Originally Posted By: Ellis
It is possible to discuss brain surgery without a great understanding of the nature of the brain. Performing surgery may need high expertise but it is possible for a lay person to understand what is involved. We all have some understanding of living- I mean here, as in the state of being alive, though we would all have different ways to express our experiences of life. None are right, correct or the only answer. Similarly I feel that your conclusion regarding the ultimate reality is merely one opinion. You state:

Yes we can discuss anything without any degree of accuracy and we often do, compiling our collective beliefs into some form of accepted philosophy, but then if it is possible to actually know something for real, at what point does one come to the conclusion that knowledge is far more than the inexperienced opinion of personality?
Obviously the Earth didn't stop spinning as a sphere while man had the opinion that the Sun rotated around the flat earth.
Originally Posted By: Ellis
Quote:

"For anyone who has invested years into belief and, making assumptions of God without the actual experience of God, it can be a great blow to the ego to discover everything you believe in is built on shaky ground."

And for certain that could be so. However it is possible that another person making the same journey may have come to a different conclusion, as a person's experience of god is different for each one, and some belief may be rock-solid but flawed.

The only way you could be certain is to find something that everyone experiences differently but still remains the same.
God is like that. The personality experiences it with the senses but when the heart engages it beyond the senses everyone who has the different sensory experience has the same understanding of it and knows it to be the same.
Until then the ego tries to absorb and solidify what the senses have observed.
Then in that sense of understanding it becomes obvious when the brain surgeon talks to the layman and easily discovers the layman has no surgical experience and no expertise on the subject of brain surgery.
Originally Posted By: Ellis

Whilst the certainty that is shown by those who believe that they have achieved ultimate reality, or truth or revelation is enviable, it may in fact be no more verifiable than disbelief, and therefore have no more validity in argument (no matter how irritating the antagonist). After all who is to define the "shaky ground"?

Only one who knows the difference in truth and illusion.


Actually, I can put it another way. Truth and illusion separate leaving what is real for one who can see past the illusions of personal opinion founded on conclusions that are sense oriented to belief rather than universal mind. Universal mind becomes the mind of personality when one is in the NOW.
Ego has left the building... whistle


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!