The Secret of the Vedas

[Moontanman]

 

I cannot have a productive discussion with him unless he stops being sarcastic with me and let go his ego.

 

 

Immortal, all I am asking for is empirical evidence, not belief, faith or opinions and not interpretations of science that twist the science to support your notions. Twisting scripture to fit science or twisting science to fit scripture is not a tenable position and makes your assertions automatically weak if not simply wrong...

[immortal]

 

 

It's quite obvious that you don't know what being informed is...

 

 

 

Why should we? Because some guy thinks they should be?

 

 

At least I don't show double standards like you do when there is evidence against your beliefs and you fail to accept it.

[Moontanman]

 

 

 

 

At least I don't show double standards like you do when there is evidence against your beliefs and you fail to accept it.

 

 

Immortal, my beliefs do not figure into this, you provide empirical evidence and I'll look at it, so far you have failed to do so... The best you have done so far is very weakly circumstantial at best...

Edited December 19, 2012 by Moontanman

[immortal]

 

 

Immortal, all I am asking for is empirical evidence, not belief, faith or opinions and not interpretations of science that twist the science to support your notions. Twisting scripture to fit science or twisting science to fit scripture is not a tenable position and makes your assertions automatically weak if not simply wrong...

 

No one is twisting anything, the interpretation of the scripture is based on best scholarly evidence available and the interpretation of implications of Bell experiments is based on the best minds in the theoretical physics. These interpretations are correct because they are made by experts in the field and not by some internet haywire.

[Moontanman]

 

No one is twisting anything, the interpretation of the scripture is based on best scholarly evidence available and the interpretation of implications of Bell experiments is based on the best minds in the theoretical physics. These interpretations are correct because they are made by experts in the field and not by some internet haywire.

 

 

but you have failed to make a connection between the two, show me an interpretation by the scientists involved that support your position directly... I must have missed that one...

[immortal]

Quite right. But it is difficult to present a clear view under the circimstances. This is Immortal's;thread and so I won't get further involved. The questions will come around again elsewhere, and when I have a bit more time i'll start a thread. I have every sympathy with your view, and feel that the sceptical questions asked here deserve proper answers and not woolly platitudes. .

 

 

No one said not to participate in this thread, its intellectual dishonesty to make blind accusations on someone and run away without being responsible for your claims. Your view of Advaita is obviously wrong and you have been misinformed, Advaita is not atheistic, it has its own pantheon of Vedic gods and these gods are not external existent, they exist with in you and they are emanations from the Self(Brahman).

 

In the meantime, if anyone browsing here is interested in the late Vedas I'd thoroughly recommed Radhakrishnan S., The Philosophy of the Upanishads. This gives a clear and authoritative exposition.

 

Its the same Upanishads which speak of gods, most ignorant scholars think that the Vedas were produced by barbaric people and then somehow they rejected the silly idea of gods and then intellectualized their views in the form of Upanishads which is an outright lie because that never really happened, the Vedas and the Upanishads should be considered together because the Upanishads are not the end of the Vedas but they are the ending message of the Vedas, the gods are as much prevalent and important in the time of Upanishads as they were in the time of Vedas.

 

An obvious truth which some can see because they have an open heart while others continue to make mistakes due to their closed minded attitude.

 

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v550/__show_article/_a000550-000048.htm

 

As one can see the gods are as much prevalent and important at the time of the Upanishads as it were at the time of the beginning of the Vedic period. A shear double standards displayed by people, especially those people who claim themselves to be scientifically minded and yet they are as much motivated by their preconceived notions and beliefs like religious people.

 

 

Western academia always thinks that they understand Santana Dharma better than the natives and what's ironic is that they think their own views of Advaita as views held by Shankara and make natives as outsiders devoid of any knowledge without realizing that it is the native traditions who have preserved the knowledge of the Vedas and the Upanishads. No wonder the kind of confusion that philosophers of religion are in as to what is the doctrine of Advaita and no wonder why quantum theoretical physicists are still struggling to solve the measurement problem and the mind-body problem. Its mainly because western academia has failed to consider eastern philosophical systems of the mind in its intellectual discourse. If the attitude is like "why should we consider them because some guy said so" without realizing the subject matter and how the attitude of philosophers of religion and of physicists are changing then I have nothing to lose, yeah what authority do I have to speak on such matters, let me remain silent and simply watch the confusion unfold.

 

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

How about showing how physicists support your religion instead of just making an unsupported claim...

