I follow the path of Vedanta because of faith, not because of conviction.
And I follow it out of Sharadda, which is faith born out of conviction 
I can respect that. Also your point about following (or not) logic, causality, and consistency is a good one. This is vividly shown in Christianity by the miracles of Jesus.
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;50148]Translation: You can’t answer them.
[/QUOTE]
Once again you’ve reached a wrong conclusion. Won’t is not the same as can’t. But as usual you distort the facts. It would be easy to give some glib and thoughtless answer like you do, but that’s just an exercise in egotism. So no, I don’t play that game, especially not with you, because you’re dishonest and your intentions are bad.
This is vividly shown in Christianity by the miracles of Jesus.
There you go, he finally admits he is a Christian 
A Christian is as irrational as irrational can get. They preach faith as a virtue, which allows them to believe whatever they want. First they believed in flat earth and young earth(Some Christian fundamentalists still do) They pick and choose what they want to believe and pick and choose what evidence they want as long as it supports their beliefs.
Although, most Christians have no choice but to accept old and spherical earth today, they still practice flat-earthism in other areas. Such as Christian scientists who oppose the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, because it rejects the precious reality they believe god created for them to play in. It is often these Christian scientists who dominate the scientific community who prevent serious research into parapsychology, consciousness studies and reincarnation.
Asuri wants to believe in a world that was created by his father in the sky. This is why he reacts with violence against anybody that says this world is not real, but an error of perception. But as we have seen very clearly he cannot refute any of the arguments or the evidence that show this world is not real.
Asuri defends dualism purely out of faith. He picks and chooses from anything, even Samkhya and Yoga that fit his faith in the miracles of Jesus.
@Surya Deva
You really are a dirty, low-down, no-good son of a bitch. The fact is that the miracles of Jesus defied the laws of nature. It’s completely irrelevant whether I believe in Christianity or not. It just reinforces the point that Awwware made.
[QUOTE=Asuri;50212]@Surya Deva
You really are a dirty, low-down, no-good son of a bitch. The fact is that the miracles of Jesus defied the laws of nature. It’s completely irrelevant whether I believe in Christianity or not. It just reinforces the point that Awwware made.[/QUOTE]
You confirm what I said that you react with violence against anything which challenges your worldview of dualism born out of faith in your religion of Christianity.
I have so far been called the following by you: a Hindu terrorist, psychotic and now a dirty, low-down son-of-a-bitch.
I have not yet called you anything. The violence in your words is disturbing and very unbecoming of somebody who claims to be an authority on Samkhya and Yoga.
Describing you in unflattering (but accurate) terms is not violence. Violence is making malicious and disparaging remarks against all members of the Christian faith, because you’re pissed off at me. I’m not the one who’s indulging in temper tantrums here.
[QUOTE=Asuri;50212]@Surya Deva
You really are a dirty, low-down, no-good son of a bitch. The fact is that the miracles of Jesus defied the laws of nature. It’s completely irrelevant whether I believe in Christianity or not. It just reinforces the point that Awwware made.[/QUOTE]
This is like a bad version of The Waltons…
[QUOTE=Asuri;49719]As I contemplate this a little more, I have to admit that in some dreams (some of my dreams anyway) there is a shared experience. The experience is not shared in this reality, but it is quite real and sometimes we even get information that we can use in this reality. So I think it may be fair to say that there is a reality that is beyond our normal waking state, but somehow connected. Both are real, neither is unreal.[/QUOTE]
The common assumption is that upon waking from the dream, that the dream has come to an end. In fact, there is really not much difference between what one is experiencing in wakefulness, and in dream. All that a dream is, is certainly projections of one’s unconscious to the conscious mind. The language of the unconscious is symbolic, metaphorical, it does not use the linear logic of the intellect. Hence it transmits information to the conscious in the form of projected symbols. But these projections of the unconscious do not simply disappear upon waking up from the dream. Most of what we experience in our so called ordinary wakefulness, is largely a projection of the mind. That is what subjectivity is. That is why no two human beings on this planet are being supplied with precisely the same experience, everybody is interpreting the world in a way which is absolutely unique. And what one ordinarily assumes as “reality” is largely a psychological projection, it is not something which is born out of seeing things as they are. Once one comes to see things as they are, free of the projections of the mind, then almost 95 percent of what one had considered reality will disappear. In that sense, transformation is always a kind of death - the Truth shatters everything that one has assumed as real right down to the very foundation. And because most people have invested their whole lives into the dream world that they have created in the mind, it becomes very natural to be terrified of dissolving it. Even if it has created a prison, one wants to remain in the prison. There are some people who have been living in prisons for so long, that even when their time has expired and they fulfilled their sentance, they had preferred to remain in the jail. Because they had become so accustomed to that way of being, that to live in any other way was almost unimaginable.
Even what we consider as “real” in our waking state is not at all too different than the same stuff which dreams are made of.
