If you want to consider that the mind contains consciousness and the brain is needed for that to happen this would make a little bit of sense. But it does not solve the question: What are we and where did we come from?

But if consciousness exists as a container for mind, then consciousness is where Will originates. Mind is simply program and the brain is the computer. Will is the end user.

Jeannie

I disagree with this completely.

Our minds are not dependent on our physical senses. I think the simply fact that you can close your eyes and imagine images in your mind is proof that you don’t require sight to ‘visualize’ things.

I’ve stated this before also. In the case of experiencing the “White Light” in meditation, this is clearly not a physical light. You’re eyes are closed when you experiences this light. It’s not photos exciting retinas. It’s an entirely non-physical light that requires no physical senses.

I believe that this can be true of all the senses. If you have a good enough imagination you can imagine yourself sitting by the ocean. You can “see” the image in your mind. You can “feel” the breeze of the wind against your skin. You can ‘taste’ the flavor of the sea salt in the moist ocean spray. You can ‘hear’ the music of squawking seagulls. You can “smell” the scent of fishy flesh.

Now you might argue that you can only experiences these particular things because of memory. You can argue that you had to have experienced them sensually prior to being able to imagine them. But I would argue that you have missed the point entirely if you pose such an objection.

The fact that you can imagine these experiences in your mind without the need to actually sense them directly shows unequivocally that the mind is capable of creating these things from within. I hold that you can indeed imagine experiences that you have never had before. Any limitation in that area is not a limitation of the mind, but rather it would merely be a limitation of the creativity of the one who is doing the imagining. Clearly the minds is capable of imagining sensations without external sensory input.

The only question then become this,…

Is the physical brain the mind?

In other words, are we nothing more than physical creatures, or do we indeed have a spiritual essence?

Are we nothing more than a brain? A biological robot?

I have come to the conclusion that we necessarily must be more than this. My reasons for coming to this conclusion are complex and so I won’t go into that here. But ultimately I believe that our physical brains only constitute a small fraction of our actual sentient ability.

And as ironic as this may sounds, I also believe that if we were to succeed in building a fully sentient computerized robot, that robot, now being ‘sentient’ would also be an extension of the spirit of the universe.

In other words, I believe that if man could create a thinking being that is truly sentient using material from this universe, then all he would have done is manifest a portal through which the universe may become sentient. Therefore that sentient robot would be every bit as ‘spiritual’ in its nature as we are!!!

After all, we are nothing more than biological robots. If we do have a spiritual essence (which I believe we do), then any fully sentient robots in this universe would also have that very same spiritual essence. This is because the spiritual essence is the universe as a whole!

So if you decide to build a robot, give it the same respect that you would give a human.

Of course, this should be automatic for an atheist I would think?

As we sit here typing into a dating club web site, as we live and breathe, there is a "mad" scientist at work deep in an underground laboratory breeding creatures, half human, half animal.

There are other scientists, in the secret of their laboratories growing human body parts, and clones. Human clones. Just because it is possible and just because he can.

There are others who seek to merge man with machine, thinking that somehow a man made machine with human DNA could improve the working structure of the biological one.

There are others who study mind control and seek to gain control over the body they call a machine.

Many of these scientists do not believe in spirit, soul or God. Therein lies most of their problems.

But there are the ones who do know about the individual soul energy and as any scientist will do, they are learning how to capture and use that for their own purposes.

What ever you might want to tell these scientists that they cannot or should not do, they will do and indeed are doing.

You can take that to the bank.

Jeannie
Rev High Priestess of the Universal Life Church of Brutal Truth and Honesty.




These things are happening now.

Complete sensory deprivation will net visions and dream worlds to the observer. To you, the person my be like a vegetable because they cannot see or function in your world. To them, it is you who do not exist, but don't be so sure that observer's awareness sees nothing, creates nothing, even a dream world.

Awareness is awareness of being. It is not just the awareness of the exterior world. It is awareness of being. It is the I am.

Jeannie

That is interesting Jeannie, because people often speak about ‘clones’ as though they wouldn’t quality as living ‘souls’, that somehow they would be but a mere ‘carbon-copy’ and not really spiritual.

That’s utterly crazy!

A clone is really not all that differnet from natural birth. Instead of starting with a single cell that we call and “egg”, they start with a single cell that we don’t call an “egg”.

So that that’s supposed to make the difference of whether or not the resulting human has a soul?

Where do they come up with that???

I will tell you where their logic comes from. The Bible. If a person is not created by their God, they are not considered Human. The Catholic Church at one time did not consider a woman to be a Human, but an extension of Adam, hence his property.

Well you have finally cracked it. The soul resides in the egg. That is why so many men are called soulless bastards .

