Have you ever had visions of who you were in a past life?
| Votes | Answer |
|---|
| 27 | No | | 9 | I guess I have | | 9 | That's bullcrap | | 4 | Once/Twice/All the time | | 0 | I'm having one right now |
|
| User | Comment |
|---|
| thecomic22 |
I have | Melf     |
No. | | Ephebiphobia |
Yes and no I often have obscured visions of people and places but, I not quiet sure if any of them are fromone of my past lives. | | JessicaWoman99 |
Yes I have had those visions' of some past life and who I was before | Iseult  |
No, I can't say I have. | | Enheduanna |
No; I don't believe in past lives or reincarnation. | cloudhugger  |
Yes, on a guided meditation a time or two. | romkey  |
I'm not insane... so, no. | | Maarten |
No, that's bullcrap. | | Maarten | | (reply to romkey) posted 7-Feb-2007 6:45pm |
| | RGirl |
No, but some one once told me I was a dog in my past life. | | Zang |
No. In spite of the fact that I tend to believe in reincarnation, I don't believe we are able to know our past lives. I suspect anyone who thinks otherwise is probably deluded.
"Visions"? What's that? Drug induced hallucinations? Mental illness? Something involving meditation? | | Galomorro |
Well, "Other" -- not who; more like where. | | LJD |
No | | Enigma | | posted 7-Feb-2007 10:14pm |
I don't think so. | | cabinfever | | posted 7-Feb-2007 10:56pm |
I think I have... it was pretty spooky. I had a serious case of deja vu when I went to look at the house we are buying for the first time. I kept having dreams that I was walking through it, but I'd look down and I was wearing clothes that were obviously from the 50's, and I had old lady hands. | | bill |
reincarnation is illogical | | Kristal_Rose |
Not exactly visions. Oh wait, unless deja vu of historical places you haven't visited in this life counts. Oh, wait again, I've had meditation visions of past lives.
Mostly what I have though is a reliving of life experiences by which I can put together a prior life. My first clue about past lives was at age three when I was sketching designs for remote flint strikers for gas chandalier castle lighting.
| | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 8-Feb-2007 8:34am |
While I appreciate the disclaimer there, as well as the reality of delusion probabilities, it does seem as incongruent as implied. Reincarnation is, after all, continuity of some distinct entity roughly known as a soul. Personal souls would be irrelevant if they didn't tie into personal physical and mental experience in some fashion.
Your position on recalling past lives seems to suggest that likewise, our entire set of living experiences is limited to our physical experience, imagination, and processing of those. Is that your position as well? Somehow I thought you were somewhat Hindu, which in my mind means understanding reality and personal experience to be the dream of God. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 8-Feb-2007 8:42am |
If one believes reality to exist for the sake of experience, it's quite logical, certainly more logical than going permanently to heaven or hell. It does rather depend on the existence of souls though, and while God is logical explanation of reality, the existence of souls, aside from a universal soul, is a less probable stretch. Even if it's all God, recycling raw material is more likely than rebuilding components. Of course that's based on physical patterns we see here, and basing our conception of cosmic laws of divine manifestation based on the more limited realm of products of manifestation is illogical. | | bill |
Well, if you want to mess with the definition, I guess you could try to make it work... but the idea that the same soul is reincarnated again and again doesn't fit. The math is wrong. There are more and more people (souls) in the world. So, you'd have to keep adding souls to the pool. And, most people wouldn't actually have an old soul that goes back... | | bill |
p.s. Like belief in god, reincarnation is a nice thought. It makes people feel better; feel like they are not really going to die. Death is a scary thing. We all have to grapple with it. But, reincarnation is clearly bullcrap that we just made up, just like the idea of god. If people need a crutch to cope with not existing, I guess they are welcome to it. But, I'm not going to tell them they are right. They are making crap up so they don't have to deal with reality. | | Biggles |
Nonsense. | | blondie20 |
Nope | | Samm | | posted 8-Feb-2007 10:22am |
im pretty sure no1 can have a past life... u live once and u dont come back as somthing else when u die... DUH!!! | | Galomorro |
I appreciate your views and comebacks to the naysayers. We Buddhists believe in reincarnation and karma. Millions of people all over the world do also; but so many (especially Americans) are so stubborn about this belief -- so quick to insist the believer is deluded just because THEY don't believe in it. If one can believe in some "God" out there judging everything you do; or imagine some kind of "hell," "purgatory" or "heaven" after one dies, then it seems to me far less of a stretch of the imagination to believe you existed in past lives. Isn't it also true that long ago when Christianity first became a popular religion that they also believed in reincarnation? | | Zang |
> Personal souls would
> be irrelevant if they didn't tie into personal
> physical and mental experience in some fashion.