[iNow]

Even showing which physicists agree with him would not support his claim. His claims are unsupportable. His position is that he agrees with some stuff some dudes wrote in the past few hundreds of years and that's good enough for him to accept it as true. Unfortunately, he misrepresents that claim by asserting that "science backs it up" and other such silliness. He seems to be using a completely different definition of "science" than the rest of us.

[immortal]

How about showing how physicists support your religion instead of just making an unsupported claim...

 

Its not that difficult to support my claims contrary to what you think. You better change your mind that these aren't my beliefs, opinions or representations, they are based on facts established from experiments and the best scholarly evidences in religion.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407907615838

 

To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it, says Michael Brooks.

 

 

 

"perhaps an unheard tree falling in the forest makes no sound after all"

 

- John Clauser, Bell experiments and its implications.

 

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2529.pdf

 

"Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs."

 

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality

 

Quantum physics says good bye to reality-

 

Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871).

 

Bernard D'Espagnat is a theoretical physicist who has intensively studied the implications of such experiments on our cosmos and he concludes like this.

 

Bernard d'Espagnat a French theoretical physicist best known for his work on the nature of reality wrote a paper titled The Quantum Theory and Reality according to the paper: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

 

In an article in the Guardian titled Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind d'Espagnat wrote that:

 

"What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". He further writes that his research in quantum physics has led him to conclude that an "ultimate reality" exists, which is not embedded in space or time.

 

 

D’Espagnat develops in several books the idea of a “coemergence” of consciousness and empirical reality from reality-in-itself. As far as the origin of consciousness is concerned, he rejects the “identity theory,” which identifies consciousness with some material structure internal to or involving neurons. He also rejects the “efflorescence theory” according to which consciousness is a derived product of neuronal activity. His argument is based on implications of quantum physics: all parts of our bodies, including neurons, are essentially elements of the empirical reality. Since empirical reality, as a representation of reality-in-itself, is a priori relative to consciousness, it is difficult to imagine how it might possibly generate the latter or be identified with it.

 

Does it mean that consciousness constitutes some sort of an absolute, as stated in radical versions of idealism? According to d’Espagnat, the answer is no. States of consciousness involved in quantum measurements are also relative in the sense that they refer to “points of view” adopted by different observers in different contexts.96 Neither the things or phenomena observed nor the states of consciousness involved in measurement are absolute. Both seem to exist in relation to each other, or to generate reciprocally one another, and this is why d’Espagnat brings in the notion of a coemergence of consciousness and empirical reality. This coemergence arises — atemporally, because time is part of empirical reality — out of the mind-independent reality that is conceptually prior to both consciousness and empirical reality. What is really “veiled” in d’Espagnat’s conception is not empirical reality but ontological reality, which is identified with Being itself (Fig. 5.1)

 

- Jonathon Duqette, philosopher of religion,Towards a Philosophical Reconstruction of the Dialogue between Modern Physics and Advaita Vedanta: An Inquiry into the Concepts of akasa, Vacuum and Reality, pg 266

 

 

Eastern philosophical systems did knew about this and if one considers their views about the philosophy of mind then it will do a world of good to both quantum physicists, people working on consciousness studies and also to philosophers of religion and science.

 

 

Buddhas Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri, or Vajrasattva and his consort are the main deities related to the zhi-khro teachings. As they sport in the center, five other dhyani buddhas, together with various bodhisattvas associated with these families, arise as their retinue. These make up the forty-two peaceful deities, which are followed by the appearance of the fifty-eight wrathful deities. This is the mandala of the Guyagarbha tantra. All these buddhas are a display of the original wisdom which structure our body and mind.

 

- Rinpoche

 

Its quite evident that eastern philosophical systems recognize a non-physical mind and their views on the mind-body problem is completely different since they know that it is gods who structure our body and mind.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

The Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace has also indicated (as shown above) that saying that Buddhism as a whole is "non-theistic" may be an over-simplification. Wallace discerns similarities between some forms of Vajrayana Buddhism and notions of a divine "ground of being" and creation. He writes: "a careful analysis of Vajrayana Buddhist cosmogony, specifically as presented in the Atiyoga tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which presents itself as the culmination of all Buddhist teachings, reveals a theory of a transcendent ground of being and a process of creation that bear remarkable similarities with views presented in Vedanta and Neoplatonic Western Christian theories of creation."[37] In fact, Wallace sees these views as so similar that they seem almost to be different manifestations of the same theory. He further comments: "Vajrayana Buddhism, Vedanta, and Neoplatonic Christianity have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory."