Abra:


You are making an assumption. If a baby is born incapable of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, there would be no input into the brain. The child would subsist by instinct alone, and if someone was not there, to feed and care for the child, it would not survive. No matter how strong hunger gets, a baby can find no way to satisfy its needs.

Now add only one of the senses, lets say, sense of taste. What do you suppose that child would dream about, what creativity would exist when the only comparisons for any action or need this child has, is a memory of taste.

Yes we can close our eyes and imagine visions, but these are not the same visions that a person who has been sightless from birth has.



Again you make a lot assumptions, James. What we have experienced, up to a certain point, in our lives is all we know at that point. If a person never experienced taste in their lives (and there are some who have this problem) they will not “remember” taste because it never existed for them. Our senses are tied to the “reality” of our physical being. We cannot related to the sense of something that is not within our realm of experience. In the same manner, this person with no sense of taste, cannot ‘create’ something and know it will taste good.

The same problem exists with certain brain malfunctions, diseases or injuries. Occasionally a person will loose certain functions of their brain, for example, one might loose the ability to ‘connect’ words with the “pictures” or symbols they perceive or even remember. They might still have all the words, by they can no longer recall, what words belong with what ideas or symbols. They can still dream, they can still create, but they cannot communicate.

The point I’m making is that without some working sensations, the brain would have no input and what could come out?

According to you and anyone else who believes that this physical form is merely a temporary host to a spiritual entity we don’t need our senses, in fact we wouldn’t need our bodies, so you are actually correct, to associate the physical form with a machine. If the function of the “spirit” within is to perform all creative thought, and in essence be the consciousness, then we really are mindless machines.

I find it quite interesting from a personal perspective when I seem to be walking a "tight rope" between a fundamentalist Christian or "believer" and a hard core non-believer who claims to be "atheist."

I have discovered an interesting phenomena about this. The believer sees me as an atheist bound for Hell and and the atheist views me as a believer in bondage to religious dogma.

To the Christian, I am a sinner, to the Atheist I am an unrealistic fool.

To an atheist, religion is the same as spirituality.
To a believer, lack of belief in their religion is the same as evil.

It is a very interesting position to be in. Stuck in the middle.

I am not agnostic either, but I feel closer to an agnostic than anything else. I disbelieve in the Christian God who seems to come in the form of a physical being or a man who judges, murders the evil people, and grants mercy to the ones he likes.

For me to explain that we are all part of the one being called "God" is blasphemy to the believers and poppycock to the atheists. But quantum science gets closer and closer to putting all the puzzle pieces together in my favor. Perhaps I am delusional to think so, or perhaps I am a fool.

No matter. I am a happy person. I believe in love and creativity. I know who I am.

I am.
Jeannie

This is true. I’m not saying that it would be possible to ‘survive’ in the physical world without sensory input. My only point that while a person did exist in that state they would still be able to ‘imagine’ for the period of time that they did remain alive.



I never meant to imply that they would be the same visions. I was only making the point that some ‘vision’ would still be possible. Clearly it could not be based on anything from memory, so it would need to be entirely a construction of pure spontaneous creativity.



I’m with you here 100%. I used the ocean scene only because it is a scene that we can easily conjure up in our imaginations because most people have either experienced it for real, or have at least seen it in a movie.

If we had no memory at all, we might imagine things that are totally different from the five physics senses we have available. We might imagine more senses, or less senses. But if we had a thinking mind, I believe that we would ‘imagine’ something. Precisely what we would imagine is hard to say.

Where does ‘creativity’ come from?

If out imaginations were restricted solely to being able to imagine things we already have experience with, then how could we ever come up with anything original?



We wouldn’t need our bodies for what?

To imagine on our own?

Yes, I agree with that.

It is the manifestation of the physical world that allows us to interact with others.

When out imaginings are manifest in the physical world then other people can ‘sense’ them too!

And we can’t sense their manifestations.

From my point of view this is the very purpose of the physical world.

Without the physical world we would have no way to interact with each other.

All would be one mind. There would be no way to interact. You can imagine making love with someone in your mind. But making love with someone in the flesh is so much more rewarding doncha think?

You mean to tell me you have never heard of or experienced astral sex?

You should read Robert Monroe's books.

"Journeys out of the Body"
"Far Journeys"
"Ultimate Journey"

It is really quite like an energy exchange between disembodied entities. It happens kind of like a hand shake, and is common place. It feels fantastic!

Yes, but it’s without a doubt, the best place to be.

As far as I’m concerned I think obvious that we are a manifestation of the universe. I mean, with respect to atheism. A person might not want to believe in a ‘sentient God’, but how they can claim that the universe isn’t ‘sentient’ at least via us is beyond me!

