Philosophical Speculations

But even if we assume everyone was thrown into an existence of suffering without any choice, that does not negate the freedom which is inherent in eternal purpose. The alternative would be no existence at all, in which case there is no possibility of freedom. Right, it does not negate freedom, but ...

On the suffering question, this is one that first made me an atheist. Long before I knew it was an old trope, I’d decided that if god was all powerful then he couldn’t be good, and if he was good then he must be powerless to stop the suffering. Now I see it very differently. I would of course never...

But this says nothing about whether we have free will. It just says that we have a purpose, and we will only really be the full embodiment of our true nature when we are aligned with that purpose. We could restate it this way - if there is no goal you are acting towards, then your actions become me...

Cleric, thanks for your elaborated post The facts of experience is that both self and no-self states are possible. I entirely agree, since both states are possible, the experience of both states makes the idea of the existence of self inconclusive as well as the idea of its non-existence. So far the...

The majority of physicists are very narrow-field specialists and are usually philosophically illiterate.

The digital people of bivalent logic tend to forget and deny by omission that transistor can work either as an amplifier or a switch. The continuous current of the amp works wonders with my black Gretsch without switches (for the duration of music). The switch function of boolean etc. logical gates...

Before we get too far sidetracked here, let me rephrase my earlier point as a simple question - do you believe "fate" excludes the reality of "freedom", i.e. more fate means less freedom and vice versa? That is what I got from your earlier post. Of course unlimited freedom is im...

That will clearly require more discussion if you disagree that they are polarities rather than mutually exclusive opposites. They can be pointers to ontic realities, or pointers to relative realities (such as archetypes) or pointers simply pointing to some collectively shared mind-created meanings....

Aloha, Lou :-) As a down-to-earth person I prefer to avoid such ambitious labels as "self-realized" or "mystic". Arriving at and stabilizing in this "zone" is simply a non-dual path of the development of consciousness, and I can't claim any exclusivity to it or superior...

Maybe you missed this part of this post? When there's no active thought process, there is also no self-perception as conveyed through that process. This seems to support the idea that the self only exists as long as the self-reflective quality of thinking is present. No, was commenting exactly on t...