Reply to Fred,
One of the first places I read about the Atman and the Brahman was a
book by Rudolph Otto called "Mysticism, East and West." He pointed out
that they correspond to the name that God gave Moses--"I AM." The "I AM"
within is the "I AM" without. Rudy Rucker also discusses this in his
book, "Infinity and the Mind."
Supposedly the Atman/Brahman is existence, consciousness and bliss.
Apparently this means the "core" of each of us--the "I AM" in each
us--is those three things.
I took a Buddhism class in college. My instructor told us that in
Buddhism (and I assume this holds true in all "mystical" traditions)
that when meditation results in enlightenment one of the things that
happens is the person moves into a state of permanent and very deep
bliss and peace, along with increased clarity of mind. In that state,
they cease to cling to things.
That sounded to me like the ultimate nature of reality was
consciounsess, bliss and peace! I thought that if this was true, why
should this be? Because if the MoQ is true, then this is exactly how the
universe should evolve. It is high Quality.
Because of this, I decided the scientific view of things--the universe
is dead matter; life, consciousness and self-consciousness are
insignificant epiphenomena; everything is meaningless, morals are a
matter of convention--was extremely limited, in fact untrue.
A more high-Quality explantion--to me--is that the universe is alive
(quantum physics says all creation is a dance of particles created and
destroyed [that sounds 'alive' to me]) and that life and consciousness
are the "base" of reality.
Because of this, I decided that what I think, feel and imagine are just
as real as anything outside of me. In other words, the Intellectual(and
Societal) levels are just as real as the Organic and Inorganic.
I believe people like the Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tse and others experienced
these things directly and tried to share them. I also think the belief
in UFOs and alien abductions are a substitute for religion.
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:58 BST