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SI
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Well maybe that's one reason there are different religions or religions at all: we all need to get thru this in our own way.
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SI
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i can say this with assurance for myself. Yogananda and Amma have told us about Avatars. It would be quite a doubting Thomas to continuously have no faith in their words and the experiences i have had and many many others who have taken the time to practice and follow the teachings and techniques of such Masters.
I agree you have to find what works for you. It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to disprove other thoughts that do not work for you. |
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ding dong
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If an avatar told me they were an avatar i'd get up and walk out the door.
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SI
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If an avatar told me they were an avatar i'd get up and walk out the door.
I would ask them what it means since I honestly don't know. |
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ding dong
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Doubting Thomas would've been the only one to survive Heaven's Gate.
And Thomas seems to have the most sense of the whole bunch. Thomas' gospel has some good quotes.
To be sane and rational doesn't make you some kind of extreme Cartesian skeptic. To be skeptical is healthy. One of my complaints about religion is that it seems to retard the development of critical thinking faculties. That is one charge I would lay squarely at the door of religion.
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« Last Edit: Jun 21, 2016 11:58 pm by grasshopper »
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ding dong
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If an avatar told me they were an avatar i'd get up and walk out the door.
I would ask them what it means since I honestly don't know. Do they know? |
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SI
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If an avatar told me they were an avatar i'd get up and walk out the door.
I would ask them what it means since I honestly don't know. Do they know? Depends on what they define it as I suppose. |
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mccoy
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...i think the notion that Brock was proposing was that if it is all a dream--- why come back and save some one else from it?
The unflinching pragmatist that I am, the answer is pretty simple: When at night I have a nightmare and start screaming (it happens), I'm pretty happy that my wife shakes me and wakes me up. Since this material plane is a nightmare, an Avatar like Yogananda who comes back and saves us is similar to my wife who shakes me and wakes me up from the nightmare. So there is a reason. |
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mccoy
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If an avatar told me they were an avatar i'd get up and walk out the door.
Actually, you don't know that the one affirming to be an avatar is really an avatar. Moreover, being a skeptic, you should have posed the question like this: :If an alleged avatar.... or like this: If some self-appointed avatar.... or like this: If a deluded master.... or liek this: If some guy.... Anyway, you would do the right thing to walk out of the door since a real avatar would never boast like that to anyone. |
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ding dong
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The reason your responses on the dream analogy don't satisfy me since they say that we are dream characters. You don't need to wake up a dream character. And there are not two - there is no one else for you to wake up and no you to wake up them. If there is someone else to wake up, you're still dreaming, according to advaita. Again, it would be like going to take a nap so as to wake up someone who you dreamt about the night before.
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« Last Edit: Jun 22, 2016 11:38 pm by grasshopper »
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ding dong
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We can see that when we go to sleep, and aren't dreaming, the character disappears. Oh, and the world and all the other characters along with him. This is enough to show you that you/we are a product of the mind's waking and dreaming activity.
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« Last Edit: Jun 22, 2016 11:42 pm by grasshopper »
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mccoy
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We are dream characters who are given the faculty to take life out of the dream itself. We may not know that we can take life and exit the dream. The Avatar will suggest it to us. The avatar will also give us guidelines since we don't know how to transition from dream characters to 'real persons'.
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mccoy
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We can see that when we go to sleep, and aren't dreaming, the character disappears. Oh, and the world and all the other characters along with him. This is enough to show you that you/we are a product of the mind's waking and dreaming activity.
Maybe we should differentiate our individual dreams from God's dreams. Also, does God experience the dreamless state? When there is no cosmic dream, Is he sleeping and not dreaming or just being awake? |
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