A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Iwannaplato
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 7:13 pm
What does one do when someone else seems to be committing self-harm?
Rescue kids, leave adults be.

There's more to it, of course: but that's the gist.
There's some swingroom between those options. If it's a friend, I tend to at least bring up the issue. If it's a stranger and the self-harm is in my face, I might say something. There's a whole set of tiny (mentioning) to stronger intervention type reactions, all of which fall way short of rescuing, which is generally not possible. Even slapping a knife out of someone's hand may only be a solultion for 10 minutes.

Don't you sometimes say something?
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:03 pm The whole God story is a fantasy. The believing brain has nothing to relate to but it’s own concocted imagination. The ability to conceptualise reality is an artificial superimposed imprint upon nothing.

And the brain takes this imprint as literally real, even as it is only illusory.
There are a whole lot of asserted truths about reality in the above. Even the use of 'brain' and 'imagination' is implicitly making all sorts of claims about reality, including models of perception, physiology, epistemology and ontology.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by henry quirk »

Don't you sometimes say something?
Sure, dependin' on circumstance and what kind of injury is bein' self-inflicted (and who the person is [a loved one gets more, a stranger less or nuthin']).

But I err on the side of adults makin' choices, and livin' with the consequences. The self-injury is gonna have to be obvious before I play buttinsky.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

henry quirk wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 12:52 am
Don't you sometimes say something?
Sure, dependin' on circumstance and what kind of injury is bein' self-inflicted (and who the person is [a loved one gets more, a stranger less or nuthin']).

But I err on the side of adults makin' choices, and livin' with the consequences. The self-injury is gonna have to be obvious before I play buttinsky.
It's interesting. You manage to quote me without me receiving a notification. And yeah, I'd say the same.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Walker »

Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:01 am
Walker wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 11:00 pm

Here's why your thread title is wrong. Observation shows:

- What matters is the profound knowledge, that colors every moment, that life as you know it will totally change when you cannot ever take the next breath.
- That knowledge perspectivizes any doing to be done.
- That’s the important thing that folks do know all the time, sooner or later.

- Religions and their people also know enough to intentionally worship the greater, or the greatest.
- Religions don’t intentionally worship the lesser, although they may inadvertently end up doing so.
- This is simply human nature, obvious in all the folks who informally worship the lesser, even outside of a religion.
- For example, some folks worship the lesser in the form of vices, such as gambling.
- Worship is bhakti devotion in thought and deed.

This is why Ayn Rand was an atheist. She figured that nothing is greater as an object of worship than uncorrupted human as a principle, which she personified through characters.
I do not know what you are talking about Walker.

Religion: a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.
The only religion here that can be known is the interest in the I that knows.

The pursuit of I is a religion. The pursuit of an I who believes it has control over it's autonomy which then extends out to something else who is controlling the controller known as I .. in this case: A supreme Being known as God.

But there is no such thing...except as concept, which is illusory.

This all inclusive universe has no other requirement to be just as it is in every moment, and has absolutely no need for the belief in the existence of a supreme being known as God.

Belief is a mental construction, belief is an artifical superimposed add on to what is already everything, requiring nothing, and does not exist except as a mental concept in this conception. The Belief that there is a 'someone' called I who lives and dies, is just story, it's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The opposite is also true, which is a lie.

A pursuit of interest simply implies an object of my desire. In other words, to objectify a reality from what can never be objectified, or be made into an object. Except in this conception, which is obviously happening within the mind so as to make some constructive sense of this apparent sense of self...albeit illusory, since the self is just a mental construct, it's an idea that can never be seen physically as an object separate from the mind, rather, the self can only be known as an object conceptually. And because objects are not conscious, the whole idea of self is an illusion.

The 'Self' has never been seen, there is no physical sighting of a 'SELF' anywhere in reality.

The 'Self' is only known. By the only knowing there is which is consciousness.

And no thing knows what or how consciousness is, just that it IS..but not how or why or what it is.

All this make-belief ABOUT worshiping a God is the dream story believed to be real. But has no more substance or reality than a subroutine does in a computer, a computer that is synonymous with the human brain.
I do not know what you are talking about Walker.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
This is how I see, from your thinking-out-loud, that your thoughts don't go past your own assumptions. Here's why.

- Perhaps your imaginative notions of non-duality have yet to propel you to objective, dualistic analysis.
- Because it has not, of what use is it?

- The worship of “I,” is the reinforcement of self-concept.
- Self-concept, whatever it may be for any particular person, may indeed be worshiped as the greatest thing that is known or imaginable.
- However, even though believed and worshiped, this is not true. Why?
- Because humans have the innate, choiceless ability to imagine something greater than one’s own self-concept. This is a quality of human intelligence. It’s part of being a human bean.
- Therefore, the “I” which is defined by self-concept, a self-concept which falls short of being imaginably greater, is unworthy of being a religion … and everyone knows it. Why?
- Because religion requires one to worship, and to worship one must pay devotion to what is known to be, or imagined to be, greater than the “I” defined by self-concept.