 

While Buddhism is deemed nontheistic, the Vedas are regarded as polytheistic, and the Bible is monotheistic, we have seen that the cosmogonies of Vajrayana Buddhism, Vedanta, and Neoplatonic Christianity have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory. Moreover, the commonality does not end there, for in the Near East, the writings of Plotinus (205-270) also influenced Islamic and Jewish theories of creation. This apparent unity could be attributed to mere coincidence, or to the historical propagation of a single, speculative, metaphysical theory throughout south Asia and the Near East. For example, the Upani˝ads may well have influenced the writings of early Mah›y›na thinkers in India, and they could also have made their way to the Near East, where they might have inspired the writings of Plotinus. On the other hand, Plotinus declared that his theories were based on his own experiential insights, and similar claims have been made by many Buddhist and Vedantin contemplatives. If these cosmogonies are indeed based upon valid introspective knowledge, then there may some plausibility to the claims of many contemplatives throughout the world that introspective inquiry can lead to knowledge, not only of the ultimate ground of being, but of the fundamental laws of nature as well.

 

- Alan Wallace, Is Buddhism really non-theistic.

 

Its ironic that not a single reference is cited to eastern philosophical systems of the mind in either the literature of quantum physicists or in the literature of consciousness studies even though they are well supported by scholarly evidence.

 

The next frontier is not outer space, it is inner space, scientists will shift their line of research into investigating the gods because they hold the key in discovering the fundamental laws of nature unknown to current science.

 

Even showing which physicists agree with him would not support his claim. His claims are unsupportable. His position is that he agrees with some stuff some dudes wrote in the past few hundreds of years and that's good enough for him to accept it as true. Unfortunately, he misrepresents that claim by asserting that "science backs it up" and other such silliness. He seems to be using a completely different definition of "science" than the rest of us.

 

You showed your ignorance when you said that the books of eastern mysticism as well as Christian mysticism should be thrown into the dustbin. BTW, when will you get over your personal incredulity that our ancients did not invented gods and that their books are not equivalent to books of Harry potter.

[iNow]

You showed your ignorance when you said that the books of eastern mysticism as well as Christian mysticism should be thrown into the dustbin.

I didn't say that. If you wish to suggest otherwise, I recommend using the handy quote feature offered by this forum software.

 

BTW, when will you get over your personal incredulity that our ancients did not invented gods and that their books are not equivalent to books of Harry potter.

Perhaps they are not equivalent to the books of Harry Potter, but that makes them no more reliable as "evidence" of deities.

[immortal]

I didn't say that. If you wish to suggest otherwise, I recommend using the handy quote feature offered by this forum software.

 

 

So unless Eastern mysticism can demonstrate some practical results, shouldn't it be thrown into the dustbin of history?

How is eastern mysticism any different from western mysticism like christianity? Should not all of these human invented mythologies equally be discarded for the fiction that they are?

 

 

Its quite obvious you acknowledged Dekan's conclusion which means to throw to eastern mysticism and western mysticism into the dustbin of human history without recognizing what scholars, philosophers, psychologists and physicists are actually saying.

 

Perhaps they are not equivalent to the books of Harry Potter, but that makes them no more reliable as "evidence" of deities.

 

The Vajrayana tradition of the Tibetan Buddhists, the Smarta tradition of the Vedic Aryans and the Valentinian Tradition of the Gnostic Christians are the preservers of religious truth which people who claim themselves to be Buddhists, Hindus and Christians often fail to recognize them. They have not only preserved the theory of the ancient view but also the practical methodologies to test that view. They are obviously reliable sources because these traditions derive their truth and cosmogony from the same scriptures which Buddhists, Hindus and Christians believe in and they form the genuine traditions because they form the kernel of truth of religion.

 

These traditions have near enemies and they are secular Hindus, secular Buddhists and conservative Christians. For example - PeterJ is a good example of near enemy for he treats Schroedinger as his hero and Shankara as holding the correct view of Advaita without realizing that the same view of Advaita acknowledges the existence of deities and such people are in huge numbers and their views can be corrected by scholarly evidence.

 

The far enemies are atheists and it is against these traditions that atheists need to argue because they hold the torch of wisdom hidden in religion and it is their view which needs to be rigorously tested to finally know the truth of religion.