Would they? I don't think that's necessary. In fact that is completely contrary to what I believe regarding reincarnation. I think that it is very important that we have no awareness of the specifics of our past lives. I believe that we lose all memory of past lives during the process of death and rebirth.
> Your position on recalling past lives seems to
> suggest that likewise, our entire set of living
> experiences is limited to our physical experience,
> imagination, and processing of those.
> Is that
> your position as well?
No, but I would like to think that I'm pragmatic.
> Somehow I thought you
> were somewhat Hindu, which in my mind means understanding
> reality and personal experience to be the dream
> of God.
My beliefs resemble Hinduism, but I wouldn't call myself a Hindu. I don't believe that the "dream of God" metaphor/analogy/concept/whatever is something that is consistent throughout Hindu thought. I've encountered the idea before. I wouldn't call it a foundation of Hindu belief.
| | Cain |
I've had a few dreams where I'm a black cop in the States in the 40's/50's. That's not to suggest that I was, it's just that during my dreams I've never been another person before. Made me wonder. I'm not at all convinced by the ideas about past lives, but it's a nice idea, and I'd like to think it would then mean I was going to have future lives. | gambler  |
No | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 8-Feb-2007 9:04pm |
Ah, but there are excuses for that too. One is that this planet is just one of billions that people incarnate on. Another is that time is non-linear.
The excuse I take seriously is that we are now a bunch of fractured soul wimps. Several people believe themselves to have been Jeanne D'Arc in a prior life because several were.
My belief in reincarnation though comes from experience and personal speculative interpretation, not good sounding documented theory or faith. I have experiencd a set of past life memories in various forms. I also have a first-hand memory of the resurrection, but do not claim to be a reincarnation of the messiah; that I attribute to a phenomena called the 'Akashic Records', the universal library/memory of God, accessable to all meditators. I also experience my current self to be more of a merging of souls rather than merely a multiple personality, somewhat more like a possession. This leads to the notion that souls can divide and merge. I have found people I can tap into who carry the entire history of an archetype, much like the Akashic Records, but a particular subject matter, like cupids or holocausts. This is not unlike the archetypal breakdowns of spiritual manifest story subject matter into astrology signs, houses, and planetary forces, tarot paths and kabbalistic sephiroth, angels and spirits of matters, and pan-theistic deities. In short, I believe that God formed creation by subdividing into a myriad of story creating forces - rings of angels, nature spirits, etc., and these forces mix into new formulations for remanifestation, mostly through reincarnation. Sometimes these forces can become so succinct that they form near-tangible ghosts or spirits, and at other times they keep reincarnating as individuals or dissipate/absolve back into the universal mind/soul/memory/creative-force of God.
In other words, God is a manifestion of fuzzy parallel shifting library-of-congress style soul-memory layers, of which we are instances, and which we experience in our life environment.
If one is to believe in reality as a manifestion of spirit, it seems the most fitting (logical) and comprehensively accomodating explanation for what can be observed here.
I have tried many times and have never tapped into extra-terrestrial being memories, though I have seen planets formed and seen Horus blinking around the universe like Q from Star-Trek in meditation. Therefore I simply haven't the meditation experience to support the interplanetary incarnation model.
