Ask a Question
or
Create a Poll
  1. Home /
  2. macdjug-Paxvobiscum's Profile
macdjug-Paxvobiscum's avatar

macdjug-Paxvobiscum's Profile

Add as friend Send a message

Subscribe via RSS:
Questions | Answers

macdjug-Paxvobiscum's Questions
macdjug-Paxvobiscum's Answers

Achievement Level.

4,087 Sage

Leaderboards »

Friends.

See All 23 Friends

About. Details about macdjug-Paxvobiscum.

Question Answer
Question Answer
Display name: macdjug-Paxvobiscum
Gender: not provided
Location:
Website:
Date joined: October 31st, 2007
Last seen: September 22nd, 2011
About me: web counterDownload a free hit counter here.

Underneath my superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self -- if you become aware of it -- the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears -- now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown -- and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.

My Ego's place

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is
really an illusion. What we really are is, first of all, the whole of our body. And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Obviously a body requires air, and the air must be within a certain temperature range. The body also requires certain kinds of nutrition. So in order to occur the body must be on a mild and nutritive planet with just enough oxygen in the atmosphere spinning regularly around in a harmonious and rhythmical way near a certain kind of warm star.
That arrangement is just as essential to the existence of my body as my heart, my lungs, and my brain. So to describe myself in a scientific way, I must also describe my surroundings, which is a clumsy way getting around to the realization that you are the entire universe. However we do not normally feel that way because we have constructed in thought an abstract idea of our self.



WHO IS THIS GOD PEOPLE TALK OF?

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. When we look through our telescopes and microscopes, or when we just look at nature, we have a problem. Somehow the idea of God we get from the holy scriptures doesn't seem to fit the world around us, just as you wouldn't ascribe a composition by the Beatles to The Stones. The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. It's hard to conceive of the author of one as the author of the other.

WHAT IS FAITH?

Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOMETHING AND NOTHING?

The idea of nothing has bugged people for centuries, especially in the Western world.We have a saying in Latin, Ex nihilo nuhil fit, which means "out of nothing comes nothing." It has occurred to me that this is a fallacy of tremendous proportions. It lies at the root of all our common sense, not only in the West, but in many parts of the East as well. It manifests in a kind of terror of nothing, a put-down on nothing, and a put-down on everything associated with nothing, such as sleep, passivity, rest, and even the feminine principles. But to me nothing -- the negative, the empty -- is exceedingly powerful. I would say, on the contrary, you can't have something without nothing. Image nothing but space, going on and on, with nothing in it forever. But there you are imagining it, and you are something in it. The whole idea of there being only space, and nothing else at all is not only inconceivable but perfectly meaningless, because we always know what we mean by contrast.

Feedback. Answers and comments on macdjug-Paxvobiscum's activity.

See All

Activity. See macdjug-Paxvobiscum's recent Answerbag submissions.

Show:
All
Questions
Answers
Comments
See more of macdjug-Paxvobiscum's activity

Answerbag

a Demand Media company