[QUOTE=Asuri;50212]@Surya Deva
You really are a dirty, low-down, no-good son of a bitch. The fact is that the miracles of Jesus defied the laws of nature. It’s completely irrelevant whether I believe in Christianity or not. It just reinforces the point that Awwware made.[/QUOTE]
That such miracles have happened, one is absolutely unaware. All that one has heard of the matter are just second hand reports, most of which are entirely unreliable. And because the story of Jesus has been handed down through centuries, like any other story, it is bound to be distorted and twisted in such a way that to know of what had really happened is impossible. What the man said, what he did not say, what he had done and did not do, the only way to know was to be in the presence of the man, a direct witness. And even in being a direct witness, then too there is a great possibility of misinterpretation. When Jesus says something to his twelve disciples, the moment the message even enters the ears, it has become distorted with one’s own interpretation, with one’s own misunderstandings, with one’s own prejudices. It has been the case with every spiritual teacher - whether it has been Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu, they have all been greatly misunderstood. Because to understand a Buddha, you must understand not the words, but the space from which the words are arising. To understand a Buddha, you have to come to the same space as a Buddha. To understand a Christ, you have to come to the same space as a Christ. Because all of their words and expressions are a direct outcome of something which is far more fundamental, which is direct experience.
As far as miracles are concerned, most of the miracles are either symbolic, or have just been invented by the disciples to give credibility for this man being the son of God. Because otherwise, he becomes just an ordinary man. If he is to become something like the son of God, he has to do something like be born of a virgin, which is impossible. But the same story of a miracle birth is there for Buddha, for Krishna, for so many others. Man feels the need somehow to justify his beliefs by giving it some quality of otherwordliness. Otherwise, Buddha was just an ordinary man, if Jesus had been born and died just as everybody is born and dies, then the whole charm of it is gone.
Even in the New Testament, depending on which gospels you are looking at, there are different reports about the same events. Some places, it is said that Jesus remained on the cross for six hours, in other places, nine hours, in other places, a different account. The descriptions of the “disciples” are also conflicting on many different points. And these are just from the four gospels which have been included in the New Testament. There are other gospels which are just as old as the four gospels in the New Testament, but had not been included in the Bible. And those gospels give a totally different account on the personality, the events, and the life of the man. Some have even said that he did not die on the cross. He remained on the cross for only six hours, when ordinarily it takes a man more than 48 hours to die on the cross. And he was taken unconscious, resusciated, brought back to health, and then quietly brought outside of Jerusalem, and left for Kashmir where he died. In Kashmiri history, the story of Jesus is well known. His name was Isa, who was also referred to as a shepherd, who came from Jerusalem into Kashmir and started teaching. They even claim that there in Kashmir, is the tomb of Jesus. Next to the tomb, the feetmarks of the man were taken through a method of stamping the feet onto metal, and there you can clearly see the scars on the feet from the crucifixtion. This is a very different account of the life of the man. There is even a Buddhist text which had been found in the Hemis Monestary, which mentions the same figure, Issa, a divine incarnation who had been taken from Isreal to a monestary in Jerusalem from the age of thirteen, learned the teaching of the Buddhists, and then started teaching in Persia and various places before returning to Isreal. And even in Christianity, nothing at all is known of the life of the man between the ages of thirteen to twenty seven, the accounts of those years are entirely absent from the Bible. This is again, an entirely different account of the life of the man.
As to what had really happened, it is impossible to say, one can only remain absolutely ignorant.
[QUOTE=Asuri;50250]Describing you in unflattering (but accurate) terms is not violence. Violence is making malicious and disparaging remarks against all members of the Christian faith, because you’re pissed off at me. I’m not the one who’s indulging in temper tantrums here.[/QUOTE]
I make critical remarks about concepts. You make violent and abusive remarks about people.
You have told Amir he makes you sick and he is insane, and have told me I am a psychotic Hindu terrorist and a low-down son of a bitch.
Like I said, I have been consistent in attacking concepts. You have been consistent in attacking people.
Anyway, it’s your crediblity mate, no skin of my back
You know Amir, you’re really very good. You talk about just enough generally accepted psychology to make yourself believable, then you start blowing smoke again. You’re really a classic con artist. Ordinary wakefulness is a projection of the mind? Not really. Ninety-five percent of what one had considered reality will disappear? No it won’t.
Why does Asuri get away with so many insults? To add his list of insults. He is now called Amir a “con artist”
Notice how neither myself or Amir have insulted him back even once.
While myself, Amir and Awaare and everybody else are discussing the central topic, Asuri is busy attacking
people with really violent insults. Surely this is against the t&c.
Apparently you missed what Awwware said.
Regardless of whether you believe in Christianity or not, the miracles in the Bible make the same point, that God is not bound by laws of logic, causality, and consistency. I’m not taking a position either way, I’m just saying, it’s the same point.
To accept the bible as proof for anything requires faith in the bible. That is called circular reasoning or begging the question. Amir has a made a very valid point, the bible is dubious because it gives contradictory accounts and makes exaggerations. It mentions how much the fame of Jesus had spread across lands etc, but the actual historians from that period make absolutely no mention of him.
You are obviously Christian, that we have all gathered - but you are possibly one of the most vicious and abusive Christians I have met online. Whenever any of your beliefs are questioned, even indirectly, you react by spitting venom.
This is how you make critical remarks about concepts? This was your response to the point I made above.
I feel compelled to correct what I said before. Actually it depends on the individual. It’s definitely true of Surya Deva, but thankfully it’s not true of everybody.
Actually I’m sort of a spiritual mongrel, about 40% - 60% Catholic, 40% -50% Hindu, and maybe 10% -20% Buddhist. I was raised as a Catholic and went to Catholic schools for ten years. I still have great love and respect for the people who taught me when I was young, even though I haven’t been a member of any church for quite some time. I’m not a member of a church, because I am just not a fan of religion in general. Still, I find your anti-Christian hate speech to be highly offensive, and consider it to be the mark of ignorance.