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Sunday, June 22, 2008
God is?
God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The sensation in the minds of religious believers that there is a strong presence of another entity in the space with them, not identifiable with any of the other people that may be present. The characteristics of the sensed entity are normally determined by the traditions of the local society, and may or may not contain supernatural attributes like extraordinary wisdom or power."
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If you would have said, "...in the space WITHIN them..." imagine the implications; the myths about deities rarely portray said deities as being composed solely of "spirit stuff."
The space WITHIN is quite a different concept of God than the theistic one.
From my conversations with theists about God and the few times I have succeeded in experiencing God myself, God is clearly a separate presence. I am using presence in the sense of the God helmet experiment, which does not define the "stuff" of the presence.
I have experienced this presence in a secular setting and it definitely was not within, had a vaguely human form with a face that might be described as an idealization of my major mentors which in my case were all non-religious. No feeling of God, just "aunt/uncle" beside me conversing. Many of my mentors were female, I come from a family of strong females who were that way long before it was politically correct.
You should know that I respect you sufficiently to not only listen carefully to your analysis of others but also believe that you have been powerfully convinced of the accuracy of your perceptions of your personal experiences.
When having some entertaining debates with Onefreespirit, I cannot help but admire the mind even if I think the conclusions that mind makes are not the best ones, all the time. [How's that for "beating around the bush?"]
One of the successes of religions is the almost innate understanding of and effective manipulation of the human psyche. The human mind is powerful beyond measure but for most of life, its power lays hidden in the trivial and mundane pursuits of daily life. Durkheim, Campbell and others correctly observed that religion, within the act of establishing a "sacred framework," enabled practitioners to experience transcendent moments, so much apart from the norm that their appeal was cemented into the hopes of the seekers.
Being raised in the AoG Church and "guided" by the Jesuits for 5 years also exposes one to a number of rather distinct ideas regarding finding and experiencing the "presence of God." Without belaboring the point, I simply have found better explanations for those experiencesa that rely only upon the power of the human mind and do not require the contributions of any agency or agent.
I am not arguing for the existence of an external agency or agent as the source for the presence of God. Religions use the fiction that there is an entity, God, that is separate from and greater than all to justify their corporate place in the social structure of the community.
The presence I am speculating on, and it is definitely a speculation at this point, is that the presence is a collective resource created or at least maintained by the individuals in the parish. It is not external in the sense that it comes down "from Heaven" to the church, but is generated in the collective minds of those who are part of the local society.
In other words God in the Greenwich Village RC Parish is totally unrelated to and separate from the God of the Hispanic East Harlem RC parish. I might be able to feel the presence of the Greenwich God as I am emotionally close to and intellectually similar to several individuals in that parish, and could (rarely) use their connection to God to piggyback in. I would be shut out of the East Harlem God by having no connection with anyone in the parish.
In any event the collective consciousness is created by and the property of a unique and relatively small group of people, but is a group not an individual property.
To leave religion and God entirely, have you ever been a participant in a "magic" performance, perhaps as Santa or as a performer in a musical group where you, and the audience are "in sync" and feeding off one another to become immersed in the moment?
The guy in the fancy dress might say God came down to bless the group. I would say the group resonated for the sheer joy of being a part of an intensely human experience of community.
Since I am the one-true Santa Claus, there is nothing "magic" about what I do or experience. It's all quite normal, actually.
As I presented the material of Durkheim in another post, I won't repeat it here but his idea of CE (Collective Effervescence)resonates with me, moreso than a collective consciousness.
Your speculation on the nature of "God" is interesting and the idea appeals to me enough that I hope you turn out to be right but also suspect that the notion is likely not the best explanation of the phenomenon.
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