Is it just me who is going through a lot of existential angst about idealism?

[AshvinP]

Hi Ashvin

I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying explicitly that self-remembering is the first step. Then, I've also spoken about a second step (non-dualism), and I have never excluded there being other steps. These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are.

And, in the same way that Cleric is repeating how Thinking is not thinking, I am repeating how self-remembering is not just intellectually assuming I am always present during our normal waking state. And also in the same way Cleric is saying (or at least that's how I understand him), that unless you are Thinking you are just playing intellectual games, I'm saying the same about self-remembering.

Your quote is no doubt true. But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all. The steps may look like they are going up, but they are still on the horizontal and not the vertical.

But clearly, I'm not expressing myself well.

Mike,

What reason do you have to be confident there are more steps? Who are the people 'far wiser' and what steps have they claimed beyond the "self-remembering" step and how did they imagine these steps (I realize they cannot be described, but I am looking for any indication of what vicinity of experience they are in, like Cleric provides for Imaginative, Inspirative, Intuitive consciousness)?

No one has claimed what you wrote in bold, and we all agree with the underlined. Along with the 2 questions above, my other question is why you think Cleric's imaginative consciousness is "still on the horizontal and not the vertical"?

Hi Ashvin

First, where did I say I'm confident there are other steps? I said "These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are."

I've mentioned Gurdjieff extensively in this discussion, and I've mentioned how he structures One World in terms of octaves. he also structures the type of Being in One World, which of these are and are not available to us as we are, and which we can grow into. And he details the capabilities of beings at every level. If you are interested in his ideas, you can download "In Search of the Miraculous" by PD Ouspensky for free.
Also Buddhism structures One World in the same way, with multiple steps on the ladder of Being.
So does Kabbalah.
Christianity has levels of Being as well, Angels, Archangels, etc. But I'm not read up on those so I don't know for sure.
So, if you're trying to intimate that only Cleric is outlining multiple levels of being and multiple levels of One World, that is incorrect.

Second, I never said that "Cleric's imaginative consciousness is still on the horizontal and not the vertical" When I said "But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all.", I thought I was clearly saying that unless one is self-remembering / Thinking / conscious / present, then whatever one hears will be heard at the horizontal level, no matter how profound the utterances are. "Him who has ears to hear, let him hear." or however it goes.

I would never make a judgement about whether Cleric, you, or anyone else here can hear what is being said. I can only speak for myself, and I have repeatedly said that much of what is said here is beyond my experience.

And my focus on this first step of being present to what is happening in the mind, self-remembering, Thinking, and so on, is because I know myself how easy it is to just get sucked into the horizontal intellectual games of analysing what people are saying, and trying to agree or refute because I do or don't agree with it.

Mike,

The whole discussion has been about pointing you to the fact that the "multiple levels", which certainly exist, do not only need to be "outlined" as intellectual diagrams to speculate over, but can be concretely and consciously experienced. We can actually grow into those levels of Be-ing with our Thinking-consciousness. Remember, your initial comment to me said:

Therefore, to find, or get to, or approach (all these words are wrong, just metaphors or pointers), One World, to experience non-dual, one has to experience the consciousness out of which duality arises. You can't "trace back" to non-dual by examining "thought-forms", because "thought forms" are by their very nature already dual. If you observe your thought forms, there is your consciousness observing, and the thought forms, and you are in duality.
...
And mindfulness allows us into the next step:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

To be clear, I have no problem with this response and encourage such comments, but it certainly sounded like a judgment on our approach which we then sought to also address. So then Cleric illustrated why inaction, in the sense you were using it in that comment and subsequent comments, will get us stuck at the mindfulness step, and how we can evolve beyond that step by remaining connected with our esssential spiritual (thinking) activity as we ascend to higher octaves in full consciousness. You now seem to be admitting this can be done, but for some reason you don't feel Cleric or Steiner did it. They speak to us of a conscious path precisely into these higher octaves where the more conscious angelic beings reside who weave together our inner experience. So my question remains, what part of that are you now disputing and why?

