Evolve

Take a piece of paper and a pen for a short quiz.
Write down the answers to these two questions
Put them in a safe place no one can see them.
Be as honest as possible. Don’t cheat, – you are cheating yourself :)

If you would have the absolute proof and certitude that God doesn’t exist.
That there is no heaven and hell after death.
No judgment day, no price to pay, just death and nothing more.
Would you start to cheat and steal, would you stop to pray?
Or would you live your life just the same way you are living your life today?

What if God in person and his full glory would pop up in front of you and say:
“Here I am, look at me, take a picture, touch me, hold me and know that I am.”
Would you stop wanting more, would you stop judging and holding grudges?
Would you drop in your knees and start to pray.
Would you live your life any different, or would you stay the same?

Write down as much as possible of what is in your mind right now.
Let a couple of days to go by and then revisit your answers.
See if you can tell if you were honest or not.
See how you feel about it.

Take the test again in a couple of weeks.
Compare notes.
Has anything changed in your answers?
Has anything changed in your life?

Yes?
Then you are evolving :)

No?
Then you are extremely, incredibly enlightened.
Or most likely, extremely, incredibly ignorant.

Wishing you a great weekend.
Namaste!

Determinism & Free Will

When I wrote post “The Acorn Universe” I wasn’t thinking much.
It was more of a hunch than a well constructed theory and frankly I did not expect that anybody would take notice :)
But you did; and I got some brilliant comments that have given me reason for thinking.
So here are my thought about that.

It seems that most people believe in a scientific, mathematical sort of universe.
A universe run by laws, like “The law of conservation of mass” or “Energy” or the law of “Causality”
According to this view the universe is a perfect mechanism.
If there was a celestial accountant; according with this view, at any point in time we draw a bottom line everything in the universe is accounted for to the last atom and quanta of energy.
The universe is absolute determined and the laws of physics run the show.
Science holds the truth and there is no doubt about anything.

According with this point of view, what I am writing now and what you will respond to my post it is already determined by your past, education, mood etc. You can’t do squat to change it. You are just a spectator to your life, like in a movie theater.
According to this, everything, the way the universe evolves and where and how it ends is predetermined.

The second view of the universe is of a random, unlawful, universe.
According to this model (See Quantum’s comments) everything is not run by laws but by probabilities.
The laws of physics are not absolute anymore; the scientific method is not accurate.
Science does not hold the truth and everything is debatable.
See this little video about “Quantum Physics” to get an idea of what I am talking about :)

According to this view what I am writing right now and what your response will be is up to you to decide.
You can change your mind, your actions and your life at will.
You are not a spectator to your life anymore but the force and creator behind it.
According to this the way the universe evolves is not determined.
Actions ; like sending up satellites in deep space are changing the course of the universe evolution, which in other words means we have God like powers – if we only knew how to use them :)

So this is the little dirty secret of the scientific community.
Something that everybody knows but no one will admit.
“The force behind the steering wheel of the universe is no other than FREE WILL

So I still believe that “The Acorn Universe” is a valid hypothesis, I just think it needs some time to take root ;)

Knowledge & Truth

If you think you know, there is no way to see the truth.
BoH

We’ve some how drifted into a metaphysical discussion. (Which was not my initial intention :)
But the discussion has generated some buzz.
People are getting involved, there are pro and con, brilliant arguments, and there is excitement and interest.
(We even managed to keep the dialog civil and respectful :)

This discussion is not new; it has started hundreds or thousands of years ago.
It has started with the earth at the center of the universe and evolved along the way with new ideas, with people that questioned the conventional wisdom and broke through dogma and ignorance.
What is the truth about the universe around us?
How does it work?

For hundreds of years the questions have been the same.
The only thing that has changed and will continue to change is how we see the universe.
The only thing that has changed and is changing is US.

This is not about the universe, about what it is and how it works.
We knew the answers thousands of years ago when we started our journey into reason.
The universe is “that it is” and it works “the simplest way possible”
But that is not what we want to hear, isn’t it?

We don’t want to know the universe!
(If you want to know it, go out tonight look at the stars and say “Hi universe! Nice to know you!”)
We want to control the universe; we want it to respond to our will, we want to be Gods!
This is pretty much what the “scientific revolution” is all about.

What we know is not changing the way the universe is or works.
What we know changes what we are and how we work.

