(June 22, 2016 at 9:39 am)Gemini Wrote:

(June 22, 2016 at 9:27 am)Little Rik Wrote: Wrong again Gemini.

To understand NDEs you should also put yourself in God shoes so to speak but you can't because you start from the idea that God doesn't exist.
Suppose that God exist for a moment.
As God your intention is to teach something only to those who are ready to learn.
Why would you teach to someone who is not ready?
It wouldn't make sense that is why only some of the people who had an NDE experience God.

God is not there to show himself to those who don't care about him.
Not only that but he-she (God has no sex) is also not engaging in games or give evidences that he exist such as to show to skeptics tricks when an NDE can see things put there by skeptics as experiments.  

You just said that I was wrong that there is no objective evidence that NDEs support an afterlife, and then explained why we shouldn't expect to find objective evidence for this. Do you realize this?

Point to me the contradiction if you think there is one.  

@Rik

In your meditation does 'god' actually do anything - does it exhibit any sort of agency - or is it just a single object or point of focus/awareness like a light or whatever? Does Yoga meditation have similar aims as Buddhist meditation (apart from the god bit)... to lose 'attachment' to pretty much everything including the sense of self?

(June 22, 2016 at 9:44 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(June 22, 2016 at 7:54 am)Little Rik Wrote: Wrong again yog.  

Abstract is the mind that build the computer or the car or any other thing.
The computer is as physical as your body that wouldn't move unless YOU
decide so.  

You're just asserting that the mind is abstract.  What evidence besides NDEs do you have that the mind is intangible?

(June 22, 2016 at 9:27 am)Little Rik Wrote: Wrong again Gemini.

To understand NDEs you should also put yourself in God shoes so to speak but you can't because you start from the idea that God doesn't exist.
Suppose that God exist for a moment.
As God your intention is to teach something only to those who are ready to learn.
Why would you teach to someone who is not ready?
It wouldn't make sense that is why only some of the people who had an NDE experience God.

God is not there to show himself to those who don't care about him.
Not only that but he-she (God has no sex) is also not engaging in games or give evidences that he exist such as to show to skeptics tricks when an NDE can see things put there by skeptics as experiments.  

This is nothing but a bunch of fictitious claptrap.  Suppose God exist.  Suppose Peter Pan can fly.  Suppose Santa is real.
Gemini said there is no objective evidence and you haven't provided any.  All you've got is a 'what if'.
Stories about how God must be aren't evidence of anything.  All you've got is the bare claim that she is wrong.
And that doesn't amount to spit.

We know that humans got a mind but we can not see it touch it, smell it and so on.
Abstract things can not be perceived by physical senses that doesn't mean that they do not exist.

To perceive abstract things such as God we need something else and that is a developed consciousness.
All the rest will not work.
Atheists pretend solid physical evidence about something that is not physical and this is a demented idea.

If you follow this logic you will never find God.  

Assuming that there's a god to find.

(June 22, 2016 at 10:18 am)Emjay Wrote: @Rik

In your meditation does 'god' actually do anything - does it exhibit any sort of agency - or is it just a single object or point of focus/awareness like a light or whatever? Does Yoga meditation have similar aims as Buddhist meditation (apart from the god bit)... to lose 'attachment' to pretty much everything including the sense of self?

Yoga is all about reducing the distance that separate you from God.
As a drop of water that after so much trouble finally end up in the ocean she become the ocean.
There is no more distinction.
Now the drop of water is the ocean as the individual by merging in the ocean of consciousness
become God.
This is what yoga is all about.

Talking about Buddhism you got to be carefull.
Only a fraction of Buddhism follow what Buddha was teaching.
All the rest is religion which is worthless.  

(June 22, 2016 at 10:33 am)Little Rik Wrote:

(June 22, 2016 at 10:18 am)Emjay Wrote: @Rik

In your meditation does 'god' actually do anything - does it exhibit any sort of agency - or is it just a single object or point of focus/awareness like a light or whatever? Does Yoga meditation have similar aims as Buddhist meditation (apart from the god bit)... to lose 'attachment' to pretty much everything including the sense of self?

Yoga is all about reducing the distance that separate you from God.
As a drop of water that after so much trouble finally end up in the ocean she become the ocean.
There is no more distinction.
Now the drop of water is the ocean as the individual by merging in the ocean of consciousness
become God.
This is what yoga is all about.