[mikekatz]

Mike,

The whole discussion has been about pointing you to the fact that the "multiple levels", which certainly exist, do not only need to be "outlined" as intellectual diagrams to speculate over, but can be concretely and consciously experienced. We can actually grow into those levels of Be-ing with our Thinking-consciousness. Remember, your initial comment to me said:

Therefore, to find, or get to, or approach (all these words are wrong, just metaphors or pointers), One World, to experience non-dual, one has to experience the consciousness out of which duality arises. You can't "trace back" to non-dual by examining "thought-forms", because "thought forms" are by their very nature already dual. If you observe your thought forms, there is your consciousness observing, and the thought forms, and you are in duality.
...
And mindfulness allows us into the next step:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

To be clear, I have no problem with this response and encourage such comments, but it certainly sounded like a judgment on our approach which we then sought to also address. So then Cleric illustrated why inaction, in the sense you were using it in that comment and subsequent comments, will get us stuck at the mindfulness step, and how we can evolve beyond that step by remaining connected with our esssential spiritual (thinking) activity as we ascend to higher octaves in full consciousness. You now seem to be admitting this can be done, but for some reason you don't feel Cleric or Steiner did it. They speak to us of a conscious path precisely into these higher octaves where the more conscious angelic beings reside who weave together our inner experience. So my question remains, what part of that are you now disputing and why?

Hi Ashvin

Mike,

The whole discussion has been about pointing you to the fact that the "multiple levels", which certainly exist, do not only need to be "outlined" as intellectual diagrams to speculate over, but can be concretely and consciously experienced. We can actually grow into those levels of Be-ing with our Thinking-consciousness.

I know you're trying, and I'm trying, but we are missing each other. I've said so many times, but I'll try again:

• For me, in terms of my experience, there are two vertical levels available to me, self-remembering and the non-dual state.

• I've also said repeatedly that I'm not denying further levels, I just haven't experienced them.

• And I keep repeating that I'm in no way insinuating, claiming, or assuming that Cleric, you, or anyone else on this forum does not have access to these levels that I have not experienced.

Can we please put this to rest once and for all?

As to your last sentence, I have no idea what "growing into a level of being" means. It's just an intellectual idea for me, that I can't investigate because I don't experience it.

Do I have more insight in general, and do I see more and more of the underlying influences that shape how I see things? Absolutely! Thanks to self-remembering / Thinking, when I am doing it, there's an ability (because I am conscious right there), to inspect where the thoughts and feelings and attitudes are coming from. Sometimes I have the opportunity to not respond as before.

And this ability is strengthened the more I experience the non-dual state in meditation (which also does not happen every time), because when I "come back" it's easier to realise that there is just One World, even though it seems dual.

... So then Cleric illustrated why inaction, in the sense you were using it in that comment and subsequent comments, will get us stuck at the mindfulness step, and how we can evolve beyond that step by remaining connected with our esssential spiritual (thinking) activity as we ascend to higher octaves in full consciousness. You now seem to be admitting this can be done, but for some reason you don't feel Cleric or Steiner did it. They speak to us of a conscious path precisely into these higher octaves where the more conscious angelic beings reside who weave together our inner experience. So my question remains, what part of that are you now disputing and why?

Self-remembering is inaction? I never said or intimated that. On the contrary, I said that if you are not self-remembering / Thinking, you are completely inactive because your actions come from your habits, your culture, your instincts, etc. You are not conscious, so you are not acting. You are just reacting mechanically in terms of your past.

So self-remembering / Thinking is the only time when we are truly active in our lives. Can we put that to rest too?



You make it sound like I'm attacking Steiner, Cleric, you, and I'm really not. I'm not even sure there's a difference between self-remembering and Thinking. These are just two terms to describe a way of experiencing, and they sound quite similar.