Granted my model was influenced by documented theories, but then my belief in history (that it existed) was influenced by historians, and taken even more in faith than through observation. There are Christians that believe the world was created 5000+ years ago, replete with dinosaur artifacts, and while I find that theory preposterous, the ultimate extension of that thinking, that even one second ago, as well as all prehistory, was invented just in this moment, makes for a workable model of cosmic physics. Science has yet to prove that yesterday existed. If it did, it makes just as much sense that it still exists somewhere. In that model, the even the thoughts we had yesterday would permanently exist in that tangible yesterday time-space. What changes is that our observational consciousness (a different definition of the soul) occupies different though-time-spaces. To the extent that our soul has memory and a connection to thought, we have déja-vu and reincarnation. To the extent that our consciousness taps into universal consciousness and transcends space and being entities while connecting to personal thought, we have the Akashic Records and remote viewing. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 8-Feb-2007 9:34pm |
My fear of death, which I didn't even realize I had until then, vanquished upon my spiritual awakening. Unlike your speculations on the motivations of belief systems, I have no assurance that I will in any form persist past this life as an independent entity. Having undeniably seen however that every iota of matter is under direct immediate control by God, I have no further concerns with personal longevity because I am certain that God is all-encompassing and eternal. One could almost arrive at the same conclusion through the currently scientifically accepted theory of preservation of creation, e=mc^2, except that I believe there is a consciousness component to the equation. Evidence of this lies within the existence of our own consciousness. With any scrutiny, one realizes that consciousness is not an epiphenomenalistic matter; One purpose of meditation is to discover that we have consciousness independent of thoughts, memories, and sensory data. If consciousness were a matter of those elements, then every pocket calculator would be conscious. As is, we could computationally facsimilate every aspect of the human thought and perception experience, and still not create actual consciousness.
While I can't unvalidate your logical anti God-dogma, I think the breadth of your physics/philosphy/theism could benefit from contemplating the nature of consciousness and fitting that into your model of cosmology. It's as significant as the existence of time-space-matter, and immediately personally accessable. It's unreasonable to wholesaley condemn belief explanations when you have no encompassing belief explanation yourself. When you have an explanation for matter and consciousness, then I will take your cosmological arguments seriously. Until then I can only accept them as arguments on social psychology, where they do, imo, have some foundational merit. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Galomorro) posted 8-Feb-2007 10:00pm |
If you read my further posts in this thread, I have expanded on that. My cosmology accounts for hinduism, buddhism, taoism, and much of christianity.
What primarily distinguishes christianity from other religions is the notion of God as an external (from creation) independent conscious creator entity. Christianity sprung from judaism which actually had roots in pantheism, nature spirits. To this day, they believe pure souls purify local matter. Thou shalt have no OTHER god speaks of this pantheism. If you read the dead-sea scrolls, written by folks Jesus hung out with, you find many passages of God manifest as the orchestrated workings of nature. I suspect that Jesus spoke of God in tangible objective metaphors because he would otherwise be ineffective as a teacher amongst so many people who can not think in the subjective abstract. His interpreters took notions like 'father' too literally.
I don't know that early pre-christians particularly believed in reincarnation. More likely, they believed in some hybrid of my explanation above of soul archetypes, but with far more emphasis instead on 'ancestors'. In my period of Nichiren Buddhism, I experienced these ancestors as a posessing force, capable of physically reading my foreign Sutra chants while my own personal spirit was free to socially mingle with those of other chanters in the congregation. I should have listed ancestors amongst the layers of archetypal aggregate soul entities which I believe exist.
Westerners are founded in materialism. It's easier that way. And while that may entail the loss of comprehensive breadth of understanding, at least it amplifies the tactile depth of a particular understanding that this physical universe is best suited for. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 8-Feb-2007 10:12pm |
Hinduism is undeniably vast and diverse. I believe in a mystical core predominant in the 7th c., and yet a similar mystical core exists in most major faiths, to which the mainstream is generally oblivious.
If I understand you correctly, incarnations are like books being read by over-souls. If so, then where we significantly part in our understandings is that I consider physical reality (a hologram of sorts, if you will), to be the primary occupation of God self-experience, and not some separate parallel non-tangible plane where souls do their own thing betwen lives or in parallel with them.
If I don't understand you, then I still don't get why individual souls and individual incarnations should exist, and what is the connection between them. | | Galomorro |
Thanks for all this! | | bill |
Like the Easter Bunny, I get along just fine without believing in God, reincarnation, etc. I think it's in mankind's nature to try to explain things. But, that doesn't make them true. From a certain perspective, I'm limiting myself, but I don't see it that way. They way I see it, I'm not deceiving myself. There are a lot of things about existence that we'll never really know, especially in this lifetime But, they also don't matter that much day-to-day. Knowing that my time of life is all I have is enough to motivate me. The self-deception is a turn-off to me. Present it as sci-fi or fantasy and I like it, though. Just don't talk about it like it's truth, because it's not. Well, there's a very remote possibility that it's true (like the Easter Bunny), but that's not enough. | | bill |
I think I have a good imagination too. But, I wouldn't claim what I see in my head to be true. It's just creative thoughts. I think it's important to separate truth from fantasy. | | bill |
Here's a quote from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. that I liked a lot: When the music was done, I shrieked at Julian Castle, who was transfixed, too, "My God--life! Who can understand even one little bit of it?"