Talking about Buddhism you got to be carefull.
Only a fraction of Buddhism follow what Buddha was teaching.
All the rest is religion which is worthless.  

Yeah, I know... I'm not interested in the religious/superstitious side of Buddhism at all, just what the Buddha actually said (allegedly obviously but still agreed upon... as I understand it... by all the different types of modern Buddhism)... the practical teachings on meditation and mindfulness etc. But whether he, or someone else, or even no single person said it doesn't matter because the whole point was that the proof was in the pudding... that it was not about 'faith' but seeing and understanding for yourself by observing your own mind. In other words if the message is good, learn from it, if not don't. Simple as that.

As to Yoga I see where you're coming from and it's a nice idea and probably something similar influences the idea of reincarnation in buddhism... a kind of shared stream of consciousness. But I don't agree with it... I don't believe in reincarnation or karma or anything past the death of the brain in this life. So what I see is mind-states in this life and nothing more... pretty cool mind-states and helpful psychologically but mind-states all the same... no matter how 'transcendent' they may seem. But that's just me.

(June 22, 2016 at 10:19 am)Little Rik Wrote:

(June 22, 2016 at 9:44 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: You're just asserting that the mind is abstract.  What evidence besides NDEs do you have that the mind is intangible?



This is nothing but a bunch of fictitious claptrap.  Suppose God exist.  Suppose Peter Pan can fly.  Suppose Santa is real.
Gemini said there is no objective evidence and you haven't provided any.  All you've got is a 'what if'.
Stories about how God must be aren't evidence of anything.  All you've got is the bare claim that she is wrong.
And that doesn't amount to spit.

We know that humans got a mind but we can not see it touch it, smell it and so on.

This is just a bare assertion. In cerebral achromotopsia (color blindness), some patients lose the ability to experience color. It's not that they simply can't perceive color. They can no longer remember scenes with color, and they can't imagine a colored object. This is a result of trauma to the brain which has affected a component of consciousness. It would seem that a component of consciousness is physically accessible after all.

That we haven't succeeded in localizing consciousness in the brain is not evidence that it cannot be localized and henceforth measured and manipulated as any tangible object can. All you have is negative evidence and that makes it an argument from ignorance.

(June 22, 2016 at 10:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: Abstract things can not be perceived by physical senses that doesn't mean that they do not exist.

To perceive abstract things such as God we need something else and that is a developed consciousness.
All the rest will not work.

More bare assertions. This again is not evidence that consciousness is intangible.

(June 22, 2016 at 10:33 am)Little Rik Wrote: Yoga is all about reducing the distance that separate you from God.
As a drop of water that after so much trouble finally end up in the ocean she become the ocean.
There is no more distinction.
Now the drop of water is the ocean as the individual by merging in the ocean of consciousness
become God.
This is what yoga is all about.

Sounds like a DMT trip. You got anything more than your fee fees that you experience 'God' while meditating?

Quote:"The presence of what is awesome, what is wildly and passionately and luminously alive, filled every meridian in the vast continent of my expanded being, an intensity of joy and love and life coursing like heavenly ambrosia through my electrified veins. It was as though I myself was God, moving through liquid ecologies of God, the self-crystallizing emerald labyrinths of the tryptamine dream time, a marvelous infundibulum of plasmodial calisthenics. What occurred was a total meltdown of everything I know and hold dear. [It was an] utter surrender into the honeycomb love womb of the universe reborn, born anew in a thousand unendingly magnificent eyes, and Maya and Lila handheld spinning in sundream dandelions, my five senses spinning like a zillion gyroscopes round the centripetal amethyst of this all and everything.”

10 Mind-Blowing Experiences Shared by People Who Took the Psychedelic DMT

(June 22, 2016 at 10:07 am)Little Rik Wrote:

(June 22, 2016 at 9:39 am)Gemini Wrote: You just said that I was wrong that there is no objective evidence that NDEs support an afterlife, and then explained why we shouldn't expect to find objective evidence for this. Do you realize this?

Point to me the contradiction if you think there is one.  

If you and I both agree that NDEs don't provide any objective evidence for an afterlife, then what am I wrong about?

So no matter how many people tell you that they had NDEs without any visions, that wouldn't change your mind about whether god exists. Is that what I'm looking at here, Rik? Because if so, you just answered your own question, didn't you?