So I'm not disputing anything. I can't dispute what anyone else experiences.

The only thrust of what I'm trying to get across is that unless the readers of the words on this forum are self-remembering / Thinking while they are reading, it will all be intellectual games for all of us. It will be horizontal.

And that is why I'm trying to peacefully extricate myself from this, . But every time I do, you come back saying that I said something which I absolutely didn't, quite the opposite. In this post, that I'm denying more than two levels, I'm denying anyone else experiences more than two levels (or anything at all), and that self-remembering is passive. And my intellect vainly won't let it go , so I am also engaging in intellectual games. And it's just vanity, I don't want to be seen as saying something contradictory to my beliefs.

Go in peace, my friend.

[AshvinP]

And that is why I'm trying to peacefully extricate myself from this, . But every time I do, you come back saying that I said something which I absolutely didn't, quite the opposite. In this post, that I'm denying more than two levels, I'm denying anyone else experiences more than two levels (or anything at all), and that self-remembering is passive. And my intellect vainly won't let it go , so I am also engaging in intellectual games. And it's just vanity, I don't want to be seen as saying something contradictory to my beliefs.

Go in peace, my friend.

Mike,

Of course we can put it to rest. I am not forcing you to discuss anything. But you did say everything I represented, because I literally quoted you without adding any words or taking them out of context. It is most bewildering to me when people write something in plain text, and then come back and say they didn't claim that, were never claiming that, were not disputing anything, and really didn't even mean to comment on the forum, but somehow stumbled onto their keyboard, typed out a response, and sent it

Once again, what you wrote in your last comment doesn't square with what you originally wrote, quoted again below. I am just offering you an opportunity to clarify what you meant and what any of it has to do with what we were discussing prior to your comment. If there is no relation, then that's fine as well.

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

It should also go without saying, the use of human language for communication is not "intellectual game". Without it, none of the nondual Wisdom you cherish would have ever been disseminated into broader culture. The words we use here are symbols which can orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds. These words, as outer forms reflecting inner logic, have direct continuity with the Divine Word which permeates the higher-octave inner logic of higher consciousness. That is a major point Cleric illustrated to you in his several posts, which you seem to have ignored. The words only become "intellectual games" when we refuse to take that continuity seriously, instead adopting a duality between human reason and "nondual consciousness".

[mikekatz]

Mike,
Of course we can put it to rest. I am not forcing you to discuss anything. But you did say everything I represented, because I literally quoted you without adding any words or taking them out of context. It is most bewildering to me when people write something in plain text, and then come back and say they didn't claim that, were never claiming that, were not disputing anything, and really didn't even mean to comment on the forum, but somehow stumbled onto their keyboard, typed out a response, and sent it

They are out of context, see below.
Of course, I never "stumbled onto my keyboard". I had something to say, and once it was clear that I was either communicating badly, or what I had to say was uninteresting, or just plain wrong, and as their also was not much response (not that I don't appreciate you and Cleric's responses), I said that I wanted to stop. Which I still want to do, if you'll just stop taking things out of context.

Once again, what you wrote in your last comment doesn't square with what you originally wrote, quoted again below. I am just offering you an opportunity to clarify what you meant and what any of it has to do with what we were discussing prior to your comment. If there is no relation, then that's fine as well.

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

Again I'll try what I tried in the very last post. In my experience, there are two vertical states. Two, Ashvin. One is active (self-remembering) and one is neither active nor passive, because the non-dual state is neither active nor passive. You have quoted me and not read the whole paragraph. I said it's not an action, because activity implies duality. If there's action, there's a subject performing an action, and an object being acted upon. It's dual, it can't be non-dual. If "inaction" didn't make it clear enough, I apologise. Will "unaction" or "non-action" do? These are all approximate and only pointers, and you could see those as passive too.
But didn't you get the meaning of what I meant when I said "inaction"? See below.

