Josh Young

A close friend of mine is very much into chaos magick. If you like you can PM me and arrange to ask him more about it.

To make things far two simple: There are those who think they know things and there are those who know they don't

It is true, this has not been very productive. If someone were enlightened how would they act? How would they treat others? What would they say and how would they say it? Would they argue? Would they judge others? Why must sharing information and opinions be a contest of right and wrong? Why must there be conflict with difference of opinion? Everyone here is representing who they are, how they think etc. Let the truth of this be the single truth we can all agree to.

Maybe, I don't know. I have read and own the following: The Diamond sutra. The Shurangama sutra The Dhammapada and the Teachings of Buddha put out by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai. I have also read and own many vedic texts. ralis, You have keen insight in my opinion. LostMonk, I hope I did not actually claim I follow Buddhas teachings. I love them very much, Thanks for the link. I do not follow, so i follow no teaching.

One of the only things i feel comfortable saying I know; is that what I believe is relative and subject to change, which is why I believe that I cannot know anything, but only have belief after all. I think it would be neat to see Alex take ayahuasca in a spiritual setting. That dream stuff reminds me of something else... I had insomnia very strongly as a child, it went away as a teen, and it came back some time ago. It is not like I can't get to sleep now though, it is like I need less sleep now about 6 hours.

Good point. I should have written that I do not behave out of fear of karmic punishment. For example I don't lie because it makes things so much more simple to be truthful. I don't steal because it does not serve my purposes and I like being trustworthy. I can see this as a type of karma as you point out. In the context of the topic though it was implied that some people behave our of fear of the Karmic results, as opposed to doing things for their own sake. Not stealing because you don't like stealing feels better than not stealing because of fear of getting caught. Those who do good out of desire of reward, are not doing good at all. You can't chase after Bhakti. I do not believe in action---> result as many do. What I do believe is that all actions are results and all results are actions. There is no fundamental difference between cause and effect, other than semantics.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090709/ap_on_...ed_diet___aging I note that many spiritual traditions regulate diet and intake, I believe that we now have rather credible proof of the positive impact of this upon the organism.

Don't worry I am aware of the differences between geometric dimensions (mathematical dimensions) and physical dimensions (timespace), but thank you for bringing that up. I don't dream much at all anymore. I have not dreamed for almost a year that I can remember. The last dreams I had, which are few(3-5) over the last years(5), were all lucid though. But honestly I have never really dreamed much, so I do not think it has anything to do with Hun and Po in my case. It is just the way I am still I have dreamed much less as an adult than when I was a child. Now I have some other strange thing happening. I have dreams that never occur. For example I had a dream that my taiji teacher came back to my town, in the dream he came back because there was no economic opportunity. The funny thing is, I remember the dream, but never had it. It just appeared in an instant, it was not at all related to sleep, one moment it was not there, then it was. And the part that interests me is when i spoke to him on the phone, and he told me he was moving back. I told him of my "dream" and it was totally accurate. I know nothing about what you spoke of about Hun, Po and Shen. So do not know how this relates to my experiences. It sounds interesting. I define awake and dream in a rather scientific way. Wakefulness relates to exogenous sources of sensory information, dreaming relates to endogenous sources of sensory information, ergo memory. I have no belief in these things: souls and subtle energy bodies and subtle energy realms. I have no belief against them either. I have a different view of the action of DMT than you do.

mikaelz, should I presume to tell you what you do and do not understand? You say there is a path and a method, but Buddha said there was not. His teachings make perfect sense to me, yours do not. I wish you clarity and insight. I may be wrong about the teachings of Buddha, however I may be right. I cannot know and do not care. What I have found in the teachings changed my life profoundly for the better. Pero, I disagree with you about the topic. I do not "behave" out of fear of Karma. I behave because of the direct benefit upon my life. I do not mean to tell people they are wrong, merely to share what I understand, which is a view that is the subject of misunderstanding in this thread. That is to say that I have yet to see a response that addresses what I said and believe. I said for example that i do not believe in an afterlife. This does not mean that I believe there is not an afterlife, which is a different belief. When asked what happens when we die, i replied that i do not presume to know. And yet people are saying that I said there is no afterlife. At this pace I am wasting my time sharing my beliefs, because they are not being considered. That is redefining Hinduism. I have yet to see any nihilism anywhere on this forum. If there is no pre-life or after-life then how does that entail that consciousness is a byproduct of the brain? Consciousness could be a fundamental part of the universe and there could still be no pre and post life existence. It does not follow that killing self is a good option. Nor does it resemble the enlightenment I speak of.

My advice is do it. Find a teacher who can do what you want to learn, and make sure that at least some the students of the teacher can do this too. Beware teachers whose students never seem to excel the teacher in skill. A sign of a good teacher and system is that each generation improves in skill over the last. My other advice is dedicate yourself to it, you will get out of it what you put into it. There are many style of taiji, most are great if you practice diligently. Most are worthless if you do not practice diligently. It must be a lifestyle, not a hobby.

