A Challenge To Everything You Think You Know

[Leo Gura]

24 minutes ago, Snick said:

Leo, in other threads you didn't really respond to critique, here you do!

The problem with responding to critique is that it makes one look defensive, and only further feeds accusations of acting from ego. It creates debate, which is always anti-consciousness. There is no consciousness to be had in a debate. All ego needs to do to win, is drag consciousness into a debate. Instant win. Sorta like fake news.

In the battle between low consciousness vs high consciousness, low consciousness has more latitude and power. High consciousness has to stay high consciousness, which often just looks like silence.

It's sorta like waging war on terrorists. Every time you do it, you're forced to stoop to their level, and by definition you lose and they win, because their goal it to drag you down to their level. Dragging people down is much easier than lifting them up.

It's interesting to see how a spiritual master like Jesus allowed himself to get nailed to a cross by refusing to stoop. Now that is true embodiment of nonduality. And a very rare thing.

[Primeval]

I do believe in siddhis including healing powers.

I also believe Jesus was not even a real person evemerized.

Quote

The Evemerist vs. Mythicist Position 

The Evemerist Position: 

"Evemerism represents the perspective that many of the gods and goddesses of antiquity had been real people, such as kings, queens and other heroes and legendary figures, to whose biographies were later added extraordinary and/or supernatural attributes." 

vs. 

The Mythicist Position: 

"Mythicism represents the perspective that many gods, goddesses and other heroes and legendary figures said to possess extraordinary and/or supernatural attributes are not "real people" but are in fact mythological characters. Along with this view comes the recognition that many of these figures personify or symbolize natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon, stars, planets, constellations, etc., constituting what is called "astrotheology." As a major example of the mythicist position, various biblical characters such as Adam and Eve, Satan, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, King David, Solomon & Jesus Christ, among other figures, in reality represent mythological characters along the same lines as the Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian, Greek, Roman and other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths, rather than historical figures."

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/astrotheology.html

The above article was written by Acharya S. author of various books such as "The Christ Conspiracy"

Her material also was the direct inspiration for the first part of the renowned Zeitgeist documentaries by Peter Joseph (linked below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt-qYDb7UcI

That said... I do believe the Jesus of the Christian Gnostics was an Archetypal Figurehead, similar to the Buddha, that we can all be our own saviors and "find" the Kingdom of Heaven or Nirvana, realizing our own Christ Consciousness or Buddha Nature. Which BTW has very much to do with Kundalini Awakening. 

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Kundalini: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/kundalini.html Note how he mentions early on that many in the West (and indeed the East) are thinking they've had Kundalini Awakening but have not actually fully Awakened Kundalini at the least, and are charlatans at the worst. For the record Jiddu never claimed to be fully Awakened.

Kundalini and Chi/Qi are "mana" for the magick siddhis.

[Emerald]

@Leo Gura I've been reading through the comments and I'm glad to see you addressing a concern that I have about how people (especially people of a rational disposition) often respond to non-dual teachings. As opposed to the teachings opening them up to new possibilities of reality beyond the materialist view, it seems to close them off as the "power realms" (as Shinzen Young refers to them) can sometimes be a distraction from enlightenment work. So, the many varieties and layers of reality are disregarded completely. I personally have had some experiences that people would refer to as paranormal via OBE as well as a few other mystical experiences, and (in the moments that they are occurring) they seem just as real as anything else. But in my own closed-mindedness and unwillingness to be socially unacceptable, I often wrote off these very real feeling experiences as simply hallucination and dreams: cut and dried. It's only in the past couple years that I've been letting go of these socially motivated interpretations of the phenomenon, to admit that I truly don't know what's real. I don't know if paranormal experiences of entities that I've encountered are real, I don't know if the places I've visited are real, and I don't know if my typing this here is real. But I do know that it feels real. And I think that's what's important. I think experiences like these can enrich someone's life. I know that life takes on a much more magical and limitless feeling when I open my mind to these possibilities. It's like going from being in a room with no windows or doors to being in a room with windows, doors, and an atrium. 

[Leo Gura]

The last few portions of this thread have been modified to remove tangents subjects. A block of about 20 posts have been removed, including some of my own. Let's keep things on point please. No more wild speculation about everything under the sun. This thread is meant to be specifically about the book.