It should also go without saying, the use of human language for communication is not "intellectual game". Without it, none of the nondual Wisdom you cherish would have ever been disseminated into broader culture. The words we use here are symbols which can orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds. These words, as outer forms reflecting inner logic, have direct continuity with the Divine Word which permeates the higher-octave inner logic of higher consciousness. That is a major point Cleric illustrated to you in his several posts, which you seem to have ignored. The words only become "intellectual games" when we refuse to take that continuity seriously, instead adopting a duality between human reason and "nondual consciousness".

If I was responding to you the way you are to me, I'd point out that at the start of the paragraph you say it goes without saying language is not an intellectual game, and you end the paragraph saying when words do become intellectual games.

Instead, I'll repeat for the umpteenth time that I said then and say now that words become an intellectual game unless the reader reads the words in a vertical state. My exact words:

The only thrust of what I'm trying to get across is that unless the readers of the words on this forum are self-remembering / Thinking while they are reading, it will all be intellectual games for all of us. It will be horizontal.

To top it all, you are saying the exact same thing in this paragraph, except that you are intimating I did not also say it.

I'll further strengthen the intellectual games issue by asking why you chose to read my use of the word "inaction" as being about a passive state, when clearly in context of the sentence it was meant to signify a non-dual state where neither activity nor passivity can apply? Here it is again:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

All you got out of this sentence is that I am saying that something or other is passive?? It's like you read the sentence, parsed it, and said "Aha. Inaction. He's contradicting himself. Got him!"

Where in your reading of my sentence was the vertical? Where was, to quote you above, "...orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds", or again from you "The words we use here are symbols which can orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds."

Is it only Cleric's words, or Steiner's, that should be read in this manner?

Do you read what I say just to find what's wrong with it, without making just a little vertical effort to follow along with me? I'm doing my best to read what you say vertically, and therefore, despite the different vocabulary, I'm often finding agreement with what Cleric and you are saying.

Again, I'll repeat what I said above, that in the case of this last paragraph I am in agreement with you. I'm saying the exact same thing, which is, as I said in my last post, the precise reason I started the conversation and yet you can't see that, and in fact you think I am saying the opposite. So I feel the need to quote it again even though I did above.

The only thrust of what I'm trying to get across is that unless the readers of the words on this forum are self-remembering / Thinking while they are reading, it will all be intellectual games for all of us. It will be horizontal.

[Jim Cross]

Mike,

Like many on this forum, you have fallen into the trap of trying to have a coherent conversation without insults, accusations, misinterpretations, or having your integrity or spiritual experience questioned,

Best thing to do is put all of the Steinerites on your foe list and ignore them. On most topics on the forum now almost all of the content will be not be displayed except for the posts of few people like you who still seem to be trying to have a conversation with them. They do seem to have quite a active conversation going on among themselves anyway.

[AshvinP]

Mike,
Of course we can put it to rest. I am not forcing you to discuss anything. But you did say everything I represented, because I literally quoted you without adding any words or taking them out of context. It is most bewildering to me when people write something in plain text, and then come back and say they didn't claim that, were never claiming that, were not disputing anything, and really didn't even mean to comment on the forum, but somehow stumbled onto their keyboard, typed out a response, and sent it

They are out of context, see below.
Of course, I never "stumbled onto my keyboard". I had something to say, and once it was clear that I was either communicating badly, or what I had to say was uninteresting, or just plain wrong, and as their also was not much response (not that I don't appreciate you and Cleric's responses), I said that I wanted to stop. Which I still want to do, if you'll just stop taking things out of context.

Once again, what you wrote in your last comment doesn't square with what you originally wrote, quoted again below. I am just offering you an opportunity to clarify what you meant and what any of it has to do with what we were discussing prior to your comment. If there is no relation, then that's fine as well.