 

 

 

 

[iNow]

Ah. I see the source of your confusion. I was using a rhetorical technique to remind everyone that those stories are mostly fictions and often no more than elaborate tales with only small kernels of truth. It was not my intent to throw them into a trash can or fire ala Fahrenheit 451.

 

The Vajrayana tradition of the Tibetan Buddhists, the Smarta tradition of the Vedic Aryans and the Valentinian Tradition of the Gnostic Christians are the preservers of religious truth which people who claim themselves to be Buddhists, Hindus and Christians often fail to recognize them. They have not only preserved the theory of the ancient view but also the practical methodologies to test that view.

Thanks for the clarification, but that's still not extraordinary evidence that scales appropriately in support of the extraordinary claims being made.

[immortal]

Ah. I see the source of your confusion. I was using a rhetorical technique to remind everyone that those stories are mostly fictions and often no more than elaborate tales with only small kernels of truth. It was not my intent to throw them into a trash can or fire ala Fahrenheit 451.

 

The Valentinians insisted that the myth is more real than ordinary reality.

 

"Do not suppose that the resurrection is an illusion. It is not an illusion; rather it is something real. Instead, one ought to maintain that the world is an illusion, rather than resurrection" (Treatise on Resurrection 48: 12-17).

 

"The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths as such—instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore…psychology shows myths in modern dress and myths show our depth psychology in ancient dress."

 

- James Hillman, archetypal psychology, Wikipedia.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinianism#Aeons

 

Aeons

 

The superstructure of the celestial system, the celestial world of Aeons, is here developed in the most complicated way. These Aeons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the Pleroma. The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in the female Aeon Sophia.

 

 

 

It answers all our questions. The same questions which science basically is asking.

 

Where do we come from?

 

We came from the Pleroma. We need to admit that there is both ignorance and knowledge and due to this ignorance we lost our knowledge of the Father and sin exists as long as ignorance exists. The reason we came here is because something went wrong in the Pleroma, an emergent property due to the nature of the system.

 

Why are we here?

 

To return to Fullness. This is a restoration process back to Fullness.

 

Where are we going?

 

Back to Pleroma.

 

Do we have free will?

 

No. The restoration to fullness is inevitable.

 

Does the external world exist independent of the human mind?

 

No, it doesn't.

 

What kind of eschatology is this?

 

Its called as realized eschatology.

 

This theory solves the mind-body problem, the problem of evil, the measurement problem, the problem of free-will, the problems of perception and the epistemological problems of perception.

 

 

Thanks for the clarification, but that's still not extraordinary evidence that scales appropriately in support of the extraordinary claims being made.

 

 

"The dictum that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" remains a reasonable guide in these areas, but this does not mean that the universe isn't far stranger than many of us suppose. It is important to realize that a healthy, scientific skepticism is compatible with a fundamental openness of mind."

 

- Sam Harris, End of Faith

[iNow]

I hope you realize that quotes from the minds of other humans do not serve as evidence of the extraordinary claim that deities exist.

[imatfaal]

immortal - could I ask a simplish yes / no sort of question?

 

preparatory definition - evidence.

I am sure from your time on this site you understand the sort of evidence that many of us require - this would be along the lines of repeatable observations from a dispassionate objective experimenter. ie one could (theoretically) provide a step by step methodology that even the most ardent critic could follow, or that could be followed in sections by a disparate group of people, or possible even be set up for a machine to process; and that if that list of actions was followed the same (to a reasonable significance) results would be found by every group and upon every iteration. at no point in a scientific process is a particular mindset, a belief, or a specific person (enlightened or otherwise) required - in fact the presence of these factors may cast doubt on the robustness of the conclusion.

 

on these terms is it possible to provide evidence for your claims?

[PeterJ]

I hope you realize that quotes from the minds of other humans do not serve as evidence of the extraordinary claim that deities exist.

Yes. This is what Immortal cannot understand. The books don't matter a damn in a discussion with scientists. One has to make the case from the data, not the books.

 

Immortal writes - "They are obviously reliable sources because these traditions derive their truth and cosmogony from the same scriptures which Buddhists, Hindus and Christians believe in."

 

Nonsense. These truths are verified empirically, not derived from books. If you're deriving all your truths from books then you do not know they are truths and should not be stating them dogmatically but deriving them step by step by logic from the facts.