His "contacts" are rather consistent with those reported in the use of DMT, which frequently results in "contact", time dilation experiences, strange colors, visions and scenes etc. I do not think he is a liar, but I think his experiences may not be what he thinks they are. I like his good intentions about global reformation. I do not see him as having any scientific knowledge that would have come from a non human source, much of what he says, like about black holes being holes, seem based on common misunderstandings that few would be able to catch, including him, simply because most people have little exposure to astrophysics and a great deal of exposure to science fiction. His "reincarnation" does not appear to include birth as animals or any other species. He says people are a unique GMO species and yet he says that their souls are very ancient. There is an inconsistency with this that may be sublte but is profound in its implication about his claims. I do not think he is lying about his experiences, but given that he has no new information in any scientific sense then I suspect he is not the real deal. That he predicted great calamity between July and August 2001 that did not happen, when he was told about it by aliens with supposedly amazing technology, makes me suspect he is not in contact with aliens who can make accurate predictions of the future. That his contact experiences are extremely close to many DMT experiences reported in and outside of studies, and that DMT can occur naturally in the human brain, leads me to wonder if his experiences are not chemical in nature. I have had some interesting episodes as a kid where I thought I was being abducted, in many of them I was in the back of a vehicle on a military base with those orange sodium vapor lights. This all happened when I was asleep, but often as I was tired I would hear strange noises that i have never understood and for a time I thought perhaps this was an alien craft. In my dreams I can fly. I have lucid dreams rather often you see. The experiences I have had flying in dreams are very real, I have been lost above city lights many times, it is hard to navigate actually. But does this mean I can fly? What I mean is that despite very convincing experiences of flight, I have no reason to believe that i have flown in reality. If my dream states can seen real, then perhaps so can those of others. Who am I to know that he is or is not real? I do not and cannot know, however I do not get the feeling he is real and the details of the situation do nothing to convince me.

Correct, not both. Though our information has developed a great deal, humans have changed little as long as we know them(we) to have existed. We are still animals in every sense. No behavior that we have is lacking in a correlate behavior in other species. Our bodies have not developed either and are the same as they were for as long as we know we have existed. But then nature is not goal oriented, it cannot improve anything in general, just in a contextual relationship. So there is no way for us to develop, however we are able to develop our cultured information and pass it along.

It is not we who are developed, but our information has.

Sir, you presume to know what I have or have not thought deeply of. Having read your comment, that you think using a standard definition of Hindu is joking, then I must question your willingness to think deeply yourself on this matter. For example, hindu religions vary and are not one. You say "one has vedas" and yet anyone who has looked briefly into Hinduism knows it is not "one" but many. Because eternity is not an infinite time line, it is known through the infinite nature of mind. Where in the teachings of Buddha does he mention things lasting forever? Where do you get the impression that I dismiss the true nature of mind? Where in Buddhas words is it said there is something beyond the physical? Where in Buddhas words is it said that the physical exists? You have my permission to cease putting words in my mouth. You also have my permission to cease putting words in the mouth of Buddha. You must be joking. You either do not understand what I have said, or do not understand firearms. I am leaning towards the former. If suffering comes from physical existence, then even rocks suffer. Where does Buddha say that the physical exists? Where does he say that it is the cause of suffering? I have neither rejected rebirth nor Karma. That you presume I have is insightful. If you had read my posts, which i do not think you have, you would note that I included rebirth and karma in my view. Please tell me, what texts are the these in? I have a book called The Teachings of Buddha, but sadly it does not contain the teachings of Buddha, just the teachings of Buddhism. Still I offer this from it: If one carefully considers all the facts, one must be convinced that at the basis of all suffering lies the principal of craving desire, if avarice can be removed, human suffering will come to an end. That is from the section on Dependant Origination. It does not say suffering is from existence or that to exist is to suffer. But more to the point, what is to exist? Tell me: what exists? My honest opinion about your words here is not one I choose to share. You say I claim to be "all about" the teachings of Buddha, but I only said I love them. It is clear to me you have not considered my words honestly. You do not understand: what I understand. As far as what else you may or may not understand, I cannot know, for I am only a man at a keyboard and am not all knowing. Is that what you believe? A method is a formula, you are saying a formula/method exist for enlightenment and that the formula is Buddhism. I am saying that is not true, that the Buddha taught that there is no formula/method. I can quote him if that is what you need, but since I did before and you ignored it I will not do it automatically. You presume much. Who was the teacher of the Buddha? Why am I not entitled to the same? You have shown me much about yourself. I do not think continuing our conversation on this will be productive for either of us. Please forgive me, for I place greater trust in the wisdom of the teachings of Buddha, which I find insightful and coherent, than I do in your opinion or any method.

I am married and have been for 11 years. I have 4 children right now. I never wanted to marry or have kids. I wanted to be a type of monk, for this I was once kicked out of my mormon parents house, well actually for telling my younger brother the story of the life of Siddhartha, but it related to monasticism. I love my family. I have little affection for society as it is presently constructed. Class division is such a huge problem, it creates so much poverty. The conventional consumer wage slave lifestyle disgusts me.

Since there were so many people of Turtle Island, so many languages, I wonder, is this view common to all of the Turtle Island peoples? I pray to mother earth and father sky sometimes. But sometimes I pray to father earth and mother sky.