When we see an entity with a face that breaths, drinks and eats, we assume that entity is ‘alive’. Yet in a real sense if we look at the universe as a hole, all living beings within this universe are nothing more than the ‘faces’ of the universe.

It’s a pretty straight-forward concept that was believed long before science discovered the quantum nature of the world. Pantheists continued to hold this view in the face of the Newtonian age which strongly supported the Christian-Judaic-Islamic view of an external designing God who has everything planned out.

The pantheistic view is at least every bit as old as the Christian-Judaic-Islamic view and may even be older not that it really matters. The point is that it’s always been around.

I think that even an atheist must realize that they are a child of this universe. A manifestation of it. They only thing they might claim that the manifestation is only meaningful while it lasts.

This bring up the question, ….

Are we the form?

Or are we the thing that is taking form?

How we answer these two questions determines whether we are pantheists or atheists.

Clearly the Christian-Judaic-Islamic view is that we are ‘souls’ taking a form. Souls that came into being when the form began, yet will continue to exist as pure spirit after the form fades away.

So the Christian-Judaic-Islamic view, is a view of an external deity who continually creates new ‘souls’ with ever birth of ‘human-form-only’, and that those newly born souls will continue on to live eternal lives in the spiritual world after the form of their body dies.

In fact, they seem to be confused about this. Because according to John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

This suggests that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus will simply perish. A person can’t go to hell if they perish. Even to go to hell would require everlasting life! So according to this, a person can’t even go to hell unless they believe that Jesus was the son of God.

John 3:16 only guarantees that a believer will have everlasting life. It doesn’t say anything about where they might spend it!

In the pantheistic view, we are always spirit we were spirit before we were born (before we took form) and we will continue to be spirit after we die.

In other words, the pantheistic view is that we are this universe taking form. It’s reincarnation over and over and over again.

To me the most beautiful thing would be to fully understand the process. Can we ever come to actually understand this true nature of the universe? Can we ever come to fully appreciate how we can manifest ourselves by pure force of will, or by pure telepathic thought?

As a species evolving with limited biological brains we are extreme infants. We are at the state of toddlers who are only beginning to learn how to stand on our own two feet.

The Christians have us in the end days!

They can’t wait to get the show over with, whilst the pantheists are just starting out.

And the atheists are just standing around saying, “All you people are just afraid of dying, get over it!”

I do not disagree(generally) with pantheistic thought.

No one knows what the mind contains, do they?

All subconscious and conscious choices are continually influenced, therefore, not one of them is 'freely' made.



Spinoza's ontological argument is as inductively sound as they come, to this day it gives any theist who comprehends it logical mind-fits.

The first principle of his ontological argument in Ethics I is what I referred to earlier, and it answers what you ask a priori. Should one mistakenly presuppose that Spinoza is anything before studying his ontological claim(s) and it's following axioms, which require no anthropomorphistic attributes or any dependancy on after-the-fact knowledge, one may not recognize the philisophically bulletproof origin of pantheism...

It has yet to be logically cracked...

1600's...

Astral sex?

Wouldn't that be sodomy?

LOL LOL

Nope. But you were wise to question.

Damn.

I was so looking forward to a visit to Hell. You know, .. just to look around.

I wasn't planning on staying.

I am sure I have a few friends there.

Jeannie

Souls don't perish at death they are only destroyed after judgement according to scripture...

Okay well that explains everything..

Where in the scripture does it say this?

According to John 3:16 only those who believe that Jesus was the son of God will have everlasting life. The other will perish. According to that, any non-believers would perish.

What’s to judge if they don’t believe? There’s no point in passing judgment on those who will simply perish because they didn’t believe that Jesus was the son of God.

Only those who believe that Jesus was the son of God will go to judgment. According to the Bible a person must believe that Jesus is the son of God just to quality for eternal hell. Those who won’t be granted everlasting life certainly can’t go to hell because even to go to an eternal hell requires everlasting life.

So non-believers can’t go hell. Only bad people who believe that Jesus was the son of God can go to hell. Only Christians can go to hell according to John 3:16. All non-believers will simply perish and not have everlasting life. So says the Bible. Unless it contradicts itself elsewhere.

You’re kidding yourself Abra …If you were raised in a Christian family you should know Heaven and Hell are decided after judgment according to scripture and Hell is the second and final death for an unrepentant soul such as Satan. If you seriously think that non-believers would just perish after the first death and bypass judgment scripture says otherwise. Even though I hate quoting scripture out of context these seem to be along the lines of what you are asking.

(King James Version)

John 8:15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.

John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Ezek 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.