- This is why, should you worship a light*, then you must imagine that light perceived by eye and mind sense, or just mind sense if ye eyes be gone, to be greater than any "I" that you can imagine.

* Or if you must, replace light with dog or some other critter, in which case it would be the spirit of that living thing. Or, pick the spirit of something inorganic, that is greater than one's self-concept, to worship. For instance, the immensity of the stars.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Walker »

- Whatever that thing is, because it is worshiped as a religion it is greater than the “I” defined by self-concept.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Iwannaplato wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:21 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:03 pm The whole God story is a fantasy. The believing brain has nothing to relate to but it’s own concocted imagination. The ability to conceptualise reality is an artificial superimposed imprint upon nothing.

And the brain takes this imprint as literally real, even as it is only illusory.
There are a whole lot of asserted truths about reality in the above. Even the use of 'brain' and 'imagination' is implicitly making all sorts of claims about reality, including models of perception, physiology, epistemology and ontology.
These truths are based on perceptions contingent on the belief of those perceptions.

The awareness of a perception, a conscious knowing of some knowledge, seemingly divides between a belief in a reality ''out there'' experienced by a ''someone'' in here.
But on closer inspection through self-inquiry there is no division there at all, except as illusory enabled by thought, which is also illusory.

The thought I am experiencing pleasure right now is real insofar as the sensation is manifesting as a direct experience, simply denotes that which is without pleasure can and does arise as pleasure. And will ultimately be a nondual experience.

Nondual philosophy implies a teaching about the nature of reality. ''The Teaching Is a Lie that Tells the Truth'' because no thing can know itself. And certainly nothingness cannot know itself, simply because there is nothing there to know, so there must have always been everything one without a second.

There's just everything that is, was, and ever will be, infinitely forever eternal, from which there is no room for two.

From the nondual view, the world of things, is but an illusion created by the mind and the senses. Not that reality does not exist, because it does, but that it's not-known how or why or what it is. This IS or IT cannot be known by the mind and the senses. The mind and the senses are just temporal appearances, of this IT or IS that cannot be known. Knowing is not known by a ''someone'' Rather, you are the knowing that cannot be known.


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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

Dontaskme wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 10:45 am
Iwannaplato wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:21 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:03 pm The whole God story is a fantasy. The believing brain has nothing to relate to but it’s own concocted imagination. The ability to conceptualise reality is an artificial superimposed imprint upon nothing.

And the brain takes this imprint as literally real, even as it is only illusory.
There are a whole lot of asserted truths about reality in the above. Even the use of 'brain' and 'imagination' is implicitly making all sorts of claims about reality, including models of perception, physiology, epistemology and ontology.
These truths are based on perceptions contingent on the belief of those perceptions.

The awareness of a perception, a conscious knowing of some knowledge, seemingly divides between a belief in a reality ''out there'' experienced by a ''someone'' in here.
But on closer inspection through self-inquiry there is no division there at all, except as illusory enabled by thought, which is also illusory.

The thought I am experiencing pleasure right now is real insofar as the sensation is manifesting as a direct experience, simply denotes that which is without pleasure can and does arise as pleasure. And will ultimately be a nondual experience.

Nondual philosophy implies a teaching about the nature of reality. ''The Teaching Is a Lie that Tells the Truth'' because no thing can know itself. And certainly nothingness cannot know itself, simply because there is nothing there to know, so there must have always been everything one without a second.

There's just everything that is, was, and ever will be, infinitely forever eternal, from which there is no room for two.

From the nondual view, the world of things, is but an illusion created by the mind and the senses. Not that reality does not exist, because it does, but that it's not-known how or why or what it is. This IS or IT cannot be known by the mind and the senses. The mind and the senses are just temporal appearances, of this IT or IS that cannot be known. Knowing is not known by a ''someone'' Rather, you are the knowing that cannot be known.
I asserted that you were saying a lot of things were true. You were telling us what is true.
Your response here is to justify those truths. I wasn't challenging what you were saying was true. I was pointing out that you have ideas about what is true and you tell other people what is true. Despite the fact that you say things like....
In reality, No one knows any thing
Truth is a lie.
Any truth claim is a lie...
and so on.

All through the thread you are telling what is real and what is not real. Sometimes you are telling us why these things that you are saying are true. While at the same time saying no one knows anything and there are no truths.

This is very cake and eat it too.

If you don't know anything and any truth claim is a lie, why do you keep telling us what is true?

