Happy Sunday Morning!

This is inspired by way of the "Philosophy of Religion...." thread {I'm meaning to get back on that}. I've been asking around on 'myspace' about "spirit," and got this back in a response.

Without relating this to the other topic (yet), I wonder if others are as impressed as I am by this. So...

Just for Sunday Morning Musings:

[...in response to a point about the illusion of love, "j" wrote....]

"That's exactly it, samsara. The illusion of Maya... In some views of Hinduism, anyways. I was actually studying this just a few days ago, and then a friend pointed out to me a more important point about it that I'd been seeing clues about for months, but never completely pieced together. Fred's point was good, but just because the physical world we observe is an illusion, that does not mean that it is all false. Underneath the illusion is the cause of the illusion, what truly "is", and what we observe tends to reflect the essence of it. Regardless of the physical illusion, spiritual/emotional love still occurs, and I think that's what Fred's point was. But in regards to everything else? I think the point is simply to realize that what we observe is not what "is"... And once we realize what "is", we'll be able to know how to really observe what "is". I'm only just recently getting back to my spiritual path, but my opinion is that it's information, and information, by definition, yields information. The realization that we cannot observe what truly exists with eyes that do not truly exist.

Could I get your take on the two sides: Physically tangible, derived from G0d (religious); or an illusion or artifact of evolved mental consciousness development (secular)? -[my original question on myspace]

I think it's a mixture of both. An illusion that was evolved through consciousness, yes, but derived from God in that the spirit of true reality, is God. I don't think anything that composes us, or rather our ideas about it gained from stimuli, is tangible. I think it's solely an illusion based on the stimuli that it sends out. But something exists, something only observable by something that also truly exists, and I think our consciousness can allow us to do just that. Because our consciousness is kind of like flipping the reflection back over. It's an illusion created by an illusion from reality, going back to spiritual composition as opposed to physical composition. That's my take on it anyways... I believe that the essence of God is contained in this information, what truly exists... The information is what allows all phenomena to be possible... It's what sets down the rules for interaction based on its structure, and if the purpose of information, as observed, is for change, motion, and existence, then it must be God, by the loosest definitions. Not the anthropomorphic God, mind you, just a will... The will to do, to be, to exist. I'm not doing a good job of explaining this...." -j, with permission

...as I say, just for Sunday Morning Musings....

~SA

Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.