"Don't try," he said. "Just pretend you understand."
"That's--that's very good advice." I went limp.
Castle quoted another poem:
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand. |
| | Zang |
> Hinduism is undeniably vast and diverse.
Agreed
> I believe
> in a mystical core predominant in the 7th c.,
> and yet a similar mystical core exists in most
> major faiths, to which the mainstream is generally
> oblivious.
I'm not aware of the significance of the 7th century, but otherwise, I with you...
> If I understand you correctly, incarnations are
> like books being read by over-souls.
I don't know what you mean by that. What are "over-souls"?
> If so, then
> where we significantly part in our understandings
> is that I consider physical reality (a hologram
> of sorts, if you will), to be the primary occupation
> of God self-experience, and not some separate
> parallel non-tangible plane where souls do their
> own thing betwen lives or in parallel with them.
"Physical reality", or the "material world" if you will, is considered illusory, yes.
I'm a little confused by your insertion of the word "God" into that sentence. I'm not sure what sort of context it is supposed to have. Actually, I'm confused by the whole thing. Are you sure you meant "between lives"? "In parallel with them" is getting way off into something else. You seem to be trying to inject too many ideas in there. Let's try to keep this more or less simple and to the point, shall we?
> If I don't understand you, then I still don't
> get why individual souls and individual incarnations
> should exist, and what is the connection between
> them.
Okay, that I can work with! 
The mechanism is karma. Karma decides the nature of our rebirth; what sort of body, what sort of planet...all the initial circumstances of our material existence. Any karma that exists at death, is carried over into the new body. The cycle ends when we "wipe the slate clean".
| | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 9-Feb-2007 8:46pm |
I could make an argument for the Easter Bunny existing too, not tangibly, but as a force in the human psyche which has been manifesting as things like Jackalope postcards since the days of cave paintings. I made a sculpture of an Easter Bunny at my college where it turns out this particular crazed bunny was a recurrent subject of art students over the years. Perhaps it was the guardian spirit of bunnies whose pasture was supplanted to build the college.
You bring up a good point. Mystics typically suffer motivation problems once they find that they are one with an eternal force which is on both sides of every issue. The only cure I know of is to go back to pretending that you are short-lived and are here to pursue personal desires and serve limited perspectives on good and evil.
I find that there are many parallel universes (probably infinite) and that they are often mutully exclusive, for instances universes in which history is created in the moment vs. universes universes where the present is the product of the past. That doesn't mean one is less valid than another. Were it not for that, I'd estimate that 90% of my seems-probable beliefs are quite wrong if there were only one plane of reality. The thing about being a mystic (a requirement of being one) is to work with the unknown. You will see things with no explanation when you are willing to believe in things with no explanation. I've seen all manner of ghosts, varieties of constant mind-matter connection, and have had success in permanently changing magnetic north in my living room and a brief telekenesis incident. The latter two types of things are the most rare, being physically tangible and having no parallel explanation in the realm of science (though they did have causes I set in motion in other planes). What I'm saying is that restricting your potential field of belief to the tancgible and scientifically explainable pretty much guarantees that that is all you will get, unless you are being 'called'. If that works for you, fine. I'm not trying to sway you into a foreign understanding of reality, I'm just putting my thesis on the table. I'm not going to have any mind expanding debate with people who accept it wholesale.
