jim123

@Leo Gura What about something like lying. In many cases you can get away with stuff and make your life better by telling lies. But nevertheless lying is considered ”wrong.” No-one really likes to tell lies even if they could get away with it. Saying that you could be the biggest liar in the world and that there would be absolutely nothing wrong about it is a pretty bizarre thing to say. If you tell a lie, you know that it wasn’t true. You know that you tricked people.

Ironically it feels pretty selfish to love yourself. Even if we’re just talking about the ”real self” and not the ego. I believe it’s more spiritual to love others and not yourself.

@Aaron p If you think about it, it's actually you who are trying to be like God. The teaching of Act.org is that you literally are God. If you do practices like yoga for the purpose of trying to realize that you are God, you are doing what Satan wanted to do.

So are evangelical Christians enlightened? They certainly have a lot of faith. How does that work? You must have some reason to have faith, whether it is desire to be saved from hell or desire to become enlightened or whatever else. You can't just have faith automatically can you? Having faith is not something that happens automatically for no reason, it is something you must do.

@Leo Gura If I thought that I can become God-realized or 'enlightened' by my own works and achievements, then I would see myself as a hero.

@cetus56 Bible has a definition of faith: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1 That doesn't sound all that mystical as you make it to be.

@RendHeaven Everyone in this forum seems to give Jesus authority. It's only atheists who want to deny Jesus altogether.

@cetus56 Tell that to Christ then, because Christ liked belief systems. I've watched a lot of videos of Act.org and a common theme that comes up in the videos is the idea that "belief is bad" and that everything in spirituality should be centered on direct experience (or otherwise you can become deluded by your fantasies). Or even the idea that you should have no beliefs whatsoever and that you should be in a state of mind in which you 'know nothing' (I think it was the video about radical open-mindedness). That flies in the face of what Jesus taught. According to Jesus having beliefs is actually a good thing. "And Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." - John 20:29 Jesus taught that believing on him (even if you haven't directly seen him) does not make you deluded, but that it actually makes you blessed. Do you want to be blessed? I do. Here's another: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." - Jesus, John 6:47

@AdamDiC You didn't answer my question at all. I asked why it looks like he is being demon-possessed. I'm sure you agree that it certainly looks that way.

@AdamDiC Why does "channeling God" look like channeling a demon? I think he even mentioned the word "serpent" as if it didn't already look demonic enough. I assume you don't believe in demons, so what do you think was happening there? He was just pretending to be a demon for the heck of it?

Who in their right mind would still want to practice yoga or meditation after watching this?

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." - John 20:29

What have you smoked? Well, they're not the same thing. I can believe that it will rain tomorrow, but I'm not experiencing any rain right now.

@Truth Addict You think belief and direct experience are the same thing?

The Gospel of Thomas has some pretty strange stuff in it: Gospel of Thomas 114 Jesus says: "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven." I guess that's why there aren't many spiritual teachers who are female...

Around 1:35:47 in his recent video "Becoming God" Leo said the most bizarre thing I think I've heard anyone say. According to Leo, nothing evil has ever happened in the world nor can happen, and if you believe otherwise, "you're just wrong." Last time I checked, molesting children was pretty evil. Lying, stealing and murdering were also evil, but apparently "I'm just wrong." It's like the parable of the emperor's new clothes. In the parable the emperor is naked, but people are told that he has new amazing clothes on, but the catch is that you can only see them if you're wise. If you say the emperor is naked, it just means you're not wise enough to see the clothes. In reality the people who thought they saw the clothes were not wise, they were fools. What Leo teaches is not wisdom or higher truths, it is foolishness masqueraded as wisdom.

Well the god of the dream is my brain because that's what creates dreams. Everything I think about or know about surely exists inside my mind, but that doesn't make me an all-knowing or all-powerful being.

@Leo Gura But how does one discover himself to be God? God is omniscient and omnipotent. So tell me how to know all things and create a universe out of nothing, then we'll talk.

I don't think any "nondual teacher" grabs the teachings of the Bible. Instead what they do is twist the scriptures unto their own destruction. The Bible warns about people who do just that (2. Peter 3:15-17). Every time I've heard a nondual teacher reference the Bible, it has been some individual verse which is being twisted or taken out of context. By contrast, when preachers talk about the Bible, it's going to be a whole chapter examined verse by verse. There are thousands of verses in the Bible so it's no marvel that you could take some of them and twist them to make it appear as if the Bible is teaching the same stuff as eastern religions.

You believe that God was the one who designed and caused every act of rape, murder, fornication, et cetera. And you think I am the one who is making mockery of God?

Here's the thing about that. Christians don't only believe that there is God but that there are also demons. The Bible even calls them gods (gods with lowercase-g) and with certain names like Belial. What if by doing spiritual practices like yoga, self-inquiry, etc, you're not coming closer to God but are opening yourself up to those demonic spirits? Are you not concerned about that? I'm sure you can validate something through those practices or psychedelics, but the thing you are validating may be a satanic illusion.

I saw this new age documentary called "Samadhi" on youtube. You can look it up. But when you watch it a while, something just doesn't feel right about it. Like the fact that the narrator of that film has this hypnotic voice. It's like one of those ASMR videos. It almost makes it appear like the whole thing is meant to seduce you into believing lies.

Just because someone claims something to be "an advanced teaching" doesn't make it true, does it?

That's another bizarre teaching because virtually no-one just loves everything. Try to focus on loving everything when you see someone molesting little children. No-one is like that. There's nothing wrong with being hateful or angry at times because any reasonable person would agree that those are perfectly normal and natural feelings, not some mistakes we should get rid of.

What about God's perspective? If stealing is not bad from God's perspective, why is it written in the Bible that God condemns it?