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

Again I'll try what I tried in the very last post. In my experience, there are two vertical states. Two, Ashvin. One is active (self-remembering) and one is neither active nor passive, because the non-dual state is neither active nor passive. You have quoted me and not read the whole paragraph. I said it's not an action, because activity implies duality. If there's action, there's a subject performing an action, and an object being acted upon. It's dual, it can't be non-dual. If "inaction" didn't make it clear enough, I apologise. Will "unaction" or "non-action" do? These are all approximate and only pointers, and you could see those as passive too.
But didn't you get the meaning of what I meant when I said "inaction"? See below.

It should also go without saying, the use of human language for communication is not "intellectual game". Without it, none of the nondual Wisdom you cherish would have ever been disseminated into broader culture. The words we use here are symbols which can orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds. These words, as outer forms reflecting inner logic, have direct continuity with the Divine Word which permeates the higher-octave inner logic of higher consciousness. That is a major point Cleric illustrated to you in his several posts, which you seem to have ignored. The words only become "intellectual games" when we refuse to take that continuity seriously, instead adopting a duality between human reason and "nondual consciousness".

If I was responding to you the way you are to me, I'd point out that at the start of the paragraph you say it goes without saying language is not an intellectual game, and you end the paragraph saying when words do become intellectual games.

Instead, I'll repeat for the umpteenth time that I said then and say now that words become an intellectual game unless the reader reads the words in a vertical state. My exact words:

The only thrust of what I'm trying to get across is that unless the readers of the words on this forum are self-remembering / Thinking while they are reading, it will all be intellectual games for all of us. It will be horizontal.

To top it all, you are saying the exact same thing in this paragraph, except that you are intimating I did not also say it.

I'll further strengthen the intellectual games issue by asking why you chose to read my use of the word "inaction" as being about a passive state, when clearly in context of the sentence it was meant to signify a non-dual state where neither activity nor passivity can apply? Here it is again:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction.

All you got out of this sentence is that I am saying that something or other is passive?? It's like you read the sentence, parsed it, and said "Aha. Inaction. He's contradicting himself. Got him!"

Where in your reading of my sentence was the vertical? Where was, to quote you above, "...orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds", or again from you "The words we use here are symbols which can orient us towards useful perspectives and approaches to ascending in consciousness to higher worlds."

Is it only Cleric's words, or Steiner's, that should be read in this manner?

Do you read what I say just to find what's wrong with it, without making just a little vertical effort to follow along with me? I'm doing my best to read what you say vertically, and therefore, despite the different vocabulary, I'm often finding agreement with what Cleric and you are saying.

Again, I'll repeat what I said above, that in the case of this last paragraph I am in agreement with you. I'm saying the exact same thing, which is, as I said in my last post, the precise reason I started the conversation and yet you can't see that, and in fact you think I am saying the opposite. So I feel the need to quote it again even though I did above.

The only thrust of what I'm trying to get across is that unless the readers of the words on this forum are self-remembering / Thinking while they are reading, it will all be intellectual games for all of us. It will be horizontal.

Ok Mike, that's fine. I disagree anything is being misrepresented and I think that is used as pretext for expressing your arguments while claimimg "I am not expressing any arguments". I will end with this final comment.

You just restated above exactly what we were calling "dualism of non-dualism". You are inserting dualisms all over the place, and then usung your own insertions to claim we can't even usefully discuss higher cognition unless we are reading the words with higher cognition. Do you see the glaring issue here? Put simply, this dualism excludes any path of redemption of less advanced spiritual beings through voluntary sacrifice of more advanced beings. In an effort to flatten and equalize everything, this nondual view practically ensures that further spiritual evolution will become impossible for those who need it the most (if most were to adopt that view). This isn't limited to higher worlds, either, but our world right now. The only reason human civilization got to where it is now is because of a natural differentiation between beings at different stages of development who can communicate effectively with each other towards genuine knowledge.