 

I note that Professor Radhakrishnan's famous and well-respected book is rejected as being incorrect. Ho ho

 

Merry Christmas to all. .

[immortal]

I hope you realize that quotes from the minds of other humans do not serve as evidence of the extraordinary claim that deities exist.

 

That's not the whole point.

 

1. The very fact that the Vajrayana tradition, Smarta Tradition and the Valentinian tradition can be put forward as a single theory which were documented by people who were from different cultures, timelines and locations is itself a strong enough reason to accept this.

 

2. Secondly the experiments in quantum physics is often considered to be a pointer to an independent reality and that pointer is pointing straight towards the Pleroma and the work of Bernard D'Espagnat and his concept of hypercosmic god which has been already introduced as a scientific hypothesis is evidence for that. Physicists still find the notion that the moon doesn't exist when no one is looking at it very ridiculous, they are much more prepared to give up realism at the quantum mechanical level but not at the level of planets, however biofeedback research has shown that humans do have the ability to go from wakeful state to deep sleep state or to dream state on their own will demonstrating the fact that eastern philosophical theories of the mind indeed works giving support to Bernard's claim that what we call reality is only a state of mind.

 

These empirical evidences suggests that a Pleroma (the numinous or noumenal or an intelligble realm) exists which is not embedded in space-time which are compelling reasons to investigate the gods but there is no way I can show or anyone can measure the Vajrasattva and his consort or Sophia and her consort or Indra and his consort, there is no way to observe them apart from your mind and this is the reason why we need a new scientific field of Esotericism.

 

 

I have said that the increasing intellectualisation of the Indian mind has been responsible for this great national loss. Our forefathers who discovered or received Vedic truth, did not arrive at it either by intellectual speculation or by logical reasoning. They attained it by actual and tangible experience in the spirit, — by spiritual and psychological observation, as we may say, and what they thus experienced, they understood by the instrumentality of the intuitive reason. But a time came when men felt an imperative need to give an account to themselves and to others of this supreme and immemorial Vedic truth in the terms of logic, in the language of intellectual ratiocination. For the maintenance of the intuitive reason as the ordinary instrument of knowledge demands as its basis an iron moral and intellectual discipline, a colossal disinterestedness of thinking, — otherwise the imagination and the wishes pollute the purity of its action, replace, dethrone it and wear flamboyantly its name and mask; Vedic knowledge begins to be lost and the practice of life and symbol based upon it are soon replaced by formalised action and unintelligent rite and ceremony. Without tapasya there can be no Veda. This was the course that the stream of thought followed among us, according to the sense of our Indian tradition.

 

- Aurobindo, Commentary on the Isha Upanishad

 

immortal - could I ask a simplish yes / no sort of question?

 

preparatory definition - evidence.

I am sure from your time on this site you understand the sort of evidence that many of us require - this would be along the lines of repeatable observations from a dispassionate objective experimenter. ie one could (theoretically) provide a step by step methodology that even the most ardent critic could follow, or that could be followed in sections by a disparate group of people, or possible even be set up for a machine to process; and that if that list of actions was followed the same (to a reasonable significance) results would be found by every group and upon every iteration. at no point in a scientific process is a particular mindset, a belief, or a specific person (enlightened or otherwise) required - in fact the presence of these factors may cast doubt on the robustness of the conclusion.

 

on these terms is it possible to provide evidence for your claims?

 

I have thought about it and this was my pet theory when I came here and its exciting for me to see physicists like Bernard, scholars like Alan Wallace and philosophers of religion like Jonathon Duqette have arrived at the same conclusion. You yourself said that my extreme Kantian take on religion is not universal at all. If I had manoeuvred the conclusion based on my personal bias without rigorously analysing them then how come Bernard, Alan and Jonathon have come to the same conclusion based on their life time works in their respective fields. You can investigate the fields if you doubt the conclusion, the evidence is right out there.

 

I have thought about your questions before.

 

 

Is it impossible to know the noumenon? I don't think so. Kant's distinction between two forms or terms 'Phenomenon' - the world as it appears through the sense organs and 'Noumenon' - the world which is unknowable and helps the mind in producing the phenomenon according to Kantian terms is quite familiar to all of us. Kant argued that all our known knowledge had to arrive to the mind transformed through the sense organs. So the only knowledge we have is of the phenomenon. The things which appear around us or in the physical world are not the things that exist in the actual physical world (i.e. the noumenon world) they exist only in our minds and has to the exact nature of the actual physical world we will never know it according to Kant.

