Are we God?
Many religions posit that God created the universe and then claim to have exclusive revelations as to what He expects of us. However, it seems to me that the creator-created dichotomy is artificial and even if we posit that God created it all, it is obvious that the one thing He could not have created would be life, for the simple reason that God is always alive - a dead God is no God. Creation could have started only with life. If there was no life, there would have been no creation. If life ends, then it ought to have had a beginning. So if there was a time when there was no life, life would never have come about. Thus, we can safely say that life is eternal, without beginning and end. And since we have life in us, we can logically say that we have the eternal within us. Hence, when we die, life within us does not die. It will be interesting to note that there are religions which posit that we are not the body that dies, but we are the very life that does not die. As there cannot be two eternals, eternal life is eternal God.Therefore, at least according to certain religions, we are God.
Many religions posit that God created the universe and then claim to have exclusive revelations as to what He expects of us. However, it seems to me that the creator-created dichotomy is artificial and even if we posit that God created it all, it is obvious that the one thing He could not have created would be life, for the simple reason that God is always alive - a dead God is no God. Creation could have started only with life. If there was no life, there would have been no creation. If life ends, then it ought to have had a beginning. So if there was a time when there was no life, life would never have come about. Thus, we can safely say that life is eternal, without beginning and end. And since we have life in us, we can logically say that we have the eternal within us. Hence, when we die, life within us does not die. It will be interesting to note that there are religions which posit that we are not the body that dies, but we are the very life that does not die. As there cannot be two eternals, eternal life is eternal God.Therefore, at least according to certain religions, we are God.
I dont know what religions your talking about but I absolutely support the assertions.Isnt it great? Life is eternal. Therefore we must have always been.Good post.Peace
Super Universe
If many religions claim revelation from God then it's not all that exclusive, is it?We do have eternal life within us but that does not necessarily mean that it is us. Think of a vehicle moving through a city, at any time the driver can stop the car and get out. We are God, we just forgot.
Well, one might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment on its validity. My thinking is, why limit the reality of self to the relatively trivial god concepts of theists? Frankly speaking, I do not feel a need to hem reality in by placing artificial boundaries on Reality. I am far more interested in realms of actuality that are rather beyond the kindergarten theology of man. My assertion is that when the human animal divests itself of its relatively meaningless god-concepts, after awhile, it might actually begin to appreciate the essence of what it is and how that forms the reality they experience.
tomspug
You are putting God in the same boat that we are. If God is infinite, what is life to him? He wouldn't be dead or alive. Those are human conditions which you are trying to project on God. The whole concept of God is that he is, has been, and always will be.
You are putting God in the same boat that we are. If God is infinite, what is life to him? He wouldn't be dead or alive. Those are human conditions which you are trying to project on God. The whole concept of God is that he is, has been, and always will be.
harleydavidson
to k venupogal...hi ,read your 11/07 post,there are some statements you made I don't understand. You say" god cld not have created life because he is alive",,somewhere the sense of that doesn't make sense!!lol. I look fwd to your explanation. Now you can say life is eternal,in a general way ,but specifically individual lives are not necessarily eternal,,people die ,now if god wanted to do something to make a life eternal he certainly cld [and does]. Our lives are not eternal as they had a beginning,that which is eternal has no beginning,nor does it have an end ,webster sez that eternal means without beginning or end......harley85
What I meant when saying, "God could not have created life because He is alive" is that there could not have been any time when God did not have life, therefore there was no need for Him to create it. About your point of God making a life eternal, that's not necessary because life is already eternal. What dies when we die is our body. "We are not the body" is an ancient teaching which comes to this conclusion by seeing that even if we, for instance, loose our hands or legs we remain ourselves because what was lost was "my hands", not me. Who is this who is saying "my". This of course is the "I". Who then is the "I"? Not the body, which only belongs to the "I" and is not the "I". Thus goes the trail to the discovery that I am God, where God is posited as the ultimate or the substratum of everything. And this God is life eternal, total consciousness, absolute bliss and all that.
Popeyesays
God is the Creator, I( am not the Creator. Instead I am a Creature. God is not a Creature.So, am I God? No.Regards,Scott
Willamena
Quote:
Originally Posted by Popeyesays
God is the Creator, I( am not the Creator. Instead I am a Creature. God is not a Creature.So, am I God? No.Regards,Scott
No offense, but I find much more comfort in the idea that I am co-creator, with me and God both creation. For me, at the moment, there could not be a "God" in any other context.
And I find comfort in the fact that God created me for a purpose, and I am a loved creature. I don't need to "be" God.Also, I think that imagining that I am a "co-God" to be absolutely ridiculous and a delusion of vast proportion.No offense intended, of course. I hope none is taken.Regards,Scott
I came across the following poem by Emily Bronte (of Wuthering Heights fame) who penned it a few months before her death. I thought I would share it with readers here.
