Beliefs and The Mind Deity Jehovah........ ..Is God only In Your Mind?

by frankiespeakin 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Robdar
    Robdar

    Isn't God A Trip?

    Excerpted From 'Fingerprints Of God'

    by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

    Book cover

    Read More Excerpts

    Dying In A Brain Scanner, Sort Of Laughing Back To Health What Turns People Into Spiritual Virtuosos? Searching For The God Spot text sizeAAA May 17, 2009

    Those who say life is short have never attended a peyote ceremony.

    This thought occurred to me just after midnight on July 23, 2006. Thirty-one of us formed a circle around a fire in an enormous tipi we had erected on top of a mountain near Lukachukai, Arizona. Thunder and lightning ripped through the sky, and heavy rain lapped under the edges of the tent, soaking our cushions and turning the dirt floor into a muddy paste. My companions sat cross-legged on the floor, motionless, gazing at the flames with sleepy eyes dilated by the mescaline from the sacred herb peyote. Three strapping young men with long black hair moved around the circle, pounding on a water drum and singing an urgent chant, which sounded to my untrained ears like, Doo doo doo doo DOO DOO doo doo doo doo DOO DOO. I understood nothing, since they sang in the Navajo language, Dine, but I felt the power of the chant like ropes wrapped tight around my body. I could not move, only breathe.

    But I wanted to move. I was desperate to move. I had been sitting for three-and-a-half hours on a thin, wet cushion. The only relief came in shifting from cross-legged to a kneeling position, and then for but a moment. Unlike my happy and stationary co-participants, I was not in fact stoned. I was an "observer" — an observer of one of the only forms of drug-induced spirituality sanctioned by U.S. law. Psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), and mescaline had been outlawed by the "war on drugs" in 1971, ending most of the emerging research on the states these drugs seemed to uncork. Only peyote and ayahuasca used in Native American religious ceremonies are permitted, which is how I found myself sitting in a tipi, bobbing my head to Navajo chants with a silly grin, wet and sore and as close as I could legally come to observing mystical states created by Schedule I drugs.

    Well, almost as close. I could have ingested enough peyote to reach an altered state myself. But I had opted out. Okay. I took a little. The law permitted Native Americans to ingest peyote for religious purposes only, and there appeared to be no loophole for NPR. More important, I thought the peyote might actually interfere with my work, since violent vomiting is common for the uninitiated. I then reminded myself that I had a stepdaughter, and tripping on sacred mushrooms might not be the best message to send a twelve-year-old. Whole truth be told, I also worried that the peyote would deliver on its promise and thrust me into an enlightened spiritual state. I fretted that God might be reduced to a chemical, making my own daily commitment to spiritual practices look a bit archaic. All that prayer and study, when I could just swallow a bit of mescaline — a little like using the Pony Express in the age of e-mail.

    Once in the tipi, I found that skipping the altered state was, from a culinary point of view, less of a sacrifice than I had imagined. When the peyote man first came around with his coffee can full of dark brown sludge and spooned the peyote paste into my mouth — using the same teaspoon for everyone, I noticed — I nearly choked on the acrid taste and lima-bean–like texture. Just as I was recovering from the paste, another man thrust a silver bowl in front of me. I reached into what felt like a mass of writhing worms and plucked out a peyote button, the cactus herb itself. I held the soggy yellow button reverently in my hand until he had moved on, and then quietly dropped it on the dirt behind me. I looked up to find a third man kneeling before me with a jug of green liquid — peyote tea — which he pressed to my lips before I could brace myself.

    The trinity of peyote would return every two hours or so, but after the second circuit I politely declined, leaving myself in a wired but not altered state. At just after midnight, the drumming ceased, catapulting us into silence, save for the hiss of the fire. Eventually the Navajo woman in the place of honor cleared her throat, and we all turned to gaze at her.

    "I want to thank you for praying with me," Mary Ann began in a reedy voice. "I know that the peyote and your prayers will heal me. Now I want to tell you something I have never told anyone." She paused, looking around the circle. "I need to confess to the fire."