You can start separate threads about any topic you wish.

Forum functionality is limited, so I was not able to split off the tangent topics in a sensible way into their own thread. Feel free to re-create that discussion in a new thread.

[Sevi]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hunter Arrington "Hey, this is Ra, for Actualized.org..."

HAHA!!!
 

[Leo Gura]

Okay, I figured out how to split off that removed block of posts into a separate thread. You can find it in the Meditation, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Spirituality subforum.

[jse]

Ra, Ra, Ra... where did I hear that before?

Oh, yeah... Meet the Raelians: Inside the World's Strangest - and Nicest - UFO Sex Clone Religion

And so it appears that Ra is not alone:

These 10 Bizarre Religions And Cults Worship Aliens And UFOs

[SBB4746]

99% of people enlightened... as if there's a sure way to determine if someone is enlightened in the first place. 

[kurt]

2 minutes ago, SBB4746 said:

99% of people enlightened... as if there's a sure way to determine if someone is enlightened in the first place. 

Taking the statement too literally.  Its safe to say that the pursuit of realization is not a mainstream thing.  Unless you wish to redefine the boundaries of enlightenment itself?  We could even say that Donald Trump is enlightened - you need to keep an open mind.

[ULFBERHT]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is false.

In fact, it's dangerous.

Just because you choose to do that way, doesn't mean everyone else does. Those are your values at work.

By your logic, the only way to become enlightened is to lock yourself in a cave and do nothing but contemplate. And that's just factually false.

You can become enlightened while being artist, or running a business, or writing a book, or making music, or training to become an astrophysicist.

That gives me a lot of hope. Thank you. I was doing LPC and asking myself "well dammit I want to become (blank) but I really want to explore spirituality, too. How could I possibly choose?" I think at some point I might go into a cave for a little bit, but I don't want to do that now. I want to build a life for myself!

[ULFBERHT]

I looked at the PDF. Sorry, guys. I'm simply not ready for that shit. Too scary lol. No thanks. Not at this point. I may come back to it, but until then, y'all enjoy.

[kurt]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The problem with responding to critique is that it makes one look defensive, and only further feeds accusations of acting from ego. It creates debate, which is always anti-consciousness. There is no consciousness to be had in a debate. All ego needs to do to win, is drag consciousness into a debate. Instant win. Sorta like fake news.

In the battle between low consciousness vs high consciousness, low consciousness has more latitude and power. High consciousness has to stay high consciousness, which often just looks like silence.

It's sorta like waging war on terrorists. Every time you do it, you're forced to stoop to their level, and by definition you lose and they win, because their goal it to drag you down to their level. Dragging people down is much easier than lifting them up.

It's interesting to see how a spiritual master like Jesus allowed himself to get nailed to a cross by refusing to stoop. Now that is true embodiment of nonduality. And a very rare thing.

 This is not true.  Its silly. 

The world is not out to get you.  Its a nice place to be, even when it does seem as if people are lobbing stones at you.  

People earn respect by answering their critics.  It shows cultured intelligence and maturity.  I just hop e you learn to see the difference between being tested and a real power struggle.  People with a power struggle dont have an argument, people with an argument dont need power, they want to see what you are made of.

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by kurt

[Bebop]

Seems like a lot of pointless debating going on here, can't complain though its pretty entertaining . Anyway the pdf was pretty interesting, definitely some radical ideas although I'm still quite skeptical about it.

[Neo]

My 2 cents. Practice radical open mindedness. Ask if you are real, if you exist, ask in your senses are portraying everything to you. Ask what makes up your internal representation of the world. How accurate is it. What is it based on. But this is completely different to reading any shit and believing it. I won't call that "radical open-mindedness", I would just call it "stupid open-mindedness."

 

[Arman]

55 minutes ago, Neo said:

My 2 cents. Practice radical open mindedness. Ask if you are real, if you exist, ask in your senses are portraying everything to you. Ask what makes up your internal representation of the world. How accurate is it. What is it based on. But this is completely different to reading any shit and believing it. I won't call that "radical open-mindedness", I would just call it "stupid open-mindedness."