 

I argue that there is a new kind of observation possible in humans which helps us to interact with the noumenon world directly. In this new kind of observation the knowledge does not arrive through the sense organs to the mind. Here observation is possible with out using the sense organs. The mind will be in a new state apart from the sleeping, waking and being aware. To understand this you have to understand our model of the mind. In our model brain ! = (not equal) to mind. To us brain and mind are two different things.

 

Mind is normally modeled has a tightly held rope with one end tied to the sense organs and the other end tied to the platonic forms. It is completely wrong to model the noumenon in this way because the only way to investigate is through experience and these experiences are not the kind of things that we normally see in the phenomenon world and the language we use to describe our experiences can be misleading, as it is understandable that our language was developed for the world of phenomenon. But it is inevitable we have to do this in order to make others understand what we are speaking.

 

When the mind unconnects itself with the ties it has made with the sense organs we have a mind which is like a fallen rope with the other end connected to the platonic forms it is in this situation we are able to interact with the noumenon world. Now how do we know it is really the noumenon world that we are seeing?

 

It is not a hallucination as the subjects who experience are quite normal and healthy and are not subjected to alcohol or any other kind of drugs and these noumenal experiences are not the kind of normal experiences that we normally see in the phenomenon world. One more important thing is that the experience always seem to occur only when the subject is in the process or perfroming the method to interact with the noumenon world and not at other times and hence this is not hallucination.

 

It is not an optical illusion. These experiences are not kind of things that appears when you switch on or switch off inputs to your sense organs and more importantly we should note that we are observing with out using the sense organs. These experiences are really rare and it is not the kind of thing that appears when you give inputs to your sense organs and the brain interprets it differently.

 

It is not an experience that is produced by stimulating some part of the brain. If it is then I will provide a test. The subject who has experienced the noumenon world has to be under stimulation if you are able to produce the same kind of pictures that the subject has already experienced then my argument will be wrong. But I bet you can't. However we can produce consistent observations i.e all subjects will see identical descriptions or experiences of the noumenon world.

 

It is not an experience created by the mind. If we assume that all the experiences that we experience are created by the mind then from where did the mind came from there has to be a basis for the mind and the noumenon world is the basis. This is established by the fact that the subjects have experienced or seen the structure of the mind as it is. Which I discussed before by giving a model.

 

To those who are wondering that how it was possible for me to look this issue from all angles was because this argument was under disscusion in the chat room. I posted here so that many people look at it and as all people will not be available at the same time.

 

Whether is this science is a different issue. One thing which troubles me from being to describe this as science is that we can not make predictions as to when the experience will happen. There is no math here and that may be the single reason others might not give importance to this but this is definitely not metaphysics.

 

I am neither going to argue this using scientific models nor i will try to reduce this to exact science. The models of noumenon world are very much differnt from the models of science and it is not surprising to see this because one talks about phenomenon and other about noumenon

It just provides us with a possible new Worldview and I think just scientific models are not sufficient to describe the universe completely we need these noumenon models but there are no one to one correspondance between the phenomenon and the noumenon models. Its completely different and if this is the new physics that Roger Penrose is looking for then everyone have to be prepared for big surprises.

 

 

This link further answers your questions -

 

http://www.yogapsychology.org/art_biofeedback.html

 

The results of scientific research on the subject of meditation are accumulating now, forming a publicly accessible body of empirical data that can serve generations to come. Unfortunately, however, these data are derived mainly from beginning practitioners of meditation, and taken as a whole do not reflect the richness of experience described in traditional contemplative teachings. They are also limited by the conventional scientific insistence that results be repeatable. Certain important experiences occur only rarely in meditation, and a science that disregards them loses important empirical results. For these reasons, contemporary research does not illumine the full range of experience described in the contemplative scriptures and the oral traditions from which they come. Modern studies give us only a first picture of the foothills, with a few glimpses of the peaks. Still, what they give us corresponds in several ways with traditional accounts.

 

Yes. This is what Immortal cannot understand. The books don't matter a damn in a discussion with scientists. One has to make the case from the data, not the books.

 

 

 

Oh yes, so that you can cherry pick those things from the scripture which suits your personal pet theory and ignore the rest from the scriptures, that's how one scientifically investigates texts of late antiquity right? By accepting data which suits you and ignoring things which explicitly shatters your preconceived notions and beliefs. Actually the scholars and philosophers working in the fields knows the concept of Brahman very well than you do and what you have is a serious misunderstanding of the doctrine of Advaita. Your views on Advaita will be corrected by scholars and philosophers and actually its quite pointless to argue with you because you have a straw-man doctrine of Advaita.

