by Nickolas 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
All the available evidence, all of it, indicates that reality is the here and now,
I fully agree with you there....
that belief in a wonderful life after death (or after Armageddon) is an ancient fantasy. You are born, you live your life, you die.
Then explain my best friend, who vividly remembers being strangled by her husband in 18th century England, and had this memory of hers confirmed by a shaman without saying a word about it to him.
The OP was really poetic. Truth sets the mind free.
Good post, Nickolas. That cartoon made me think of this Douglas Adams quote:
"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"
This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."
Then explain my best friend, who vividly remembers being strangled by her husband in 18th century England, and had this memory of hers confirmed by a shaman without saying a word about it to him.
False memory syndrome is a well documented psychological phenomenon. I can't explain it, PS, I can only refer you and your friend to the documentation. This is the first one that popped up on Google: http://psychology.about.com/od/findex/g/false-memory-definition.htm. There's lots more.
Then explain my best friend, who vividly remembers being strangled by her husband in 18th century England, and had this memory of hers confirmed by a shaman without saying a word about it to him.
Your friend has false memories and shamans are bullshit?
The old Truth book from 1969 told of how terrible the world would be by 1975- and they didn't even know about facebook, yet- or the Internet. In the near future when raw materials and oil really are scarce, they will look back and remark how good everyone had it in our day.
I fully agree with you, Nickolas. If only they could see what they are doing to themselves.
About three years ago I went to see a psychic healer for chronic back pain. She did a reading and said that I was harboring anger towards my father, who died in 2002. I didn't think so, but she said it was in my subconscious mind. She went into a trance and my father started speaking to me through her... he was apologizing profusely and begging my forgiveness for not protecting me from my abusive and psychotic JW mommie dearest. I hadn't said a word about our intimate family matters to her, it was just as if my father was talking to me. He was smart enough to stay away from the cult.
So you guys may not believe in any kind of afterlife, and you may have convenient explanations like "false memory" or whatever, but I'm fully confident that consciousness continues after death, which is not the end of anything, but merely a transition. I feel that otherwise, all of our life experiences are in vain and they are gone and forgotten with absolutely no contribution to offer to the evolution of mankind. That is absolutely just not right.... but hey to each their own. We'll find out sooner or later, won't we?
By the way, she took the pain out, ordered to go off into the universe, and it never returned.
I suggest you call James Randi and arrange for the two of you to revisit your psychic healer. If she can demonstrate convincingly her ability to act as a mouthpiece for the dead, Mr. Randi will give you $1,000,000. He's had that prize out there for many years. So far nobody's been able to claim it. All the information you need as well as the application for claiming the prize is here. Assuming hers is a commercial enterprise (she charged you for the service, I trust) your psychic healer should have no objection to sharing the money with you.
We have a tendency to believe what we want to believe, see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear. The fact that you went to see a psychic healer at all attests to your open disposition to such things, PS. I'm not saying it didn't work for you, because it obviously did. But I believe it was you who healed yourself, not the psychic and certainly not your dead father. To each his own, yes that is true. But will we find out sooner or later? If the light just goes out, as I believe, then we will find out nothing because our ability to discern anything at all will be extinguished with us. I can only base what I believe on the evidence I perceive, and the evidence I perceive tells me that just as we did not exist prior to our conception and birth we will not exist after we die. And just as it makes no sense to be afraid of the oblivion that preceeded our births, it is also nonsensical to be afraid of the oblivion that comes after we die.
Actually, she didn't charge me, we met on a dating website.... but it never amounted to a romance.
Whatever the case, she had knowledge of intimate family matters that I told her nothing about. She said she reads from the "Akashic Record", which seems to be what Einstein was describing with his "time-space continuum".
The things we are debating here have been debated for millennia... you said: I can only base what I believe on the evidence I perceive, and the evidence I perceive tells me that just as we did not exist prior to our conception and birth we will not exist after we die. And I think that is the problem here.... quantum physics is being cast aside, and we're limiting our beliefs to what we can perceive from a very small bandwidth compared to the overall reality. There are many dimensions both "below" and "above". This is what Paul was referring to when he described the "third heaven".
Everything began to change for me a few years back when someone suggested I look into Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".