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou–thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
I particularly like that bit. Frubals. Unfortunately i must spread around some more so take a raincheck
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........upon direct realization of which comes Enlightenment.
I think you've put the whole thesis even better.
I think it is a bright word expressing the ultimate knowing, the final awakening.
I somehow don't think that the christians are God either.So if we are all the "re-membering" of God...all of the one fabric that IS in fact God...then the athiests should cease to exist as reflected by their own belief...and christians?...if they embrace the truth...they are thrown into hell by the power of their own beliefs.It is my belief that we all eventually get what we believe.(at the very least we SEE/or don't see what we believe)So who knows.Maybe that's just me?Because it's what I believe?
I agree. God did not create life. All life has existed in some from for eternity. However I wouldn't say we are God. But rather we are gods, baby ones, not yet developed into the full version.
__________________
"I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'M A HUMAN BEING GOD DAMNIT, MY LIFE HAS VALUE!'"
--Howard Beale
__________________
"I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'M A HUMAN BEING GOD DAMNIT, MY LIFE HAS VALUE!'"
--Howard Beale
Quote:
autonomous1one1
Greetings Willamena. Let me provide an explanation 'from below' - that is, within the conventional subject-object view of the world. Enlightenment is a breakthrough awakening where the being realizes identity with the Source of all being. Many of my posts in RF have used this type of description but perhaps elaboration would help clarify.Many years ago when studying this very breakthrough experience, I wrote a short composition in which various expressions of the experience were written down. The composition was titled "A State of Being." I dug up some of that ancient writing and here is an extract of many of the expressions captured from the works of different individuals:"The ‘State’ as used herein is the State of Being in which the human becomes united with God through the realization of oneness with God. The i, or finite human being, realizes (or becomes) the I, the infinite being; i and Thou become the i-Thou or the ego and Thou become the ego-Thou; we are merged with the Supreme, sunken into it and one with it in which the Supreme is to be known only as one with ourselves, center coinciding with center; beholder and Beheld become one; in our self-seeing There, the self is seen as belonging to that order, or rather we are merged into that self in us which has the quality of that order and knowing of the self is restored to its purity; being becomes united with the Transcendent of being; one with the Whole or union with the One; union of the mind with the whole of nature; the human who lives in the ideal identifies himself with what is spiritual in all spirits, the Absolute Spirit; being united with Being-itself; thought realizing itself as part of the Absolute; the human in unity with the Ground-of-being; one with that above subject-object structure in which the human ‘subject’ and its ‘object’ become one above subjectivity and objectivity; the unity of being with the Word; one with the unconditional; one with the eternal; the finite self is lost in the infinite in which the Self is found; existence is united with essence; union with the ultimate; realization of oneness of the fundamental in man with the most Fundamental and the fundamental in all ‘else’; the human realizes one with the universal substance, the ultimate, the identity, of spirit and nature, the universe, the cosmic whole, the value creating process, the progressive integration, the absolute spirit, and the cosmic person; the achievement of Nirvana or reunion with Brahma or the state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual existence and by the absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit; and lastly, entering the Kingdom of God. All of these, in my opinion, are expressions of different realizations or the State or awareness of the possibility of the State. These expressions come from the few throughout the ages who have either realized the State or nearly done so; some more perfectly in the State than others. .....These statements are expressions ‘from below’; that is, from the finite which unites with something greater than itself. Such statements ‘from below’ can be misleading in that they imply separateness, but they are necessarily that way from the human with ‘at first’ awareness of the State or when conveyance is attempted to a human not in the State. However, once union is realized fully these expressions could very well be written or understood in another fashion ‘from above’. Thus, as examples, one might express the State as: in man the absolute rises to self-consciousness; the Fundamental through its created manifestation recognizes itself in that manifestation; and God reunites with himself and becomes all in all. ..... " In RF I might write something like 'the One overcomes differentiation within to reunite through human consciousness' or as Zenzero suggests, 'seer and that seen merge.' Hope these many ways of describing an experience that I think of as Enlightenment will add to the clarity rather than the confusion.
What you've said is it. Moreover, this whole process of getting into our essence (by bringing the restless mind into a state of restfulness) is not just about getting a new kind of thrilling experience. It is more about continuing a seemingly normal, calm and ordinary life in the most blissful of manner, unbeknownst to anyone, except when we chose to express ourselves for no particular reason. In such a living, the like-dislike dichotomy drops off - you simply dance through the different facets of life's possibilities in sheer bliss. In other words, this whole pursuit of our inner life is not merely an academic adventure. It is a life-renewing journey. To such a person what is day to others is night to him and what is night to the others is day to him.
