"The Divine Self" means just what?

Or you can just type the word quote in square brackets at the beginning and /quote in the same square brackets to end what you want to set out as a quote.

That's a useful trick when you wish to break up a quote with your own comments.

The edit button works well if you mess it up as I typically do and must correct something. However, you have only about ten minutes after hitting the post button to use the edit feature before you'll be locked out of editing.

I usually move everything to Notepad so that I can check to be sure I've put in all the quote signals so that it's easy to copy and paste if I have to correct something.

You'll soon get the hang of it.

Do you have an UPG to provide evidence for yourself or is that just something that is taught in your religion?

I don't know what a UPG is (someone told me, in the welcome-forum, but I forgot; I intend to look it up there), but the existence of you and your experience is the one fact that you know for sure. It's the one fundamental fact.

You exist if anything does. That suggests that that the most parsimonious, simple and elegant ontology is that you, the innermost you, the Self, are what fundamentally is.

People hereabouts are fond of citing UPG as the only evidence for many beliefs, but I'm not so sure we can be confident of their validity. After all, there's so much that we don't know the cause of. Was that a ghost or only mist rising due to a weather or climate condition that I don't know exists? Now, if there were a meteorologist or climatologist present, such a person could likely theorize what the mist we're seeing might be...but without more precise measurements and observations, we can't be certain.

And then, the delusional don't know that what they're seeing or hearing isn't actually there, do they? How can any of us be certain that what we're experiencing isn't a delusion? Our senses are sometimes faulty, and people have an alarming tendency to superimpose what they wish had happened upon what actually occurred. Ask the people involved in a fenderbender who was at fault, and you're likely in many instances to get quite sincere accounts placing the other person at fault--by both drivers.

UPG = unverifiable personal gnosis, btw. I prefer "unverified" as the first term in the hope that many things currently believed impossible to verify eventually will become so.

DotNotInOz wrote:People hereabouts are fond of citing UPG as the only evidence for many beliefs, but I'm not so sure we can be confident of their validity. After all, there's so much that we don't know the cause of. Was that a ghost or only mist rising due to a weather or climate condition that I don't know exists? Now, if there were a meteorologist or climatologist present, such a person could likely theorize what the mist we're seeing might be...but without more precise measurements and observations, we can't be certain.

And then, the delusional don't know that what they're seeing or hearing isn't actually there, do they? How can any of us be certain that what we're experiencing isn't a delusion? Our senses are sometimes faulty, and people have an alarming tendency to superimpose what they wish had happened upon what actually occurred. Ask the people involved in a fenderbender who was at fault, and you're likely in many instances to get quite sincere accounts placing the other person at fault--by both drivers.

UPG = unverifiable personal gnosis, btw. I prefer "unverified" as the first term in the hope that many things currently believed impossible to verify eventually will become so.

It's tough to explain Dot. I wouldn't really say that UPG is the only evidence that I have for my beliefs, but it is why I adopted my beliefs. There is a bit of a self validating aspect to beliefs. A person has such beliefs, so when x happens, it enforces that belief. Reality becomes "colored" by the beliefs in question, so you only see things which tend to validate them in the first place.

I think the big difference between those who say that their beliefs are UPG and those that say their beliefs are based on objective truth, is that those that admit that their beliefs are UPG, are more willing to understand that others who believe differently are just as valid.

all

I understand, all, I think.

However, I'm wondering: Are you as certain as you are of say the sun setting this evening that what you experienced was what you think--a visitation of your deities?

I don't mean this to cast doubt upon your specific experience. It's just that I wonder to what extent we can know that what occurs in such instances is actually that...or our preconceived ideas of the lore on deities and how they're said to behave being superimposed upon an otherwise inexplicable experience...or something else entirely.

I guess that's why I prefer "peculiar and unexplained" for some things that I've experienced which I'd be tempted to call a message from the spiritual realm. I don't know just what it was to be honest.

DotNotInOz wrote:I understand, all, I think.

However, I'm wondering: Are you as certain as you are of say the sun setting this evening that what you experienced was what you think--a visitation of your deities?

