Imagine no religion … or a religion where there is no presumption of a single ultimate goal.
There would be:
I propose that we are always perfect. Perfect and prefectly situated. Seeming imperfection is always the result of erroneous assumption as to who we are and what we are about. After all we are part of God. We are God in that sense. So how could it be otherwise?
Consider for a moment the case of Dorothy, the sweet and innocent young girl who gets lost in a storm, survives miraculously … only to be pursued by a nightmarish green skinned woman and an army of flying monkeys … wait a minute, isn’t that a film? …
Continue readingI propose that death, and for that matter birth, old age and disease as well (sometimes dubbed the fourfold miseries of material existence) are there to serve us. They are there in support of our purpose. Indeed they are necessary to our purpose.
But how? And do they really need to be so extreme and harsh? I propose they are actually no more or less graphic than necessary, in fact just dramatic enough to make entirely believable the notion that we are mortal/temporary, limited … and so on. …
Continue readingHaiti Earthquake, Jan 12th 2010 – if God loves us, and is in control … how can one reconcile that idea with the horror and tragedy of such a huge scale natural disaster?
OK … everyone still has an individual experience of death/loss of loved ones, as in the normal course of life. And perhaps those who lose their life are not particularly aware that they are dying as part of a mass loss of life. …
Continue readingKarma, understood as reward/punishment, is a concept that seems to fly in the face of the oneness aspect of the jiva (individual soul) and God (the source). In other words, why would God punish Himself? Perhaps if it is understood more in terms of our creation of a backdrop for us to perfectly experience a specific chosen emotion, then that would fit much better with the idea of our emotional experience being part of the completeness of God. …
Continue readingIt is not so much that God is getting something that He wants from what is going on here in the material world, but more that He is simply manifesting something He is: the Supreme Enjoyer. His supreme enjoyment includes ‘enjoyment’ of the myriad of pleasures, including those ghastly and horrific, facilitated by self-ignorance in the material world. Without them His enjoyment would not be complete! …
Continue readingThe seeming horror of what goes on in the material world, for example birth and death/one species needing to eat the body of another simply to survive, is best understood in terms of our oneness with God, rather than from the standpoint of our separateness from God. Otherwise, no amount of philosophical rangling can produce and explanation that believably preserves the notion that God is both benevolent and in control. …
Continue readingDeath is a fatal car crash, but we walk away without a scratch. Imagine our surprise as we view the wreck – the mangled remains – how did we survive?
I propose that our body is like our car. A vehicle for the soul if you will.
Bhagavad-gītā chapter 2 verse 23 states
… Continue readingThe soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
We all enjoy reading a good book. A book with a well-conceived plot, rounded characters that we can relate to and empathise with, an eventual triumph againts all odds of the protagonist, and so on. And with a good book we get to enjoy a huge range of emotions from the comfort and safety of our living room. And those emotions can seem every bit as instense and vital as their real-life counterparts. …
Continue readingWhat I mean by ‘real life’ is our living in ways fully consistent with who we are at the most fundemental level.
Consider a life experienced in a dream: It seems very real while asleep, but upon waking we realise it is not our real life. Even though the range of emotions experienced while sleeping are tangible, perhaps just as tangible as those experienced in our waking life (for example, we may cry and feel sorrow intensely, or feel the ecstasy of being in love), still we readily step back from our dream … which, after all, is only a dream. …
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