Talking about it as if it's truth is a literary convenience most theoretical public lecturers employ. Spiritual frameworks are on the par with psychological frameworks, them both being based on personal interpretation of subjective observation, and the wise will always realize that truth is a relative subscription in such matters. Come to think of it, psychological frameworks make a great metaphor for parallel universes. Depending on the individual, the theories of Freud, Skinner, or Jung may be most applicable, or possibly, all of these models may pertain depending upon the current context. Likewise, the ultimate truth of the inner workings('s) of the mind are an unknown (possibly unknowable and shifting and evolving) so really, we have no 'truth' in the field of psychology. We have theories which accomodate patterns. Does that mean we should go back to the dark ages and give up on understanding patterns of the mind, or that we should apply popular templates, knowing that they are rough approximations of causative pattern at best? Spiritual experiences by mainstream people and by advanced mystics aren't absolutely random, in fact, the patterns to be found in that domain are slightly more predictable and normalized than those in the field of psychology. I can liken not seeking an understanding of the spritual to not seeking an understanding of the psychological. One can get by without doing either, or at least, in the latter case, get by oblivious that they are even subconsciously discerning and responding in accordance with pattern prediction. My view is that it's ignorance, but I don't condemn it anymore than I condemn ignorance with arts or physics, otherwise I'd have to live in Olympus. Come to think of it, even the pantheons had their specializations. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 9-Feb-2007 9:00pm |
Following that line of logic to it's inevitable conclusion, everything in your head is creative thought. You too appear be victim to a faith. You believe that there is 'a' 'truth'. Who assured you that such a thing exists? This concept which seems perfectly self-obvious to you is no more valid than the self-obviousness of God is to many other people out there. Like those who's natural inclination is to believe in God, you pursue a more refined understanding of your faith, and would be paralyzed if you didn't gamble on the most likely understandings, like persistence of gravity, just as most people gamble on 'Do no harm' as a means of making it through the day. My goal in this post is that you don't have a disdain for others who are essentially operating just as you, but concerning themselves with a domain you don't acknowledge. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to bill) posted 9-Feb-2007 9:15pm |
I just read that book two weeks ago. It's a favorite of mine which I had read back in high school.
That is an awesome quote. The edition I had when younger described Vonnegut's brother who gets grants to attract lightening storms to his desert laboratory. The graphic button for the metaphysics section of my website is a cats cradle. It is also a depiction of the kabbalistic tree of life, and a model for ice-nine. If you read some ancient kabbalistic texts, you will find that they are treatises on nuclear physics, introducing principles of viral algorithmic nanotech propogation for the construction of golems from inert matter.
The movie 'Insignificance', about a meeting between Einstein and Monroe (you should see it, if you haven't) was based on an early 50's play about Soliflux, which is basically that nano-golum tech I mentioned above.
As with Stephen King, who's fiction too well resembles phenomenon I've witnessed, I fear that there may be more than inspired fiction behind some of these fictional works.
I've been looking for text to set to music. I had the thought of backing up the spiritual lecturer Alan Watts, but as soon as I came up with the idea, several other musicians took to doing it. Perhaps I should write to Vonnegut for permission to record the songs of Bokonon. It would be suitable material to play at Venice Beach. | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 9-Feb-2007 9:46pm |
'God self-experience' is another basic tenent of hinduism I had thought, the overall root cosmology being 'All god, by god, for god', and maya being the mechanism of that creative experience.
By over-soul, I meant a personal soul which doesn't participate in incarnation in any way accessable to the mind of our incarnation, but resides on some higher plane.
Ok, so if I get you now, the soul 'transforms' into (seemingly) tangible incarnations, and has long term experience/learning goals or flow, but this soul forgets it's encompassing experience during incarnations, and only recalls the overview between lives where it chooses new incarnations to balance it's composite big-picture karma.
My own experience is somewhat like that, except that I may transform to that soul-awareness daily, or every couple years, where I make choices about what the incarnation of my next day or next couple years will be like. I then come back to earth, so to say, and it is much like a hologram regaining concrete solidity. I am lucky though that I have some recall of these 'inter-manifestation' soul dialogues. The last major dialogue confluence of soul and persona was a decision to become a musician, and probably has much to do with why my music from the very start came only top-down through trance states, and it has taken years for my bottom-up ego-based constructive approach to musicianship to catch up.
It took about three years after my spiritual awakening to discover this manner of operation. As a soul, I could have any life experience I wanted, but from that perspective nothing mattered. I eventually found that the trick was to create life in advance as a compromise between soul and ego, then mostly forget the dialogue and drop back down in to maya where the experience is taken seriously, and the ups and downs seem surprising, challenging, and intriguing. | | Melf | | (reply to bill) posted 10-Feb-2007 10:39am |
Well said. | | bill | | (reply to Melf) posted 10-Feb-2007 11:56am |
No, not really... it was too harsh and pissy. Someday, I'll learn to say that in a way that doesn't piss believers off. | | Melf | | (reply to bill) posted 10-Feb-2007 12:18pm |
Umm, well intentioned then  | | Zang |
I don't know where you get these ideas from. They sound rather obscure. Which of the Vedic scriptures have you read? (I know this has been covered elsewhere, but I'm too slack to look for it right now, and you may have read something since.) | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 11-Feb-2007 12:37am |
Siddha Yoga (Swami Muktananda and Guru Mayi Chidvilasananda), Upanishads, Jaideva Singh & Swami Laksman Joo's translation of the Spanda Karikas and it's original commentaries by Ksemaraja. The SpadaKarikas (or SpandaMrtam) is an extension of the SivaSutras, explained by Ahbhinavagupta, spread by Kallata, composed by Vasugupta. It extends the principles of Self as witnessing consciousness as laid out by Sankhya, Patanjala Yoga, Vedanta, into a system of dynamic interactive energy pulsation which is the source of supraphysical and physical manifestation on several planes of involvement. It's somewhat a guidebook to the angelic sorcery which lies between 'all is God' and mortal consciousness. If I were to assign the understanding an archetypal deity, I would say it's primarily in the domain of Siva and Sarasvati.
