Understanding GOD

[prabakaran_cad]

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem Science has with God, The Almighty.

He asks one of his new students to stand and.....
Prof: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.
 

Prof: Is God good?
Student: Sure.

Prof: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.

Prof: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him.
Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is this God good then? Hmm? (Student is silent.)

Prof: You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fellow. Is God good?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Is Satan good?
Student: No.

Prof: Where does Satan come from?
Student: From...God.. .

Prof: That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct?  
Student: Yes.

Prof: So who created evil?
(Student does not answer.)
 
Prof: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student: Yes, sir.
 
Prof: So, who created them?
(Student has no answer.)
 
Prof: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son...Have you ever seen God?
Student: No, sir.
 
Prof: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No, sir.

Prof: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
 
Student: No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.
 
Prof: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student: Yes.
 
Prof: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student: Nothing. I only have my faith.
 
Prof: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.
 
Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
 
Prof: Yes.
 
Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.
 
Student: No sir. There isn't.

(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)
 
Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat,

But we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold.

Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
 
(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)

Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
 
Prof: Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?
 
Student: You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness isn't.

If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?
 
Prof: So what is the point you are making, young man?
 
Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
 
Prof: Flawed? Can you explain how?
 
Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure.

Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.

To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Prof: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)
 
Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavour, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?

(The class is in uproar.)

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain?

(The class breaks out into laughter.)

Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.

With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
 
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable. )
 
Prof: I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.

Student: That is it sir... The link between man & god is FAITH.
 
That is all that keeps things moving & alive.......

[Omnicron Solaris]

And that is a really good post!
It seems as though there has been a dramatic rise in the number of atheists in the world recently.
They seem to like to bandy about terms like "no one has ever made a scientific measurement of the god the force " or something like "you believe in something that has no logical foundation.

Therefore God must not exist!
I cannot count the number of things in this world that defy logic and defy measurement.
Recently, on another message board (with more atheists than you can shake a stick at) I put forward the idea that most people can't even give an adequate definition of who "you" are.
If we want an EEG or PET scan or an MRI we can see the brain at work.  In some scientists say "there we have it!  Proof that we are thinking! I tell the subjects to think of his mother and we can see the blood flood into this particular area of the brain." I say that nowhere in this experiment we see where the self lies.
Where is the seat of the self? If we cannot even adequately identify within ourselves what this "me myself and I"  thing! So why in the world are we trying to define what God is when we can't even define what we are?
I like to call it a scientific arrogance.
I think it's just another human growing pain in the hope that is what it is.

[prabakaran_cad]

Dear Omnicron Solaris,

Thanks for sharing you views..

You are correct athiest population is increasing. And people are asking proof for every thing.

The spritulity starts where the science end..

Recently in USA Brain specialist done research of meditation on Swami Nithyannada swamigal and published the results.

I will provide more info on this

[CuriousK]

Evolution can be observed.

[tweety121]

evolution can be observed, but not in all the species.... so while it can be said to be applicable to certain species, it cannot be generalized to all species..

[Prof. Akers]

Speaking as an athiest and a Professor I'd like to say that no competant acedemic would leave themselves such a huge hole to fall in - I's like to say that but everyone has an off day.
I love these discussions about supreme beings, once a week I have lunch with my friend Fred; Fred is Pastor of one of our local churches and is a true born again Christian.
He believes that every word in the Bible is the literal truth, mostly we agree to differ on just about every single idea but after lunch I go teaching in a very peacefull frame of mind.

[Pravin Kumar]

Prof.

I know your views. I am posting below what I read and would like to know your views on them logically:

This is written in "OSHO'S" Book.

I said earlier that the same people who are very sexual are the people who experience real celibacy, because the same sexual energy is transformed and becomes celibacy for them. But when the ego disappears it does not change into something else, because in the first place it was only ignorance. There is no question of its transformation: it was only an illusion. It is as if someone in the darkness thinks that a rope is a snake, but when he gets closer he sees that it is really a rope. Then if you ask him, "What became of teh snake?" he will say, "Nothing became of the snake. There never was a snake. " There is no question that it has changed into something else.

In the same way, the ego is the result of a misunderstanding about your being. It is a deluded perception of being. To think that the ego is the being is the same as thinking that a rope is a snake. As you reach closer to your being you will find that ego does not exist. So it will not transform into anything else -- there is no question of a transformation because it simply doesn't exist. It was only an illusion which appeared to be there. Ego is ignorance, not energy -- but if there is ignorance it causes you to misuse your energies.What happens in ignorance is the misuse of your energies.

So remember, there will be no change to the ego, there will be no transformation because it simply doesn't exist. It was only an illusion which appeared to be there. Ego is ignorance, not energy -- but if there is ignorance it causes you to misuse your energies. What happens in ignorance is the misuse of your energies.