    Courtesy of Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA)

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    I'm more interested in whether "god" helps people or hurts people. Are you a better person because of god? Or, does his influence on you have a negative effect on you and/or others?

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090801/wl_afp/pakistanunrestreligion

  • Robdar
    Robdar
    Are you a better person because of god? Or, does his influence on you have a negative effect on you and/or others?

    I don't think God has anything to do with those questions. If you are a negative person, anything can have a negative effect on you, even a big, delicious bowl of ice cream. Why blame God for the negativity? OTOH, if you have a positive personality, God has a positive effect.

  • megs
    megs

    I don't think God has anything to do with those questions. If you are a negative person, anything can have a negative effect on you, even a big, delicious bowl of ice cream. Why blame God for the negativity? OTOH, if you have a positive personality, God has a positive effect.

    You're kidding right?

  • Robdar
    Robdar
    You're kidding right?

    No. I am not kidding.

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt
    Why blame God for the negativity?

    First, I agree with most of what you said.

    However, if you'll read the article at Yahoo! News I linked to, you'll see an example of what I'm talking about.

    An angry mob of Muslims on Saturday killed six Christians and wounded dozens after burning 40 houses and a church over the alleged desecration of the Koran in a remote Pakistani town, officials said.
    "All the dead are Christians. I was told that they were burned alive," Bhatti said.

    So, in this instance, some human beings were "burned alive" because another group of human beings felt that they were being disrespectful to their god.

    If god gives you the warm fuzzies, I can understand why you like him. It would seem like a good idea to be his friend. If he tells you to go kill folks, you might want to discontinue being his friend, or maybe find a different god.

  • Robdar
    Robdar
    So, in this instance, some human beings were "burned alive" because another group of human beings felt that they were being disrespectful to their god.
    If god gives you the warm fuzzies, I can understand why you like him. It would seem like a good idea to be his friend. If he tells you to go kill folks, you might want to discontinue being his friend, or maybe find a different god.

    I did read the article and it's apalling. Still, I stand by what I said. The people who committed the atrocities are nothing more than common murderers. I do not see a connection to God in them.

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt
    I do not see a connection to God in them.

    I will agree to disagree with you.

  • Robdar
    Robdar

    NPR's "All Things Considered" ran a very intersting story on the spiritual experience. You can find the broadcast on npr.org.

    Bradley Hagerty On Science And God

    May 22, 2009

    Listen to the Story

    All Things Considered

    [2 min 47 sec]

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year researching the science of spirituality.

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year researching the science of spirituality. She concluded that science can't prove or disprove the existence of God. George David Sanchez

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year researching the science of spirituality.

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year researching the science of spirituality. She concluded that science can't prove or disprove the existence of God. George David Sanchez

    text sizeAAA May 22, 2009

    NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year exploring the science of spirituality for her book Fingerprints of God, and what she concluded was that science can't prove or disprove the existence of God.

    "But there was something that I saw in interviewing dozens of scientists," Bradley Hagerty tells NPR's Michele Norris. "The science of spirituality is like a Rorschach test — that you can look at the evidence and come to opposite conclusions."

    Bradley Hagerty says that a materialist would say a spiritual experience is just brain chemistry — or firings in the temporal lobe of the brain — and it's all explainable by material means. But someone else could look at the same evidence and say that people are wired to be able to connect with the divine and that brain chemistry is a reflection of an encounter.

    Bradley Hagerty says she could have taken 10 more years to research the book.

    "One of the great pleasures was interviewing people who have had spiritual experiences; it's not just the scientists," she says, adding she talked with Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, people who were spiritual but not religious. "One of the interesting things is what they described as a spiritual experience was basically the same: An encounter with light, an encounter with love, often an out-of-body experience. What that told me is spiritual experience is spiritual experience — it's a human phenomenon and in fact, it may be divine."

  • Robdar
    Robdar
    I will agree to disagree with you.

    Cool.

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