breadcrumb socrates44 Blog

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

"Reason tells us that both the individual man and mankind as a whole, together with the entire world which we apprehend through our senses, is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature, whose laws are in no way affected by any human brain. On the contrary, they existed long before there was any life on earth and will continue to exist long after the last physicist has perished." (Max Planck)

Is it possible to experience some form of ultimate reality that transcends human sense experience and logical reasoning?

Through direct intuition, many people do have occasional experiences of a dimension of reality that transcends the senses and defies quantification and validation by logical means. The proof lies in the experience itself.

John Blofeld gives a beautiful description of such moments:
"There are moments
when a marvellous experience leaps into mind
as though coming from another world.
The magic that calls it forth
is often so fleeting as to be forgotten
in the joy of the experience itself -
it may be a skylark bursting into song,
the plash of a wave,
a flute played by moonlight
or the fateful shrieking or drumming of a mountain storm;
a lovely smile perhaps,
or a single gesture, form or hue of compelling beauty;
a familiar scene transformed by an unusual quality of light
or a large cluster of rocks suggestive of beings imbued with life.
Or the spell may be wrought by a sudden exaltation,
a jerking of the mind into an unknown dimension.
A certain hitherto unnoticed is suddenly twitched aside,
and for a timeless moment,
there stands partially revealed
- a mystery."
He goes on to say:
"Of one thing I am sure -
a mystical experience,
whether vague or intense
is nothing less than a direct intuition of
Ultimate Reality."
,
Post Comment

The Scriptures And God

I honestly believe that the scriptures can assist one in finding God and Truth. However, they are only a means to an end. Many people know about the truth in the scriptures but they do not know the truth itself because they have not experienced it. Such people may quote from the scriptures quite readily but this means nothing unless they have experienced the truth contained in the said scriptures. Truth is the essence; the scriptures are just a from of expression - an attempt to express the essence but they are not the essence itself. One may know the form without knowing the essence. To put it another way: God is the holy scriptures but the holy scriptures are not God. Perhaps one may say that faith can bridge this gap; yet, such faith can only be a hollow one.

True faith is based upon personal conviction; it is an internal process. Since one is limited in the amount of actual physical experiences one can have in one's lifetime, there are many things of which one may not have a physical experience; however, one can have an intuitional experience of these things. True faith is only possible with experience, whether physical or intuitional, as a base. This is the reason why many people fall away from religion after a while and also why so many regular church-goers still experience emptiness inside; they do not have a proper basis for their faith. They seek to believe something simply because it is written and not because they themselves have experienced the truth of that thing, whether through a physical or intuitional experience. Inevitably, a certain degree of uncertainty enters such people's lives. The sad thing about it is that most people would not admit the existence of this uncertainty or emptiness, even to themselves, because they believe this would undermine their faith. Rather, they forcibly try to will themselves to believe. This is a vicious circle since such faith is willed faith that has no experiential base and which inevitably collapses once one stops willing oneself to believe. True faith does not need an effort of the will; it transcends the will.
Post Comment

The Interconnectedness Of All Things

"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

- Albert Einstein



"The Interconnectedness of all things: Buddhists have always known it, and physicists now confirm it. Nothing that happens is an isolated event. The more we label something, the more we isolate it. The wholeness of life becomes fragmented through our thinking."

- Eckhart Tolle
Post Comment

DIRECT REALIZATION

Life is dynamic and constantly changing. Any thinking or verbal speculation about life, even with regard to the future, is always based on the past. One cannot have immediate contact with one's immediate existence through thought.

Why can one not realize and experience one's being directly in the immediate present without thought or verbal speculation? Certainly, words are useful in the attempt to communicate one's experience to another person but the use of words is merely an attempt to point to experience; it can never give that immediate direct knowledge, insight or realization that comes from one's experience. Words are like a map and experience is the territory. A map can only give knowledge about the territory; it can never give knowledge of the territory, which can only be obtained through direct experience.

The body has an intelligence of it own which manifests itself when thought cease its attempt to know life.

when one considers growth and decay as a continuous on-going process of which human existence is a mere iota, one realizes that there is an inexorable movement which encompasses every thing that "is", including human existence, which is a relatively recent phenomenon on the cosmic time scale. One realizes the ethnocentricity, or more specifically, the "homocentricity" of the claim that human conceptualizations are capable of knowing things as they "are"; this applies whether the claim is that of science, religion or any other system of thought.

When one examines the way the different life forms are interrelated, one realizes the distortion created by thought when one attempts to isolate and elevate one life form, in particular, the human life form, apart from the others.

There is a fundamental unity of everything that "is" and God is that which controls and directs the relationship between everything.

Love is a manifestation of this unity at the behavioural level.

Post Comment

Wisdom Of Ignorance

Socrates did not claim to know better than others. He frequently emphasized that he is ignorant of the answer. The importance of this helps to draw the line between dogma and genuine philosophy. It is one thing to state how things are and should be. Powerful institutions such as religions and political systems are built upon such dogmas and demand that others abide by them. Socrates, on the other hand, started from a position of ignorance and sought the truth.
When in questioning others, he found out that the experts are just as ignorant about what things really are, he reasons: "I do not suppose that either of us knows any thing really beautiful and good. I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."
Socrates concludes that it is better to have honest ignorance than self-deceptive ignorance. Socrates may not know the ultimate answers to the questions he raises but he knows himself. It is this self-knowledge and integrity that constitutes the wisdom of Socrates. The open invitation is for all of us to ask ourselves how much we truly know of what we claim.