So remember, there will be no change to the ego, there will be no transformation. The ego will simply disappear. It is not an energy in that sense.

And the last question: Why is it necessary for the soul to become merged with existence?

It would be better if you had asked, "What is the need for the soul to disappear into bliss?" It would have been better if you had asked, "What is the need for the soul to become healthy?" It would be better if you had asked, "What is the need for the soul to go from darkness into light?"

The only need for the soul to dissolve into the divine is that life can never be fulfilled through pain and suffering. In other words, suffering is always unacceptable to life. Life always desires bliss. And to suffer is to be separate from the divine. When you become one with the divine, life becomes bliss.

So it is not a question of God or of the divine, if is a question of your rising from suffering into bliss, of going from darkness to the light within you. But if you feel there is no need, then be satisfied with you rsuffering.

But nobody can be satisfied with being in misery. Misery, by its very nature, takes you away from yourself: bliss, by its very nature, pulls  you back to yourself. The world is misery, the divine is bliss. The need to merge with the divine is not a religious need; the need to merge with the divine is a fundamental need.

So it can happen that someone will say not to God, but no one will say no to bliss. This is why I say that there is no such thing as an atheist. Only someone who rejects bliss can be an atheist. Everyone in this world is a theist -- a theist in the sense that each person is thirsty for bliss.

There are two kinds of theists: one is a wordly theist, the other is a spiritual theist. One believs in the world, that he will find bliss through the world. The other believes that only in the spiritual realm will he know bliss. The people you call atheists are theists in their attitudes towards the world; their quest is also for bliss. They are also searching for bliss. And today or tomorrow, when they realize that there is no bliss in this world, there will be no other alternative for them but to become curious about the spiritual.

Your search is for bliss. No one's search is for the divine, your quest is for bliss. Bliss is godliness -- I call the state of total bliss, godliness. The moment you are in a state of total bliss you are the divine. This means that the moment there is no desire left in you, you become the divine. Total bliss implies that no desire remains. If there is still some desire, there will still be some misery too. When there is no more any desire you are in total bliss -- and only then are you one with existence.

You have asked, "What the need is to be one with the divine?" I will put it like this: there is a need to be one with the divine because you have needs. The day you have no needs, there will no longer be any need to be one with the divine -- you will have become the divine.

Each person wants to be free of his needs. He longs for a moment of freedom where he is not bound by any needs, where he is just boundless and infinite; where there is nothing that remains to be attained. Nothing canbe taken away and nothing can be left behind. That boundlessness and infiniteness is God.

God does not mean that there is a man sitting up there somewhere, and you will be able to see him and he will bless you, and you will sit at his feet and have fun in heaven. No such God exists anywhere. And if you are in search of such a God, you are under an illusion. You will never find this God. Up to now, no one has ever been able to find this God.

God is the ultimate state of bliss of your consciousness. God is not a person but an experience. So you never come face to face with God in the sense that you meet him or you go to see him; a meeting in which he is standing in front of you and you are looking at him. Everything that you are looking at is imagination. When all imagination and all thoughts have disappeared from consciousness, suddenly you become aware that you are simply a living part of thsi infinite world, of this existence, of ths universe. The pulsing of your heart becomes one with the pulse of the whole existence. Your breath becomes one with existence, your lifeforce starts beating as one with existence. No boundary remains, no difference between you and existence.

Then you know, "Ahambramasmi, I am God." Then you realize that what you have known as your T is an essential part of the whole of existence. "I am existence" -- I call this the experience of godliness.

There are no more questions. Now, for a while, the people who are wanting to see me alone for a few minutes, can see me. If you want to ask something in private, you can do so.

During these three days, great showers of love, peace and bliss have happened in your hearts. I am one of those birds who has no nest, but you have given me a place in your hearts -- you have loved my thoughts and the outpourings of my heart. You have listened to them silently, and you have tried to understand them, and you have expressed love for them. I am grateful to you for that. I am grateful to you for what I have seen in your eyes, in your joy, in the tears that have come out of your joy.

I feel so happy. I am happy about the fact that I have been able to create a thirst for bliss in you. I feel happy that I have been able to make you feel discontented. This is what I see in my life, and perhaps this is my work -- to make those who are quiet and satisfied discontended; to wake up the people who are moving along quietly and say to them that this life of theirs is not  really life, that what they think of as life is just deception and death. Because a life which ends only in death cannot be considered to be life. Only a life which leads to the eternal life is truly life.

During these three days you have tried to live this true life, you have tried to focus on it. If your determination is strong, if your longing is deep, it will not be impossible to completely quench the thirst that you have quenched just a little during these days.

Toight, at this moment of farewell, I will say a few more things to you. The first is that if the longing to experience the divine has become a flame within you, quickly put that longing into action. Someone who postponed to do something good will miss, and someone who hurries to do something bad will also miss. Someone who postponed doing good misses, and someone who hurries todo bad also misses.

