arvind.giri wrote:Arguing doesn't imply that your lenses are wrong :).
Accepting does not imply the lens is right. No believer says, ”I have blind faith”. It is always
others who have "blind faith”. Then there is faith based on provisional certainty, or probability, eg the sun
will rise tomorrow. The foundations of that kind of faith, built on The Knowledge of previous patterns, let’s us plan ahead, improve life. The Knowledge of previous patterns around claims of God surely behoves us to be most wary, sceptical, critical?
Am I? When did I say this? ... Again, when…. etc
In a forum discussion, it is easy to say that. It implies, ”I respect precision more than you, you cannot quote me directly therefore you are wrong”. It is a distraction because what is implicit in a position need not have been stated verbatim. That you said it is ”understood” because it is
implicit in accepting the BKWSU is
the organ of God’s work; their teachings are God’s Truth, its founder is
the medium of God and the highest human authority, even if he is dead and both supposedly channeled by another medium.
Should a medium for a medium be called a ”mediocre" ?
For only '1 hr', assume that intention of Lekhraj Kripalani (Brahma Baba) was noble. Then try to connect the dots. I am sure you will find the answer. Suddenly each and everything will start making sense to you.
Did you not read? Most here did that for years. You are not speaking to "never-were-BKs”.
Arvind: Honestly speaking, so far I don't have a very clear definition [of God]. Also agree with you that we should not shift these definitions. By the way, what is your definition?
My definition: Well, I suppose my definition is based on what God is Not. A being who is neither anthropocentric nor needing anything of us in any way, whose will and purpose is constant, i.e. not changing over time and relevant to all i.e. neither exclusive, divisive or categorising, never inconsistent with nature and the universe, whose ‘communications’ with us, if they ever occurred, would be unambiguous, independent of the vagaries of human language, society or culture at a particular time and place.
That you don’t have a clear definition of what God is explains why you might accept someone else’s claims about it.
A. What is the difference between a pint of milk and an elephant?
B. I don't know. What?
A. If you don’t know, I will not send you to buy milk!
The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor ... it is the mark of genius
- Aristotle
Folk tales are the products of collective genius. They are metaphors for many of life’s truths
We go to learn meditation, or seek peace, or find love, or truth etc. Instead we come back with ”God” - or ”magic beans” just like Jack in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
You’ll remember that Jack was young and foolish, ripe for the trickster who got him to swap his widowed mother’s last milking cow (i.e. their last earthly sustenance), for the promise of what five magic beans might bring (numerologically, 5 is the number of transformation). The beans did indeed grow overnight, very high, all the way into the heavens, above the clouds. Jack goes up.
While we are naive and foolish we are easily sold all kinds of ideals and false hopes. They even sometimes will lead to some magical castle in the sky, full of treasures and plenty. But like the mighty giant that lives in the heavenly castle, it will eat us, unless we wake up, use our wits and destroy the illusions.
We can escape ”back to earth” - for earth, not heaven, is where humans naturally live. And not just survive but now enriched by reclaiming the wealth stolen from our forefathers who had not the guile to outwit the giant illusion.
That is, the ”transcendental” life is not the end of the story. Unless people break free of the spell and come down to earth, they will become part of the giant’s "pie in the sky", feeding the illusion, allowing the tyranny to continue.
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BTW I d’ also like to hear your answers to EX-Ls questions regarding your BK history, How long? Which country? How involved?
A good example of why this matters is that this debate is like arguing with a staunch Western Leninist in the 1960s who had only been on the official guided tour of the USSR, who refuses to believe the stories about gulags, purges and genocide because it does not sit with his ideal of a workers’ paradise and what has been shown to him.
Sure, I too could also argue the case
for communism or God and how it is only because the ideal is betrayed by human beings that the ideal fails. Unfortunately, it is human beings that are the only thing we can be
sure of in matters of God, beliefs or ideologies.