Yes, it is obscure. Roughly, it lays out in scientific systematic fashion (not unlike the kabbalistic tree-of-life) the cosmology of manifestation and our role within that process. I don't know that the vedantas even bother to describe the cosmological science of manifestation, which why I consider the SpandaKarikas to be the mystical core of Hinduism (In the same manner as I would say the kaballah remains the mystical core of Christianity, even after the Rosicrucians and such). While the SpandaKarikas is immensely more explicit, the same understanding can be reached through kaballah. It is also alluded to in the Lotus Sutras. In the bible, christ only makes reference to the surface concepts of the Spanda Karikas, but he hung out with Dead Sea Screll authors who had a deeper understanding of an interactive God visible through man and nature, also not disimilar to the Spanda Karikas explanation of reality.
HOWEVER, my prior post had not so much to do with the theories whose text sources I describe above, but my direct experience of events and their relationships, in much the same fashion as if I were to describe to you how I chose subject matter to dream, then dreamt it. Such wouldn't be my 'idea', it would be 'experience', from which clear causative pattern is discernable. If there were a book on that fictitious example of a subject (except that it's not really fictitious either, I can indeed choose what to dream), then the book might have suggested that I can choose my dreams, but the direct experience is that it actually works in practice.
As far out as the theories of the Spanda Karikas would be to 98% of the planet, I find they explain the sidis I've had quite well. I am well familiar with a dozen or so new age lecturers, starting with Alan Watts, who all seem to be drawing upon the same understanding. I doubt any of them though have read the Spanda Karikas. rather, I expect that they had been exposed to the concepts from their peers and influences, adopt their peers concepts for trial examination, and lecture on what they've directly experienced to be a workable practice. They, along with myself, evolve. After a few years you hear them reporting on spiritual dead-ends, the pitfalls of samadhi, how to handle post-enlightenment, what to do as an ex-bodhisattva... The lecturers I listen to range from rabbis to buddhists and sufis, but they all have pretty much the same evolving material to report as the years pass by.
These esoteric theories are necessarily far out because they are avenues out of our karma, which is the whole point of maya/creation in the first place. It's much like sailing around the world to go home. This is where it all happens, whethar one understands it or not. Understanding it often just causes jadedness or tempts one into the severe karma of sorcerors, which is why I generally don't teach much anymore except where one is ripe for knowledge, or might do less harm to themselves and others with a bit more self empowerment and understanding.
~
On another subject, I've discovered an exciting new venue, online music collaboration. I would have created such a website myself, but fortunately I found they already exist and I am spared that effort.
~
Oh, I should mention one last most significant point about the Spanda Karikas, and that is that it amounts to a conversation with God. Once you latch in to it, usually through a spontaneous event called a 'Kundalini Awakening', you don't need further texts or gurus. Your guru is right in front of your face wherever you are, to discuss your new experience lessons with. With that sort of interactivity, it's a magnatude or two above any rate of learning one could achieve through non-supernatural sources. | | RGirl | | (reply to bill) posted 11-Feb-2007 7:07pm |
Well, reality can really bite so I'm for making crap up. This isn't one of my made up crap, but I have my share of it. | | bill | | (reply to RGirl) posted 11-Feb-2007 8:51pm |
I like to make stuff up too, but I also try to keep that separate from reality... fantasy is fun, but not something to live by, imho | | Zang |
Yeah, that's pretty obscure stuff alright. I'm vaguely familiar with Siddha Yoga, one of my buddies was into it years ago. And I'm familiar with other kinds of Tantra. I'm certainly familiar with the Upanishads, that's pretty much essential. I guess I've always been more of a Vaishnava, although I have some Saivaite tendencies.