Very informative reply. Thank you for that. I use the term in general to mean of India and do not mean to address any specific tradition. I rather like Shaivite and Brahmanic traditions. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I do like the Constitution of India compared to others.

How can someone disagree that Buddhism is Hinduism? The word Hindu means of India.

That is a new one to me, but interesting. No, at least I can't. Perhaps it is uneven true? Perhaps it doesn't, rather you do. I am interested in this. Perhaps this is why there is an inverse relationship between wealth and wisdom?

By the very definition of Hindu, Buddhism is Hinduism. There is no single "Hinduism" such a thing is only a straw dog, or perhaps for some, a straw god.

Where does Buddha teach a self exists that can be re-incarnated? Of course this question is for those who follow Buddhism in particular. How about if they were co-emergent? No need for anything to facilitate anything then. I find that I do not understand this at all, please forgive me. Could someone explain to me what it would mean? I'll give an example, senses are like paint, then what I am talking about is like canvas. How can they be co-emergent? I do not understand. Do you remember the womb? I think I do, but do not know for sure. I have memories that are so strange, there is no light, only sound and pressure. There is a sense of self, but no thought language. It is like being an aware part of a big machine, but not knowing it, because there is nothing to compare it to, there is no memory to reference. But I remember waking over and over in this situation and being curious what it was, what I was. It was so alien compared to what I know now. From this I have a sense of sense before senses, if that makes sense. There is also a part of awe or awareness that never sleeps. It is ever present. For me this is the architect of the tabernacle of which Buddha speaks.

In the words of Buddha, because mine have no sway: 212 From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure neither sorrows nor fears. 247 And the man who gives himself to drinking intoxicating liquors, he, even in this world, digs up his own root. 248 O man, know this, that the intemperate are in a bad state; take care that greediness and vice do not bring the to grief for a long time. I think it is clear. No argument that man is mortal can be used to justify self destructive behavior. I know many people, many of them are alcoholics, do you think that the best reason not to drink excessively is because of a next life? The misery I have seen it cause in this life is enough for me to know that the reason to abstain has everything to do with this life. The price we pay for vice is in this life. If you are just going to be born again why not drink cheat, steal and kill? If you believe you will have another life then what does it matter? But if you believe you have but one life, why squander it? If we believe that others are born again, why fear killing them? Why have any compassion at all? Out of desire of reward for compassion? But if you believe that there is but this life, is that not all the more reason for compassion? Does it not make killing all the more cruel? Most atheists I know care more about right mind, right thought and right action than any religious people I know. They respect life and good behavior more than any christian I have met, and I was raised as a christian. True some of them are fools who have been known to steal, thinking that since there is no God, what does it matter? None of them that are like this are happy, they are plagued by mental, physical and psychological problems. They are looked down upon by all who know them, for they cannot be trusted. They are like the man who forsakes his health and body thinking of obtaining merit in an afterlife. A dog carried a bone over a bridge and looking down saw his reflection, he schemed that if he had both bones then he would be happier. So he barked at the reflection, forsaking what he had for what he wanted, and so in the end had nothing and the bone dropped into the water. People are like this, even in regard to this life, for they forsake this life out of the desire to obtain what they want in the next, in the end all they have is a wasted life. If there is no afterlife why waste life on empty pleasures? Why not go for tranquility and clarity that last? Drugs do not satisfy, neither does sex, or any material pleasure, for they do not last, so how can someone stay satisfied? But the truth alluded to in the teachings of Buddha does satisfy, for it does last. It is like a food that if you partake of it, you will be full evermore. It is like water that ends thirst forever. I am very sad, indeed tearful at the moment, that this is not more apparent. I am sorry if I have offended anyone. Thanks. Josh

I read about these experiments in K.S.Cohens Qigong book. They are neat! Still the production of voltage does not mean that the power is sourced from AC outlets. I am very interested in seeing the meter run.

What about suburban legends? Like that prefab homes are wonderful?

When you say that a 'self-knowing aspect of being exists before the senses', do you mean within the moment of now, or prior to our birth? Is the river bed a kind of continuum? This is the most difficult question I think I have been asked in a long time. By "before" I mean do not mean to imply causality, nor invoke a time reference. By before I mean that senses must be sensed, they do not sense themselves. That which senses sense facilitates sense, so I mean facilitate, for that which facilitates is before that which is facilitated. However you brought up the moment of Now, which is eternal and unending. All things ever exist in now, which is constant, ever present and instant. It is eternal, but not in the linear sense, for the linear sense is an illusion. Time does not exist, only the perception of time exists. There is no line between time and space, much as there is no line between one moment and the next. There is one whole made by all things, it exists now. Every moment of our life is in this singularity. So yes the river bed is a continuum after a manner, though when I wrote those words that was not what I was trying to convey. I note your point about rebirth verses reincarnation is a good one in my opinion. This is why I like to use the terms transference of consciousness and succession of bodies. Because now is eternal, I am eternal, but this does not mean I live indefinitely. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but change is ever present. I am one with the universe, because it is I and I am it. Where is the line between me and the universe? It does not and cannot exist. Now I have a question: What is there to be reincarnated? Anybody?