we may never know better than the negation of a negation.

  Metaphor unsuperable.

  Eschatological horizon: laughter.
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  zensim

  I have found my kindred spirits on this board! I am ashamed to admit I did limit this board and thought there wouldn't be people here discussing this kind of thing (and my first experience with slammers on a much milder topic kind of reinforced that). So I'm opening up again after being contracted.

  Narkissos: I love the way you view the world and the way you express it. Most of the time I am struggling to understand what you are saying - even though I do understand what you mean (I think?). You just have such a different way of expressing it - good exercise for my brain.

  I recently had an archetype reading and the guy doing it kept saying my face was changing according to which type I was in. Apparently he experiences that a lot. I have had similar experiences. Once when I was WIDE open I spent two hours on a plane with another girl who was in the same state and at one point I was looking at her and she looked so much like me. It freaked me out.

  And no, we weren't on drugs. I have never done drugs. My understanding is that you can achieve those kinds of states without drugs. It is just in the past those experiences seemed to be reserved for mystics, shamans, teachers etc. Now I think human evolution is at the stage where many are awakening to that consciousness. For me, Jesus was just an advanced person talking about these very experiences. Unfortunately, given the limitations of people at that time, they could only reference it from their unevolved consciousness and, quite frankly, got most of it wrong.

  Also had another experience with another friend I made briefly. Again, both of us were in a really egoless state, we hugged and it was the strangest sensation of our molecules merging and feeling like one body - there was no me and no her.

  Now, after all the journeying and experiences I have had I kind of take that stuff for granted. But it is still a diligent path. There are definitely things that lower or raise my vibration - even as simply as the food I eat.

  Namaste!
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  exjdub

  Interesting experiences zensism...keep 'em coming, don't be afraid. I find them quite interesting and enjoy reading the experiences of those that are further along the path than I am. I know I am missing some things, but learn every time someone talks about their journey. Great thread!

  exjdub