It's really a concerning trend that modern mysticism subconsciously seeks to deny the very efficacy of human speech. My criticism here is always aimed at the underlying mindset and those who adopt these positions for themselves today, centuries later, despite having every opportunity to perceive its flaws, never the philosophies, religions, thinkers who originally formulated the arguments or revealed the Wisdom. Many of those were the best possible formulations for their time. None of them are "wrong", only incomplete. "All evil is untimely good." Our memory of the past is not there for our own judgments against this or that particular person or idea, but for our learning and progress away from the shared mistakes of all people and all ideas. 

What I am speaking is actually very elementary. First, we need to admit that we are all thinking to reach conclusions. We forget this because we arbitrarily stop reasoning when reaching desired conclusions. "Don't stop on any step, no matter how high, or it will become a snare". What is the inner meaning of movement and its cessation? Living beings will wither away if they stop moving; their muscles will atrophy and, without constant external support, eventually their inner processes will fail as well. We most immediately discern whether we are confronting a living being when perceiving if that being is moving. We will conclude a man who is slumped over in a chair is likely dead, instead of asleep, when he fails to move in response to any stimulus.

The dualistic mental habit will treat physical movement as separate from spiritual (ideal) movement, but it's easy to see the former is a reflection of the latter. We only move physically of our own will when we first have the idea to move and the mental picture of where we desire to move; the idea evokes the will. This 'right brain' skill is learned very early in life and becomes so seamless for most movements that we hardly notice it taking place. The 'left brain' intellect will even tell itself the story that "ideal activity had nothing to do with my movement". That is also what occurs in relation to ideal movement. An otherwise well thought-out worldview, full of vitality when it was first born and grew into the world, will decay and die when it stops moving through the strength of further reasoning. The intellect will convince itself that "the worldview was never reasoned out in the first place", only perceived directly in the 'facts' or divined in some other way, perhaps by experiencing "pure consciousness". Many modern, 'critical', and 'post-modern' philosophies, through this cessation of thinking-movement, became exactly like the mechanistic rational intellect they were criticizing.

The psychological motivation for that cessation of reasoning and projection of limitation is also simple, but more difficult for us to contend with. It fortifies the intellectual superiority of the person who stopped reasoning. They no longer feel responsible for any further thinking effort, but, at the same time, they can declare their own current knowledge to be the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement. That is easily achieved when we say "thinking cannot possibly go further into truth, only more into illusion." This is a big reason why Self-knowledge was prioritized at the dawn of philosophical and spiritual thinking - "O man, Know Thyself." We need to be aware that we are always thinking under duress of subconscious soul (psyche) forces. No amount of meditation or self-remembering, in the sense you have explained it in multiple comments here, makes us immune to these forces, as Cleric also illustrated. We are simply asking people to take these things seriously, rather than inert, inactive intellectual theories.

[mikekatz]

Hi Ashvin
Thanks for this discussion. I appreciate the time you put into it.

[AshvinP]

Hi Ashvin
Thanks for this discussion. I appreciate the time you put into it.

Thanks for your comments and time as well, Mike. I hope to hear from you again! Take care.

[Lou Gold]

I knew early on that finding truth
is not the same as finding happiness.
You aspire to see the truth.
But once you have seen it,
you cannot avoid suffering.
Otherwise, you have seen nothing at all.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

[Anthony66]

I can lend support to what Cleric says about prayer. It's remarkable what sincere and selfless prayer can accomplish within us, that we cannot accomplish for ourselves with thinking alone. It is not something which can be proved intellectually, but rather aligns with the principle, "seek first the Kingdom of God in righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." It is an efficacious reality we can justify to ourselves only by living within it for some time, in devotion and good faith.

Ashvin,

Who or what are you advocating to prayer to? What form does this prayer take - petition, praise, thanksgiving?

I must admit that given my evangelical church background, the thought of prayer leaves me cold. A substantial part of my deconversion surrounded my increasing conviction that prayer was pointless. Little children who my church prayed for incessantly died of cancer. A needy man who was surrounded by prayer boiled alive in his bath. My pastor died young from cancer. God never seemed to turn up in times of need.