And your ideas are really rather complicated: iow there are many, many implicit and explicit truths being asserted by you in this thread.
Last edited by Iwannaplato on Wed Sep 28, 2022 10:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Walker wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 10:07 am
Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:01 am
Walker wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 11:00 pm

Here's why your thread title is wrong. Observation shows:

- What matters is the profound knowledge, that colors every moment, that life as you know it will totally change when you cannot ever take the next breath.
- That knowledge perspectivizes any doing to be done.
- That’s the important thing that folks do know all the time, sooner or later.

- Religions and their people also know enough to intentionally worship the greater, or the greatest.
- Religions don’t intentionally worship the lesser, although they may inadvertently end up doing so.
- This is simply human nature, obvious in all the folks who informally worship the lesser, even outside of a religion.
- For example, some folks worship the lesser in the form of vices, such as gambling.
- Worship is bhakti devotion in thought and deed.

This is why Ayn Rand was an atheist. She figured that nothing is greater as an object of worship than uncorrupted human as a principle, which she personified through characters.
I do not know what you are talking about Walker.

Religion: a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.
The only religion here that can be known is the interest in the I that knows.

The pursuit of I is a religion. The pursuit of an I who believes it has control over it's autonomy which then extends out to something else who is controlling the controller known as I .. in this case: A supreme Being known as God.

But there is no such thing...except as concept, which is illusory.

This all inclusive universe has no other requirement to be just as it is in every moment, and has absolutely no need for the belief in the existence of a supreme being known as God.

Belief is a mental construction, belief is an artifical superimposed add on to what is already everything, requiring nothing, and does not exist except as a mental concept in this conception. The Belief that there is a 'someone' called I who lives and dies, is just story, it's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The opposite is also true, which is a lie.

A pursuit of interest simply implies an object of my desire. In other words, to objectify a reality from what can never be objectified, or be made into an object. Except in this conception, which is obviously happening within the mind so as to make some constructive sense of this apparent sense of self...albeit illusory, since the self is just a mental construct, it's an idea that can never be seen physically as an object separate from the mind, rather, the self can only be known as an object conceptually. And because objects are not conscious, the whole idea of self is an illusion.

The 'Self' has never been seen, there is no physical sighting of a 'SELF' anywhere in reality.

The 'Self' is only known. By the only knowing there is which is consciousness.

And no thing knows what or how consciousness is, just that it IS..but not how or why or what it is.

All this make-belief ABOUT worshiping a God is the dream story believed to be real. But has no more substance or reality than a subroutine does in a computer, a computer that is synonymous with the human brain.
I do not know what you are talking about Walker.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
This is how I see, from your thinking-out-loud, that your thoughts don't go past your own assumptions. Here's why.

- Perhaps your imaginative notions of non-duality have yet to propel you to objective, dualistic analysis.
- Because it has not, of what use is it?

- The worship of “I,” is the reinforcement of self-concept.
- Self-concept, whatever it may be for any particular person, may indeed be worshiped as the greatest thing that is known or imaginable.
- However, even though believed and worshiped, this is not true. Why?
- Because humans have the innate, choiceless ability to imagine something greater than one’s own self-concept. This is a quality of human intelligence. It’s part of being a human bean.
- Therefore, the “I” which is defined by self-concept, a self-concept which falls short of being imaginably greater, is unworthy of being a religion … and everyone knows it. Why?
- Because religion requires one to worship, and to worship one must pay devotion to what is known to be, or imagined to be, greater than the “I” defined by self-concept.

- This is why, should you worship a light*, then you must imagine that light perceived by eye and mind sense, or just mind sense if ye eyes be gone, to be greater than any "I" that you can imagine.

* Or if you must, replace light with dog or some other critter, in which case it would be the spirit of that living thing. Or, pick the spirit of something inorganic, that is greater than one's self-concept, to worship. For instance, the immensity of the stars.
You have mentioned the word ''Worship'' 7 times above.

But I have absolutely no idea how this word has got anything to do with anything we are discussing here.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 10:56 am
All through the thread you are telling what is real and what is not real. Sometimes you are telling us why these things that you are saying are true. While at the same time saying no one knows anything and there are no truths.

This is very cake and eat it too.

If you don't know anything and any truth claim is a lie, why do you keep telling us what is true?

And your ideas are really rather complicated: iow there are many, many implicit and explicit truths being asserted by you in this thread.
Why is anything happening at all? The answer is because it is, everything that can be spoken about has to be known before it can be talked about.

But who is making life happen as it is happening and being spoken about?

No one is making life happen are they? Life is just happening including discussions about what it true and not true, what is real and not real.

There is nothing complicated about the fact that life is just happening and that no thing known as I or you is making this life happen.
And that whatever is known to be happening is inseparable from the life happening.



