What he's talking about is a real sensation. There have been many reports of people achieving this state of mind. There is a reason that Buddhist monks meditate for hours every day. There has been a lot of scientific studies about the positive effects of meditation. It is very powerful in affecting the mood. I've noticed a huge difference.

Don't try to have a profound divine experience. I've only had brief glimpses of that. It's a hard thing to do and it takes practice. Just try to focus on your breath. Your mind will wander and that is ok. Just bring your attention back to your breath. It's important to not get discouraged when your mind wanders. It's a good thing actually. Every time your mind wanders and you bring it back to your breath you exercise your meta-attentional muscles. This is what leads to gains in concentration. Every time you do this you get stronger mentally. So you don't have to feel bad that your mind wanders so often. It's normal and not a big deal.

Eventually you will feel deep moments of serenity and as you practice those moments will become more frequent and last longer.

I recommend Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now." He does a really good job of describing what mindfulness is all about. It's all about the present moment. Getting into this state of mind is amazing. It feels so good. Don't listen to the critics of this book. They don't understand it or are too caught up on whether it is "true" or not. What Tolle does is explain a very powerful and pleasant state of mind that anyone can tap into with enough practice. It also takes practice and you have to be patient with it. It's worth the effort though, trust me on that one.

Now he also believes that this state of mind has spiritual dimensions to it but just don't listen to that. There is a scientific explanation for the sense of well-being that mindfulness gives. There have been a lot of studies about just what is happening in the brain during these states. We know that the feelings are real and that it can be explained by natural processes in the brain.

Here's a great talk by Meng Tan at Google. He summarizes some of what science knows about meditation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8fcq...eature=g-all-u

Here's a bunch more videos if you want to go in depth more.

http://www.siyli.org/learn-more/videos/

Thanks.

Thank you for your detailed quote, I kind of feel guilty that you spent that much time and effort on it, but I agree with you 100%. Meditation has positive effects, there's a scientific basis for the experiences we perceive, etc etc.

My point is that he's going beyond that, and adding a god into the mix. This is unsupported and there are plenty of "spiritual" people out there who will take the experiences that, as we agree, are naturalistic in origin and explainable through the materialistic nature of the brain, and add all this nonsense stuff to it, whether it is a god, or soul, or different dimension...

Don't feel bad. I'm considering making a thread on what I know of mindfulness and my experiences with it. I can use a lot of that post in my thread.

Below is an excerpt from Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge. If you don’t know, Meister Eckhart, (not to be confused with the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle who took Meister Eckhart’s name in homage), was a 14th-century Dominican theologian and mystic. The gist of his thinking is that God gave birth to the Son, the Word (logos) in all of us, and when we enter the silence, we become (are born into) the Son.

When [upon entering the silence] the veils of corporeality, sense perception, and structural comprehension have been successively removed; when the knower is aware of no desire other than the unlimited will to know and is no longer the subject of any image, concept or idea, his condition is that of contemplation. In this noble state the intellect, in the very ground of the soul where oneness is effected, becomes one with all being, without differentiation and without distinction. In this state the knower has identified himself with the synthesizing Principle of unitive knowledge. He is fill with blessedness, actually enjoys that blessedness, and the mode of knowledge is pure awareness itself. From the ground of the soul, but no longer identified with it since the veil of all structural reality has been removed, this unitive knowledge is situated within the eternal Word and, by inversion, the intellect is assimilated to unconditioned Intellect itself. Here is the True Man, the Christ, the Son, the Divine Selfhood and the knower is born anew in Christ and the knower truly is. So far as man is there in pure contemplation he is not this man Henry or this man Conrad or this man so and so. He is object free, for there [in the silence] is the True Man, the Christ; in that Man all men are one Man and that Man is Christ eternal.

Sure, if one 'agrees' with naturalism and material reductionism. Both of which are unsupported metaphysical assumptions.

Oh this will get interesting...

Personally, I'm a methodological naturalist, in case that distinction is important to you. With that in mind, my position is based upon an examination of the reality we live in. Thousands of years of scientific inquiry has revealed a wealth of information regarding the physical laws by which the universe operates, and, to my knowledge, there has been no empirical, peer-reviewed and retested experiment that demonstrated the existence of anything supernatural.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion, at least operationally, is that the physical world is all that exists. If you care to disagree, I would love to hear your evidence why this isn't the case?

you really aren't getting it though.

You experienced something, and you just know that thing is God.. that's fine.

Then you say, If I do what you did I will absloutely experience the same thing and it will be God too.'

But what if I don't experience the same thing? Or Satan telepathically communicates with me and tells me he's the one causing the experience?

All you are doing is saying I did this, this happened and here's why. But what you experienced is purely subjhective and the conclusion you assume ( that this is God) is totally unfounded.

Again if it works for you great. But if ur gonna present this as some sort of objective truism, you shouldn't be surprised when you get a ton of pushback

Too many beliefs AJ, why not just drop them.
Christ was no-one special, he just saw what buddha, and lots of other people, have seen. calling it christ consciousness is misleading, and probably off putting.

Also, its not that 95% of mind activity is automatic and repetitive, its 100%, including your thoughts on christ, christ consciousness etc. Your thoughts on this subject do not have any special significance, or come from a special place, they are the same type of thoughts as any other thoughts you have, and therefore equally wrong and unreliable. ( as are everyones, im not singleing you out here )

Btw, you are talking at cross purposes with asdf and the others. They think you are talking about a separate, omnipotent sky daddy god that cares about who you have sex with and whether you eat pork or not. Im pretty sure thats not what you are talking about, so maybe you should tell them what you actually mean by god first?

I like the "Just LOOK" theme though . wonder who u got that from ?

Jesus was the name of the guy in the new testament. Christ is not another name for him. Christ is a word representing the state of consciousness one needs to be in to know God. And that state needs to be formed in us by our work (usually by cooperation with the movings of Spirit). That work that goes into forming Christ consciousness is what I was talking about when I mentioned my past. I don't know how much or what part it played in it.

Do it, that would make for a solid discussion

Making sure ajmargarine doesn't miss this.

It's not the sky daddy ATM tribal judge of religion. I've used a bunch of words in this thread like God, Father, Mother, Tao, One, One True God, Source, Spirit, Him, It, Is.

You intuitively know what God is because the realm of God is a part of your makeup.