 

or as I once heard it, having your mind so open that your brain falls out 

[RossE]

@electroBeam Stop taking what they say seriously and look for the things they point to in your experience. You don't have to believe anything. Although I do maintain that a normal human being believing they can fly is just sheer delusion.

[hundreth]

57 minutes ago, Maorice said:

I think the ones who get caught in some of the worst theories are those who are not skeptic and don't give a damn about science. Not saying here that science doesn't do mistakes. There are many things wrong in science including there being some fundamental misunderstandings. In the end it is not very expedient to say the one side is more wrong than the other.

Furthermore what I want to point out is that it also depends on the question which is to be answered. If it is about the question for example if the earth is flat or round, then of course one can use scientific methods. Or if we talk about historic events. You can ask for instance if the September 11th attacks were done by Muslim terrorists around Osama bin Laden or by someone else, like an inside job for example. Or you can ask if Jesus really existed as a "real person" in history or if he is just a fiction, only existing in literature. These are some questions which are open to "substantial evidence".

There are some other questions, which are not open for "substantial evidence" like the ones exemplified. When someone talks about the nature of time and space or what matter essentially is for instance. These questions can hardly be answered by science alone.

So when it comes to "distant healing" and "contact healing" for example of course scientific methods, reasoning and so on apply there. You can "measure" results at least to a certain degree, you can set up statistics, you can compare with other methods, you can try to understand how, in which way, it works, if it works. There are many arguments against contact healing and distant healing. You can check their validity. It is a big field. But in my opinion you can come to an answer concerning the effectiveness and the limits of those methods. If you are not skeptic and don't give a shit about science, then of course you can believe anything. You can believe that it is possible to cure HIV by visualizing the infected is perfectly healthy.

I agree with this. You can make informed decisions using science.

For example, I read the PDF and came across the part where Ra describes how the pyramids were built through "thought" but made to look as though they were built by hand. I may be paraphrasing but that is the basic gist of the story.  The thing is, we have tons of evidence pointing to how the pyramids were built, and guess what: they fly completely in the face of what "Ra" is claiming.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html

Quote

"ZAHI HAWASS: We are lucky because we found this whole evidence of the workmen who built the Pyramids. We found the artisans. Mark found the bakery, and we found this settlement of the camp, and hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Overseer of the Site of the Pyramid, the Overseer of the West Side of the Pyramid. We found the craftsmen, the man who makes the statue of the Overseer of the Craftsmen, the Inspector of Building Tombs, Director of Building Tombs—I'm telling you all the titles. We found 25 unique new titles connected with these people. Then who built the Pyramids? It was the Egyptians who built the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid is dated with all the evidence, I'm telling you now, to 4,600 years, the reign of Khufu. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is one of 104 Pyramids in Egypt with superstructure, and there are 54 Pyramids with substructure. There is support that the builders of the Pyramids were Egyptians. They are not the Jews as has been said. They are not people from a lost civilization. They are not from outer space. They are Egyptian, and their skeletons are here and were examined by scholars and doctors. The race of all the people we found are completely supporting that they are Egyptians."

Quote

"And we found that those people, number one, they were Egyptians, the same like you see in every cemetery in Egypt. Number two, we found evidence that those people had emergency treatment. They had accidents while building the Pyramids. We found 12 skeletons who had accidents with their hands, and they supported the two sides of the hand with wood. And we have another one, a stone fell down on his leg, and they did a kind of operation, they cut his leg, and he lived 14 years after that."

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2012/07/build-great-pyramid-today/

Quote

"And isn’t it odd how ancient astronaut theorists never seem to talk about the failed pyramid projects, like the pyramid of Huni (the Meidum collapsed pyramid), built during the reign of Sneferu, the father of Khufu? Maybe the aliens were on vacation for that one. And also the Bent Pyramid . . . and the Step Pyramid of Djoser, which was built in stages after altering the non-pyramid burial mastaba style. These are all examples of human engineering — the Egyptians learned how to build pyramids gradually, trying new techniques and learning from failures. Pyramid engineering evolved through various transitions. The pyramids themselves demonstrate this quite clearly. To say they needed alien help is just insulting."

https://www.hopechannel.com/read/aliens-or-egyptians-who-really-built-the-pyramids