This is one of life's keys: stop and postpone when you are about to do something bad, but don't stop and postpone when you are about to do something good.

If a good thought comes to your mind, it is helpful to start acting on it immediately because tomorrow is uncertain; the next moment is uncertain. Whether or not we will be, it is not possible to say. Before death takes us we have to prove conclusively that death alone was not meant to be our destiny. Before death, we have to leaern how to experience something which is beyond death. And death can come at any time, it can come at any moment. So I need to be ready for it all the time; I have to be ready every moment. So don't postpone until tomorrow. If you feel something is right, act on it immediately.

Last night when we were sitting at the lake I told you about a lama in Tibet.  Somebody had gone to see him and to ask him about truth. There was a tradition in Tibet that you circle around a lama three times, bow down at his feetand then ask your question. This young man went, but he did not circle around the lame or bow down at his feet. Hejust went to him and said, "I have a question. Give me an answer."

The lama said, "First complete the formal rites."

The young man said, "You are demanding the ritual three rounds. I can walk around you three thousand times, but if I die during these three round before I have known truth, then whose responsibility will it be, mine or yours? So first answer my question and then I will complete the rounds." He said, "Who knowsl, I may die in th emiddle of the rounds."

So the most significant relization for the mediator is to be aware of the reality of death. He should be constantly aware that it can happen at any moment: "I will go to sleep tonight, and who knows...this may be my last night.  I may never get up in the morning. So tonight I should go to bed in such a way that nothing is left incomplete and I can sleep peacefully. If death comes, it is welcome."

So don't postpone anything beautiful until tomorrow. And postpone anything bad as much as you can -- death may come in between, and you will have been saved from doing something bad. If you get the idea to do something bad, postpone it for as long as you can. Death is not very far away -- if you can just postpone some of your bad actions for ten or twenty years, your life could become divine. Death is not very far away, his life can become pure. Death is not far away -- and someone who postpones to do something good for too long will not experience any bliss in life.

So I want to remind you that there is an urgency to do somethin good. And if you are feeling something good, then just begin with that. Don't think and postpone it until tomorrow. A person who thinks about doing something tomorrow does not really want to do it. "I'll do it tomorrow" is a way of postponing. If you don't want to do something, you should be clear that you don't want to do it; that is another matter.

But to postpone until tomorrow is dangerous. The person who postpones something until tomorrow has in a away postponed it forever. Someone who leaves something until tomorrow has in a way dropped it forever.

If something in life feels right, then the moment it feels right is also the moment to act on it. You hav to begin right in that moment.

So keep in mind the urgency of doing things that are good and of delaying things that are wrong. Also keep in mind that the keys that I have given you to experiment with about goodness and truth are not intellectual doctrines. In other words, I am not interested in explaining tbe birth of the new man in you.

The first birth we get from our parents. It is not a birth, it is only the arrival of one more new death. It is another cycle that will end in death. It is not a birth, it is only taking on a new body.

There is another birth which you don't get through your parents, but which happens through meditation. And that is the real birth. It is ony after this birth that one becomes a dwija, twice-born. One has to give this birth to oneself. So don't feel satisfied and at rest until you have known this second birth within yourself. Until then, no energy should remain dormant within you. So gather all your energies and start moving.

If you have worked hard, with determination, on the few keys I have given you, very soon you will find that a new person is being born within you, the birth of a totally new man. And the outer world will become new to the same extent as this new man has been born within you.

There is great light in the world, great brilliance and tremendous beauty, if only we have the eyes to seeit and a heart to receive it. And the eyes to see and the heart to receive can be born in you. And this is the only reason that I have shared all these things with you during these last three days.

Prof. I am no Pastor but I was born a couple of months after you and had more training up there. (smile). You were in a hurry.

Pravin Kumar

[Prof. Akers]

As ever my friend I'm rushing, but this time becasue to do an Osho, I'm rushing because I wish to take my time - one step at a time.
1st step.
'Your search is for bliss. No one's search is for the divine, your quest is for bliss. Bliss is godliness -- I call the state of total bliss, godliness. The moment you are in a state of total bliss you are the divine. This means that the moment there is no desire left in you, you become the divine'.
I have had fleeting bliss, a communion with???????????? I'm not sure what but not sure of it's divinity.
I know I long for this bliss but am I willing to subjugate myself in order to receive total bliss - I don't know.
I always think one day, when I get older I'm going to take up the saffron robe and go live in the mountains (not a physically long journey where I live), trouble is if I go who will teach?
Do I forgo my search in order to provide some form of stable older male figure to the kids, most of whom seem to have a never ending supply of 'uncles' moving in and out with their mothers.
The remainder of the piece I'll have to come back to, my wife to type a letter NOW!