Let me put it this way, I am as certain of the message that my deities wanted me to learn as I am of the sun setting.

In my case, the deities were not the important part. Never once have they expressed a desire to have me believe in them. Never once have they even implied that that was important.

Instead, they expressed certain changes that I needed to make in my life, and in the manner that I interacted with other people.

DotNotInOz wrote:
I don't mean this to cast doubt upon your specific experience. It's just that I wonder to what extent we can know that what occurs in such instances is actually that...or our preconceived ideas of the lore on deities and how they're said to behave being superimposed upon an otherwise inexplicable experience...or something else entirely.

Coming from that direction, you really can't. I choose to think that my gods are real beings, I just don't depend on that thought process for anything. I don't rely upon them for anything. If they were really something else, that wouldn't change the principles that I strive towards in my daily life. I'd still be the guy that offers assistance for people who got in car wrecks, or were being attacked by someone else. I'd still offer hot chocolate to people at the bus station by my home on cold days, or water on hot days. (which is seems like we are having a lot of recently).

What I'm saying is, the world really wouldn't change, only my perception of it.

DotNotInOz wrote:

I guess that's why I prefer "peculiar and unexplained" for some things that I've experienced which I'd be tempted to call a message from the spiritual realm. I don't know just what it was to be honest.

I guess what I'm saying is that some questions that are unanswerable, we have to be ok with them being unanswered. We don't have to believe anything that doesn't make sense to us, nor are we expected to.

all

Thanks, all.

Sounds reasonable and rather like my relationship with my spirit guide.

People maintain that one of the first things to do when you begin communicating with such is to ask the guide's name. Mine said something like, "You may give us a name, whatever you wish. We do not care about such. Doing is more important than naming. As with other things, we only suggest. You choose."

And yes, we've had discussions about what seems to me to be the regal "We."

I've never been one to stand on convention....

With anything involving the paranormal, I tend to be somewhat conventional.

You really don't want to do something ignorant and stupid that pisses off a spirit, IME.

I figure the only way I can learn is by expressing the matters which I am ignorant in.

all

People hereabouts are fond of citing UPG as the only evidence for many beliefs, but I'm not so sure we can be confident of their validity.

Though we can disagree on, and maybe be mistaken about, the things that we experience or seem to experience, one thing is for sure: The fact of the experience itself. The existence of experience, and its subject (us) is a fact, and not a belief. But, beyond that, who knows what's true or real?

What can be said other than that? It seems to me that no metaphysics or ontology can be proved. It seems to me that any statement on those subjects can only have the force of "What if it's like this?...", or "Could it be like this?...".

But, in discussion, ontologies can be evaluated and compared by various considerations, such as un-arbitrariness, simplicity, parsimony, and elegance.

So far, I've been talking about verbal arguments or discussions of ontology or metaphysics. Of course it's said that some people have a direct intuitive perception of Reality. But of course that's _individual_, and not something that one can argue to someone else.

I think the big difference between those who say that their beliefs are UPG and those that say their beliefs are based on objective truth, is that those that admit that their beliefs are UPG, are more willing to understand that others who believe differently are just as valid.

Yes, I too don't criticize others' beliefs just because they differ from mine. On that other website where I debated some ill-mannered Materialist/Physicalists, I demonstrated some problems of Physicalism. I wouldn't have said anything to Physicalists if they hadn't been actively criticizing every departure from Physicalism, on a philosophy-&-science forum.

So I showed that Physicalism doesn't do very well by the standards that I listed above in this posting. In particular, I showed that Physicalism, by those standards, doesn't do well in comparison to the Ontology of Vedanta.

As I said, metaphysics and ontology, necessarily, are speculative topics, and no one can claim to prove a position.

I didn't claim that I'd proved that Physicalism was wrong or that Vedanta's ontology was right. I merely compared them by those standards that I listed.