Quote

"A limestone quarry, located on the Giza plateau, 300 m (985 ft) south of the Great Pyramid, reveals that local limestone was used for the pyramid core. The quarry reveals how the blocks were cut out. In the quarry are the stumps of approximately 3- x 3-m blocks removed thousands of years ago. Trenches are found between them where the stonecutters would have worked. Blocks of stone were cut by pounding channels into the limestone using hammer stones to separate them from bedrock. These channels are clearly visible even today. The blocks were then detached using large wooden levers. Near the Sphinx, and in Menkaure’s quarry, can be found a number of unfinished quarry blocks that are almost detached from the bedrock. Huge lever sockets are also visible in Menkaure’s quarry."

Quote

"Clearly there is abundant evidence that the Great Pyramids were built by very human Egyptians rather than by aliens. Interestingly, probably the world’s leading authority on the Giza pyramids today, Mark Lehner, first went to Egypt as a New Age student, intrigued by the mysteries of the “Sleeping Prophet,” Edgar Cayce. As mentioned, Cayce believed the Giza pyramids to be remnants of an Atlantean society and also asserted there was a “hall of records" beneath the Egyptian Sphinx that held the historical texts of Atlantis. However, the longer Lehner worked on the Giza plateau, the more he realised that such notions “could not stand up to the bedrock reality of the Giza Plateau.” Accordingly he turned to an open-minded scientific method of discovery in order to understand the culture better. One can only hope that alien theorists will be as open-minded as Lehner was to the evidence. "

So open mindedness can only take you so far. When you reach evidence that goes against what you want to believe, part of being a truth seeker is accepting the truth. You have to weigh both sides to determine what is most likely to be true. Is it wiser to believe Ra, the extraterrestrial life form speaking through a human medium based on nothing more than hearsay, or is it wiser to trust the leading experts in the field spending years researching this stuff?

It only takes one error on Ra's part to destroy all of this story's credibility. I was open minded enough to read it, but that's where it ends. I'm calling bull on this one.

[Psychonaut]

@Leo Gura I have to start on page 69?! Yes sir!

[Leo Gura]

@hundreth So now here is an important intellectual point:

It's possible to hold partial perspectives.

It's possible, for example, to read this entire series of books, vehemently disagree with parts of it, but still get personal growth value out of it, AND hold the entire thing as just another partial perspective out of many. No one perspective being true.

That would be a great test of Stage Yellow Spiral Dynamics thinking.

Stage Orange would be the way you're doing it: look for one contradiction and throw the whole thing in the trash bin.

The reason I brought this book to you guys is not because I think it to be all true.

What's interesting to me, is that Ra's descriptions of Absolute Infinity are DEAD ON based on my direct experience. So if nothing else, you could learn about that. But also Ra's discussions of more practical matters like meditation, service to others vs service to self, chakras, etc can all be super-useful in your growth.

And perhaps most useful of all is that this book can be used as an antidote against your materialist, naive realist paradigm of reality. I'll tell you this much: your current paradigm of what reality is, is more wrong than Ra's. And what's worse is, you're so stuck in it, you can't break out even if you wanted to. I've personally found this book a great way to dislodge my unfounded beliefs about reality, consciousness, life, afterlife, reincarnation, evolution, good vs evil, free will, UFOs, the purpose of life, etc -- leaving me in a nice state of not-knowing.

The problem is, you don't yet realize how much of your "scientific" knowledge is just groundless belief in hearsay. So falling back to that default position by vehemently disbelieving this book doesn't advance you much. You're still stuck in a web of belief -- one you feel is "actually real" -- which is in a way the worst place to be.

"The better the model, the bigger the problem."

I've personally grown from this book, even though I find it hard to believe in some of the more far-fetched things in it, like Big Foot. I will actually be able to glean insights from this book and shoot videos about the insights, without ever mentioning Ra, and people watching will say, "OMG! That was amazingly helpful. Thank you for changing my life."

Sometimes you gotta be pragmatic more than ideological. Growing up is a messy business. And sometimes you should be happy to get whatever scraps you can scavenge.

So in a nutshell, be a self-help vulture

[stevegan928]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

be a self-help vulture