Get To Know God (GTKG) 101

Absolutely. To hope to ever get to know GOD you must first throw away God.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

There's no way to get rid of "preconceptions" or
even "conceptions," "pre-" or not.

Jar: robinrohan: Preconceptions can be gotten rid of, or at least acknowledged. Conceptions can be kept consciously open and flexible. Scientists know how this challenge works.Lao Tse, after saying how useless it is to talk about the ultimate reality, talks about it for a little while. It is like water, he says; like a path, like a supple plant, like nothing at all--colorless, odorless, tasteless. But he has already warned you at the outset that no words will catch it. The whole enterprise is a bit of a joke, he advises, on all of us.The ancient Hebrews prohibited making solid images of YHWH but they used plenty of verbal images. Wind, warrior, lover, shepherd, king, artist, darkness, light. The fact that the images were verbal, though, gave them a certain plasticity. Devotees could move from one image to the other, adapting each to describe different sides of a reality that was (as the wise took care to remind everyone) ultimately undescribable.

”But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!

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- Somomon (1 Kings 8.27)

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Is this ultimate reality a being or a thing?

It is what it is.The rest is how we conceive it._Edited by Archer Opterix, : Quote box code.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes, but it's important for us to know if ultimate reality is a being or a thing.If it's a being, theism is true.If it's a thing, atheism is true.So the distinction is crucial.

He might as well have tried to describe an orgasm. One can sympathise with his problem. Perhaps. But they gave us something beyond measure despite the admitted paltriness of descriptive language. They invariably described the Ultimate Reality as 'He'. A giant leap for paltry language by any measureEdited by iano, : No reason given.

iano writes: It is no leap forward for language at all. As soon as we say 'he' we say 'not she' and 'not it'--and that lands us back with the same problem.We have put limits on the limitless.Lao Tse's language gave him an advantage here. It has only one pronoun. The ultimate reality can be he, she, and it all at once._Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Just a footnote: the ancient Hebrews did not do this 'invariably.'
And that's okay, given the limitations of language.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

robinrohan: As being and thing are not opposites, this is a false choice.A thing has being. A being is a thing.You can say 'There is a human being over there, and a human being is a remarkable thing.' Have you contradicted yourself?
I can say 'Let's talk about the universe and everything in it.' Have I overlooked the beings?The opposite of being is nonbeing. The opposite of thing is nothing.But even accurate terms have limits.As soon as I call reality 'being' I've said 'not nonbeing.' As soon as I call reality 'thing' I've said 'not nothing.'The instant I say one or the other I take items off the table. The reality I talk about is not the ultimate reality.Reality includes oblivion. Nonexistence. Extinction, destruction, annihilation. We observe this.Reality thus includes the things--the nothings, more like--that we understand by these terms.

Intangible and elusive, yet within is image.
Elusive and intangible, yet within is form.
Dim and dark, yet within is essence.
This essence is real. Therein lies faith.

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(TTC 21)

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

By "being" I mean an entity that possesses consciousness."Things" I'm defining as entities that do not possess consciousness.It has to be one or the other.

robinrohan writes: Are you one or the other?

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes, I'm a being, you're a being, and probably certain animals are beings, like raccoons and cats. Other animals are probably things, like worms and beetles. And then there are those entities that we are fairly certain are things, such as trees, planets, and electrons.It's a way of classifying reality that is important to philosophy and religion. You could sort entities out in other ways if you wanted to. You could classify them according to color, for example, or according to size, but such schemes would not seem to be very helpful in regard to helping us form our worldviews.If we just say there's an "ultimate reality" and we don't what it is and if we try to figure out what it is, then we falsify it because we think in terms of categories, we have not made any progress. Why even bother calling It or He or whatever an "ultimate" reality? We might as well just call it reality, unless you are suggesting there are realities that are not ultimate. What would that mean? That such entities are half-real but not all the way real, but there is Something that is all-the-way real?This is why I say that these Eastern religions are steeped in vagueness. Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic Warning

robinrohan writes: This does not answer my question.You brought up the subject of consciousness. You said this was the important issue for you.You insisted that ultimate reality has to do one or the other. It has to possess consciousness or unconsciousness.So please answer my question.Do you possess consciousness? Or unconsciousness? Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic Warning

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes. Regularly. Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic Warning