I must confess that I'm more than just a little bit dubious about acolytes finding answers through unassisted direct experience. That's completely contrary to my understanding of the role of the guru.
So what's this about a music collaboration website? Sounds interesting! Can you post a link? | | RGirl | | (reply to bill) posted 12-Feb-2007 12:02am |
I wouldn't say live by but live IN. Yes, I know fantasy from reality, at least when everything is working properly. I know what you are saying. It is so easy for some one to say 'I believe it so that makes it real.' which is it false, or not? I think therefore I am? Or not? | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 12-Feb-2007 12:32am |
Christ was a typical guru. His name in hebrew in parts means door or window, as well as the trinity of manifestation. Like other guru's his job was to get people listening, to become 'the quick', rather than the dead. He explains in the bible that his disciples need not worry what they will preach, that the words will come to them, and that they will create a field within the Spanda in which each person will hear as is meant for their own ears.
Indeed, with all of these rabbis and sufis and such lecturing, I can tell that they are listening, but that the Spanda is present for them through slightly differing mechanisms, and teaches each of them slightly different understandings. This makes just as much sense to me as college professors teaching different subjects through different means. It also makes sense to me if one understands the entirety of God and creation to be an evolving pastime, rather than a single pattern of chaos or purpose with a single ultimate truth to be found within it.
If one merely followed established teachings, there wouldn't be new creation happening. One of the most recent lectures I've heard, Carolyn Myss on 'The power of creation' explains many pitfalls and misunderstandings that the new-age community has gone through. Her main point is that co-creation is CO-creation, not unguided manifestion of selfish desires. As obscure as is this stuff is to most people, it's actually being transmitted 12 hrs/wk in plain english on LA,CA's most powerful radio station in the middle of the night, and has been for the past 30 years. You could listen to it yourself too. Go to kpfk.org and download Roy of Hollywood's 'What's happening?' shows from Monday and Thursday nights. (It's good material to directly channel from too though, if one isn't limited to plain english).
Indeed, finding answers through direct experience can lead to HUGE mistakes. I've eventually come to understand that even that is part of our intended experience here; that god accomodates obliviously falling angels wihin the scope of eternity. Someone has to create all the things that go wrong here, and god evades the blame (I'm anthropomorphising there) by letting us participate in that at every level. This goes on whethar we are conscious of it or not, so being conscious participants in it is merely an intrigue, another layer of maya, which may suit the evolution of our presonal ego dharma maya. We create nothing, we create everything, we are somewhere inbetween; All these configurations are simultaneously true, and the apparent truth simply depends on what plane our consciousness resides in at the moment.
I've had Tantric experiences. I can't begin to claim familiarity with it's particular purported scope, but the primary thing I got (through direct experience) is that it's a means for tapping into the Akashic Records. Another spiritual counselor I met had almost the identical experience with it. I tapped into the entire archetypal history (real and imaginary) of sex back to Eve, while he had tapped into the entire archetypal history of death. In both our cases, we were flooded with many 1000's of intense soul 'memories' over the course of a few hours.
~~~
Here is the main page of that collaborative forum: http://www.openmusicfactory.com/
and the forum page where things really happen (aside from the audio file arrchiving): http://www.openmusicfactory.com/forum/
I was wondering if you did such stuff already.
The group there told me 'welcome to the family'. If you follow member Jeff Smiths links at his own site, I get the idea that much larger collaborative sites exist, but a small group suits me fine to start with, even if it's a bit too soulless cool jazz for my tastes there. They seem to be open minded.
All I've done so far is post text in the forum. I start school tomorrow, and am not sure if I will have a 6 hour day today, or have a 30 day today/tomorrow, in which case I might finally add some tracks to projects there tonight.
It'd be cool to find you there to collaborate with. If you find some other collab site instead, report back on that, if you could. | | Zang |
Okay | | Kristal_Rose | | (reply to Zang) posted 13-Feb-2007 6:57am |
Someone just signed up at OMF with a login name starting with 'B'. Was that you?
The 30 hour day thing didn't work out well. I stayed up recording 4 instrument layers to a song they considered done ot OMF, but didn't make it out to my first vocals class. | | Zang |
I haven't checked it out yet. |
If you'd like to vote and/or comment on this survey, please Sign On.
Link this survey: http://surveycentral.org/survey/26297.html
Hits: 1 today (598 in the last 30 days)
Google Search:
|
