Thou Art God
Eastern religion doesn't interest me as much as it once did, but certain bits still resonate -- intellectually, if not spiritually.
This is one of my favorite ideas from Hinduism:
If we all already remembered that we are made in God's image--what would happen? It would be boring! We would all just be the same, knowing ourselves as God. That is the reason why God wanted you not to remember.
God created you in God's Image, and God made you to forget that. Because only when you forget that will you think to go through all these good and bad activities. And by all those activities you face sufferings, and through the sufferings, you ultimately learn the lesson that you are made in God's image! You earn the knowledge; it's not just easily given to you. You appreciate it. And it's not boring!
God bless you. Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi.
That's from an email newsletter I keep meaning to unsubscribe from, but I keep putting it off because I enjoy the "Weekly Words of Wisdom". The newsletter is from an ashram about an hour south of Charlottesville (driving the speed limit on local roads) called Yogaville.
If you go to www.yogaville.ORG you can see their official website.
If you happen to go to www.yogaville.COM by accident (as I just did) you can see a site devoted to "Former Members and Families" run by
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I find it amusing to think about God trying to debunk Himself, God suing Himself, God considering Himself "destructive", etc.
(Does libertarianism count as a controversial group and movement?
Or are we more of a destructive cult?)
Here's an oldie-but-goody:
4 Comments:
I recognize that this damns me once again as a prisoner of state oriented thinking, but I get little solace from this principle. (Of course maybe assuming that I am supposed to get solace damns me a prisoner of state oriented thinking.)
It's as if we're trapped on an island. There are typhoons, an active volcano, and we're starving. And somebondy over the radio tells us, "I know the way off and you know the way off, but I have wiped your memories. This way you must figure out how to get off the island. It'll be uncomfortable, treacherous, and potentially damaging, but by jeepers it won't be boring!"
If you got something important for me to know, tell me. I'm not jonesing for excitement. I can take being bored.
It's like an exchange I had with the head of my masters program a year ago. He asked me how a certain class was going. I said I didn't know. It was challenging. He beamed and said, "That's good. Challenging is good."
Well ... why? Why is challenging good? Why assume that that's necessarily the case? Challenging means that either through presentation or subject matter I'm finding it difficult to access and assimilate the information that the course of study is trying to impart to me. Well, what's important here - that I struggle or that I gain that knoweledge? In fact it's one of my critiques of higher education in the country that they plan for and rely on the former as a strategy for self-justification. "Our degree must be good because it's so difficult to get." "Of course you are justified in paying us so much money. Look at how hard it is to complete our program." How is that not another way of insisting that bigger is necessarily better?
- From the morally bankrupt and the spiritually craven
I grok it. Reminds me of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. The Martian-raised human, Valentine Michael Smith, went around teaching humanity a very inadequate translation of the Martian concept grok: Thou art God.
here's a proof of "thou art god" from a fundamentalist point of view.
1) God is omnibenevolent.
people with issues will disagree, but those true of faith won't.
2) God is omnipotent.
usually the excuse for God not acting omnipotently out of omnibenevolence is free will or a higher plan. turns out both are true.
3) God is omniscient.
Same thing as before. But extended.
4) god is perfect.
anyone who will argue with that has a lot of personal feelings that are interfering with their faith.
5) god is infinite.
anyone who will argue with that has a lot to learn. how can one be omnipresent or omnipotent or omniscient if you are not infinite?
6) God is eternal.
do you really think you can kill god?
Most people in Christian faith think of God as the ultimate God, not a god among many. That would be blasphemous.
However, if God is infinite, perfect, and eternal, then would he not be infinitely perfect, and infinitely eternal? Would he not be infinitely omnibenevolent? Infinitely omnipotent? Wouldn't his infinite nature cause all of these six attributes to extend to each other?
That being the case, the Bible says that God creates. Everything God creates, the Bible says is Good. The Bible never says that anyone other than God creates anything at all.
If God is infinite, then God is so vast in his being, he can't create anything outside of himself. Thus everything he creates, he must create inside of himself. But because God, being infinite, cannot create a vacuum from which to create something... otherwise God would cease to be infinite, God must make something OUT OF HIMSELF. In that sense, all that God creates is God.
If God is infinitely perfect, and everything that God creates is made of God, then everything God creates is infinitely perfect. For something to lose its infinite perfection, God would have to lose its infinite perfection.
God is infinitely omniscient. We are not. We are made of God. Thus we must be infinitely omniscient. However, God created this earth. Out of himself. We, as creations of God, were born into matter that came from this earth. Bodies. Human bodies.
God designed Earth to house human bodies so that God as you can be born into this world not knowing it's god. Not knowing it's omnipotent. Not knowing it has all six attributes of god extending each other.
It's a process called "Creation". God in action.
you start with a creation of simulated total darkness, and then interject "god" as you, and watch as eon after eon, the darkness moves into the light and then rejoins God. That's the cycle of life.
Hope I didn't bust your noodle.
> Hope I didn't bust your noodle.
Nah, just sounds like some sloppy Descartes crossed with Teilhard de Chardin.
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