Extracts from Oregon State University article, "Great Philosophers"
Post Comment

Past. Present & Future Mental Exercise

1. Focus on the present
Be fully and completely focused on your immediate awareness of the moment NOW.
Mentally assess your degree of certainty that you are experiencing the moment NOW.

2. Focus on the past
Unlike your awareness of the present, you have to draw from your memory for this.
Think of an incident that you experienced yesterday. Mentally assess your degree of certainty that you experienced that incident.
Think of an incident that you experienced a year ago. Mentally assess your degree of certainty that you experienced that incident.

3. Focus on the future
Unlike your awareness of the present, you have to draw from your imagination for this.
Think of something you plan to do tomorrow. Mentally assess your degree of certainty that you will be able to do what you plan.
Think of something you plan to do a year from now. Mentally assess your degree of certainty that you will be able to do what you plan.

How does your degree of certainty for each of these compare with that for the others?
I believe you will experience the greatest degree of certainty for the present (of course, I may not be correct).
If I am, then it appears that we are most certain of the reality of the present compared to that of the past and the future.

Could it be that the present, or more specifically the moment NOW, is all that there actually IS?

We have a direct and immediate awareness that we are in the present, the here and the NOW, and we do not need memory or imagination to be aware of this.
However, the moment NOW is not a static entity but it is dynamic and it is this quality of dynamism or change that gives rise to the notions of the past and the future.
From our memory, we get a notion of the past and from our imagination, we get a notion of the future.

The Taoists speak of the ETERNAL NOW.

Albert Einstein said:
"Time is an illusion."

I have written two pieces of Haiku on this theme:

the moment NOW
untiring trailmaker
and in its wake - CHANGE

the moment NOW
the supreme cosmic force
in eternal birth
Post Comment

What Is Time?

The present -
tomorrow's past
yesterday's future
Is the past an illusion?
Is the future a fantasy?
What is Time?
Our scientists cannot say
If there are no events
to measure it
will Time exist?
Did it have a beginning?
Will it have an ending?
What is Time?
Post Comment

Falling In Love

Falling in love for the first time
can be very exciting at the start
But such love is usually not long-lasting
and may lead to a broken heart

A person whose heart has been broken
seeks a love that is more mature
When found such love heals the broken heart
and is more beautiful and likely to endure
Post Comment

Wisdom and Knowledge

A cup may contain water
but it is not the water

words may point to the truth
but they are not the truth

form may express the essence
but it is not the essence

knowledge may lead to wisdom
but it is not wisdom

having knowledge is being intellectual
having wisdom is being intelligent

knowledge deals with the parts
wisdom deals with the whole

the whole is more than the sum of the parts
wisdom is more than knowledge
Post Comment

The Rubaiyat (Selected Verses) - Omar Khayaam

XII
Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win -
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!

XXV
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie;
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans--End!

XLIX
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.



Omar Khayaam was a Persian philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet (born - 1048, died - 1131).
Post Comment

True And Only Path To God

In order for God to be "God", he must allow every individual an equal opportunity to attain or experience salvation otherwise, he will not be fair as he is supposed to be. If the starting point for the attainment or experience of salvation is based on the knowledge of the teachings and scriptures of a particular religion, each individual must be exposed to that knowledge, especially if such knowledge is "external" in the sense that he or she cannot arrive at the details of such knowledge on his or her own. Clearly, it is a fact that since the inception of human existence, many people have lived their entire lives and died without knowledge of any religion that may make the claim to be the true and only path to God. The only "religion" that may avoid this dilemma is one in which the individual can "realize" the relevant knowledge on his or her own, without dependence on "external" knowledge.

A few years ago, I watched in amazement, at a BBC news broadcast on television. A small aircraft was flying over a remote forested area in South America and it showed pictures taken from the air of a clearing in the forest in which there was a "primitive" hut or human dwelling place. The most amazing part of the newscast was that it showed a group of human beings close to the hut aiming their bows and arrows upwards, apparently at the small aircraft flying overhead. This strongly suggests that those people, at least up to that point in time, would have had no contact with the "outside" world. How could such people and their ancestors have heard the message of any "outside" religion, especially one that may claim to be the true and only way to God? More than likely, they must have their own religion.

I tried to locate, on the internet, a copy of the news documentary to which I referred but was unsuccessful. I shall be grateful if anyone can locate such a copy and post the link on this blog to share with others.
However, I came up with a link showing an "uncontacted" tribe in the Amazon jungle that can be viewed at:




Some Christians refer to John 14:6 to support their claim that their religion is the way to God, not a way, indicating it as the true and only way.
Muslims refer to the Quran as the Final Revelation and use this to support their claim that their religion, Islam, is the true way to God.
Some other religions may also make this claim.
What is the fate of those who have never even heard of a religion, whatever it may be, that makes the claim to be the true and only way?
(I would like to get the views of Christians, Muslims, members of other religions, and others on this matter)
Post Comment

Spiritual But Not Religious

Spiritual but not religious
What does it really mean?
This claim is quite prevalent
On today's scene

Is it just a new age fad
Or is it contradictory?
If in fact, it is the latter
Then what is the discrepancy?

Religion has divided a person
Into body, mind and spirit
It claims it seeks the spirit's welfare
And is sincere about it

If religion really deals with the spirit
Then why is there such a fuss
That many still continue to claim
They are spiritual but not religious?
Post Comment

This is a list of socrates44's Blogs. Click here for socrates44's Blog List

We use cookies to ensure that you have the best experience possible on our website. Read Our Privacy Policy Here