Vedantists, including me, have no reason or inclination to promote Vedanta, or beat someone over the head with it, or say that it has more vallidity than someone else's belief. But, when _someone else_ brings up the comparison of Physicalism with non-Physicalism, and does so in a mean-spirited manner, then there's nothing wrong with
taking up their topic, their comparison, and maybe rubbing their nose in it just a bit.

Anyway, I completely agree with the position that is widespread at this website--the position that no one can prove that one ontology is right or that another is wrong. All we can say is things like, "Well, how about this?..."
The problem at that other website was that science and philosophy have to share a forum. They only had one forum there, and they have to share it. So, inevitably, we'd get the science-buffs criticizing non-Physicalists as being "unscientific". Of course physical science says nothing, one way or the other, about such things as the validity of Physicalism, or of non-Physicalist ontologies.

Though no one can prove that they're right, it's interesting and valuable to hear people's arguments for one ontology or another--why it makes sense to them. That's part of the value of forum websites such as this one.

allthegoodnamesweretaken wrote:

Coming from that direction, you really can't. I choose to think that my gods are real beings, I just don't depend on that thought process for anything. I don't rely upon them for anything. If they were really something else, that wouldn't change the principles that I strive towards in my daily life. I'd still be the guy that offers assistance for people who got in car wrecks, or were being attacked by someone else. I'd still offer hot chocolate to people at the bus station by my home on cold days, or water on hot days. (which is seems like we are having a lot of recently).

What I'm saying is, the world really wouldn't change, only my perception of it.

all

I'd certainly agree with this sentiment, and this is one of the basis of why religious experience is I believe a reasonable way of knowing about gods, to quote J.M. Greer:
[quote=] Even if it is proven that gods are nothing more than than psychological expressions of human instincts, say, this wouldn't argue against the practice of religion; it would merely argue against certain claims made by certain religions about the nature of the universe and of the gods. The facts that religious practices foster religious experiences, and that religious experiences have important positive effects on human life, would remain as true and as relevant as if it were proved that the gods are objectively real superhuman intelligences who create and rule the cosmos.[/quote]

In a practical sense, if the universe (or our experience of) reflects that it behaves as if the gods are real, then there is little practical difference between their being psychological constructs or actual entities. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that gods exist.

I think that as long as you realize the UPG is for yourself and not for all UPG is a perfectly valid way to, well, validate your beliefs. Once you get the conviction that your UPG is meant for all, then you have to prove it. Then it fails, because, after all, it is unverifiable. Then you have a problem.


Of course this is something I have yet to convince the militant and fundy religious types of. I told a militant atheist the other day to prove there is no god. Then when he said he had no evidence and looked at me all pleased with himself, I had to point out by that logic there were thousands of gods and that you couldn't prove a negative. Then he got snippy. The need to be right seems to be more important to people than anything.
Me? I just want to have my beliefs in peace without people telling me I am wrong all the time. I am not going to tell an atheist or a christian they are wrong unless they tell me I am wrong. And I can only wish for the same courtesy.

sacrificialgoddess wrote:I think that as long as you realize the UPG is for yourself and not for all UPG is a perfectly valid way to, well, validate your beliefs. Once you get the conviction that your UPG is meant for all, then you have to prove it. Then it fails, because, after all, it is unverifiable. Then you have a problem.


Of course this is something I have yet to convince the militant and fundy religious types of. I told a militant atheist the other day to prove there is no god. Then when he said he had no evidence and looked at me all pleased with himself, I had to point out by that logic there were thousands of gods and that you couldn't prove a negative. Then he got snippy. The need to be right seems to be more important to people than anything.
Me? I just want to have my beliefs in peace without people telling me I am wrong all the time. I am not going to tell an atheist or a christian they are wrong unless they tell me I am wrong. And I can only wish for the same courtesy.

I remember one of the confrontations I had with a militant atheist.

He was all smug, and told me that "I don't believe in your gods".
I said "ok".
I guess that wasn't the response he was looking for because his expression changed to one of puzzlement, and he said "what?"

I told him that if he doesn't have any evidence that would lead him to believe, that he shouldn't, and shouldn't listen to anyone telling him that he needed to conform to any belief system.

all