Who knows any thing at all?

Who is reading these words?

Who is perceiving these words to mean anything at all?

Who invented every word? including ''truth'' or ''lie''

Seems like in life it just so happened to evolve a human story teller - believe it or not,this story telling is what life is doing right now.

Behind every story written and heard is silence. And from that very silence comes every human constructed story.

And the most important realisation / discovery to make here, is that life is only ever one unitary movement happening now, in the stillness of nowhere and everywhere all at once. And that the past and future is illusory.

What can be conceived of must have always existed. Simply because nothing can be conceived of nothingness. Therefore there is no such thing as nonduality because it's not a thing, it is no thing being everything. It's one without a second.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Even the story about the big-bang implies you were present even at that event because the whole idea has been created by the mind.

Ultimately you are everything and everything is you. And at the same time, nothing is you and you are nothing.

Nothing ever moved. Everything is just changing from one state to another, from a stateless state to a state to stateless state. Only the mind is moving not you. The mind moves, you stay put, for you are not the mind - you are the empty field of awareness in which it's movements appear.

You are the knowing of the mind, but not that which is known. You cannot experience yourself as a known objective thing, because that which is known knows nothing.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

Dontaskme wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 11:11 am
Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 10:56 am
All through the thread you are telling what is real and what is not real. Sometimes you are telling us why these things that you are saying are true. While at the same time saying no one knows anything and there are no truths.

This is very cake and eat it too.

If you don't know anything and any truth claim is a lie, why do you keep telling us what is true?

And your ideas are really rather complicated: iow there are many, many implicit and explicit truths being asserted by you in this thread.
Why is anything happening at all? The answer is because it is, everything that can be spoken about has to be known before it can be talked about.

But who is making life happen as it is happening and being spoken about?

No one is making life happen are they? Life is just happening including discussions about what it true and not true, what is real and not real.

There is nothing complicated about the fact that life is just happening and that no thing known as I or you is making this life happen.
And that whatever is known to be happening is inseparable from the life happening.



Who knows any thing at all?

Who is reading these words?

Who is perceiving these words to mean anything at all?

Who invented every word? including ''truth'' or ''lie''

Seems like in life it just so happened to evolve a human story teller - believe it or not,this story telling is what life is doing right now.

Behind every story written and heard is silence. And from that very silence comes every human constructed story.

And the most important realisation / discovery to make here, is that life is only ever one unitary movement happening now, in the stillness of nowhere and everywhere all at once. And that the past and future is illusory.

What can be conceived of must have always existed. Simply because nothing can be conceived of nothingness. Therefore there is no such thing as nonduality because it's not a thing, it is no thing being everything. It's one without a second.
Well, you've given me more things that you think are true, but you didn't answer the questions I asked.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Iwannaplato »

Dontaskme wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 11:23 am Even the story about the big-bang implies you were present even at that event because the whole idea has been created by the mind.

Ultimately you are everything and everything is you. And at the same time, nothing is you and you are nothing.

Nothing ever moved. Everything is just changing from one state to another, from a stateless state to a state to stateless state. Only the mind is moving not you. The mind moves, you stay put, for you are not the mind - you are the empty field of awareness in which it's movements appear.

You are the knowing of the mind, but not that which is known. You cannot experience yourself as a known objective thing, because that which is known knows nothing.
And more truths. Despite no one knowing anything and there being no truths, you keep telling us truths.
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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:18 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:25 pm If you want to have a nondual discussion with me...
Nope. I don't. Not even a bit.
No thought is true, but your presence that notices each thought is.

Hold your thoughts IC, because without them you have no way of knowing there is a you, or us, or I, or me, or them, or they, or any thing for that matter. And you will know these thoughts as transitory appearances within presence that is permanent and unchanging, and has to be for any life form to come into existence at all. And the fact that existence is an experience means it cannot ever not exist. In other words, you are NEVER NOT HERE.

Immediate presence cannot be touched by thought. Nor can immediate presence be erased by thought. Presence is primary and fundamental, it has to exist before consciousness exists, and consciousness which is just another word for (knowing) cannot exist without this immediate presence.

This immediate presence without an object is the true you. It's the elephant in the living room, that the mind ignores, because the mind can only refer to itself as a concept, so it is only the mind that is creating the sense of 'personal self' And this sense of self is a self-referential, self-sustaining automatic feedback loop upon only itself. While the true you ''Pure Awareness'' looks on in complete detachment, untouched, unphased, pristine and spotless.


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Re: A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being.

Post by Dontaskme »

Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 11:44 am And more truths. Despite no one knowing anything and there being no truths, you keep telling us truths.
Yes that's right. No thing is claiming to know truths or lies.

These claims are apparently happening, and there is absolutely no thing that can be known that is making this happening happen.
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