But I am not a scientist. I am a dreamer.
For me the universe is like a lover, like a woman!
Every fact about it fascinates me, and I would like to know as much as possible about it.
But in the end I love the mystery more than the knowledge.
Because the universe like a woman was not made to be deciphered but to be loved.

Oneness

Reading the scientific books one might think that we have everything explained quite well.
Let’s take for example perception, and out of all forms of perception let’s look at vision.
Everybody knows that the light coming from a source it is reflected by different objects and is then captured by our eyes and changed into nervous impulses - images.
So we see light. – No light, no vision. – Right?

Wrong!
These letters are actually black; so you shouldn’t see them at all since they do not reflect light.
Right? As non scientifically it might sound, you are seeing no light after all :)
But if the letters were white; thus reflecting light – you wouldn’t see them at all!!!
Right? As non scientifically it might sound you wouldn’t see light after all :)

So what the hell are we seeing; light or no light?
What we are actually seeing is neither, nor!
What we are actually seeing is the contrast between light and darkness.
Without a contrast there is no perception. – Light or no light.

So perception, vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch is possible only as long there is a contrast.
It is this contrast that makes everything perceivable.
Same rule apply to everything else we perceive; thoughts, emotions, feelings, morals.
Whenever we talk about a bad behavior we have in mind the opposite god behavior.
They go hand in hand like front and back and left and right.

Same goes about God or the rest of existence – if that is what you want to call her :)
You need the ego to perceive the rest of existence.
Without an ego the whole universe would be an oneness.

By practice, one may attain liberation from the bondage of the ego – enlightenment – and see the reality as oneness.
In that moment one doesn’t see and feel as a separate part from the whole.
The reality doesn’t change but the way you see it is so perfect, so profound, so beautiful.
(It is a wondrous experience I have been blessed to experience for brief moments.)

It is not like understanding one thought or feeling one emotion but understanding and feeling everything at once.
It is like looking at this page and instead of seeing a lot of separate black characters on a white piece of paper you would see nothing separate, but a whole white page with some intricate holes cut into it – and understand what it says all at once.
I know it is a very poor example but it is the best I can do in words.

But the point that I was trying to get to is that God, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t look at you as separate from him, and it might come as a little shocker and disappointment to the new age crowd but you are not God after all; it is the other way around :)

PS: I just realized that my blog background is gray and you could actually see white letters :(

Dualism

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."
Anaïs Nin

The Western world is undoubtedly a world of duality.
It is the world of God vs. Satan, good vs. evil, man vs. nature, us vs. them, etcetera.

Some where on the life’s path we might change our polarized views.
The good cake and the bad broccoli, will eventually become the not so good cake and the no so bad broccoli, drinking whine in moderation seems to be good for your health now days, and greed once taught as good as once again fell from favor.

But generally speaking even if we change our views on a particular subject we keep pretty much a dualistic point of view on reality.
So if we speak of global warming, abortion, same sex marriage, guns, drugs, religion, internet, democrats or republicans, we will automatically attach them a value – positive or negative – according to our personal beliefs and preferences.

But for every person pro something, there is another con something.
The democrats are blaming the republicans and the republicans are blaming the democrats, the Christians are blaming the Muslims, the Muslims are blaming the Jews, but always WE are right and THEY are wrong, who ever they might be.

Here is a novel point of view – familiar to most of you students of Eastern philosophy.
The world’s duality is just an illusion and in essence reality is one.
So dualism is a doctrine that exists only in our mind and even if we see the two sides of a problem as different they are in fact one and the same.
The coin has truly two sides but two sides are not making two coins.

So to pick up on the last post’s question. - Is the internet good or bad?
Depending on your point of view it could be either, or.
According to the Buddhist philosophy is neither, nor.

According to the Buddhist doctrine things have no intrinsic moral value.
It is the use and the abuse that gives the good or bad value to things.

I use the internet for banking, I just bought an MP3 player on line, I check my daughter’s school reports on line and of course without the internet I couldn’t have my blog.
But on the other hand computers and the internet can be a pain too.

The spam, the sensory overloads, the time waste, the consumerism, the viruses and nasty people all of that and more can turn the internet into a bad experience.
But that is not the internet – that is us!
We had good and bad experiences before the internet and we still have them off line.

It is what we do that has moral value, everything else are just props.