 

 

Immortal writes - "They are obviously reliable sources because these traditions derive their truth and cosmogony from the same scriptures which Buddhists, Hindus and Christians believe in."

 

Nonsense. These truths are verified empirically, not derived from books. If you're deriving all your truths from books then you do not know they are truths and should not be stating them dogmatically but deriving them step by step by logic from the facts.

 

 

Sorry, this isn't metaphysics, this is mysticism or esotericism and we do use reasoning here, actually quite brilliant reasoning's read about Valentinus if you don't know about how to derive reliable esoteric truths from the same Pauline epistles and the Gospel of John which exists in the Biblical canon of the orthodox Christians.

 

 

Aside from the Church fathers, however, “the majority of Christians did not recognize the followers of Valentinus as heretics. Most could not tell the difference between Valentinian and orthodox teaching.”[40] This was partially because Valentinus used many books that now belong to the Old and New Testaments as a basis for interpretation in his own writing. He based his work on proto-orthodox Christian canon instead of on Gnostic scripture, and his style was similar to that of early Christian works. In this way, Valentinus tried to bridge the gap between Gnostic religion and early Catholicism.[41] By attempting to bridge this gap, however, Valentinus and his followers became the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing. “The apparent similarity with orthodox teaching only made this heresy more dangerous – like poison disguised as milk.”[40] Valentinian Gnosticism wa​s “the most influential and sophisticated form of Gnostic teaching, and by far the most threatening to the church.”

 

- Valentinianism, Wikipedia

 

I note that Professor Radhakrishnan's famous and well-respected book is rejected as being incorrect. Ho ho

 

 

It wasn't rejected and neither I said that it was incorrect.

[Prometheus]

1. The very fact that the Vajrayana tradition, Smarta Tradition and the Valentinian tradition can be put forward as a single theory which were documented by people who were from different cultures, timelines and locations is itself a strong enough reason to accept this.

 

So the fact that disparate cultures have come up with a concept of a flat earth must mean the earth is in fact flat. Huh, who would of thought?

 

 

 

 

Wait a minute...

 

 

 

Oh yes, so that you can cherry pick those things from the scripture which suits your personal pet theory and ignore the rest from the scriptures,

 

 

You mean like you did with Buddhist scripture?

 

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/same-faith-debates/142512-dharmic-only-buddhism-theistic-15.html

[immortal]

So the fact that disparate cultures have come up with a concept of a flat earth must mean the earth is in fact flat. Huh, who would of thought?

 

We all know how the book of Erwin Schroedinger, What is Life? inspired biologists to discover DNA and we all know how it ended up and revolutionized biology and started the field of molecular biology. We all know what was his views on Mind and Matter which he expressed in his My view of the world.

 

“The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West.”

(Source: WHAT IS LIFE? By Erwin Schrödinger Pg. Cambridge University Press)

 

 

“There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction… The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”

(Source: Mein Leben, Meine Weltansicht [My Life, World View] (1961) Chapter 4)

 

Just keep watching how religion is going to correct science this time.

 

 

 

Wait a minute...

 

You mean like you did with Buddhist scripture?

 

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/same-faith-debates/142512-dharmic-only-buddhism-theistic-15.html

 

 

Do you honestly believe I am going to let go secular/atheistic Buddhists and ignorant Hindus just like that? Instead of permanently banning me without giving any genuine reasons tell them to give me access to post and respond to those replies, that's one reason why I demand a scientific investigation because its unbiased and unprejudiced. When I start a thread like "The illusion of Secular Buddhism" I doesn't want a moderator Staff who himself is an atheistic Buddhist to moderate that thread. This is the kind of danger in distorting traditional doctrines and actually yes, its atheistic Buddhists who are cherry picking those things which suit them and ignoring those things which explicitly shatters their views from the scriptures. Any ways their views will be corrected by credible scholars like Alan Wallace and there isn't much point in arguing with them.

 

Again my advice to you is, there is nothing wrong in being an atheist but its definitely wrong to be a secular Buddhist and accept those things only which suits you and ignore the rest and display double standards.

 

Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist:

http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2010/october/distorted-visions-of-buddhism-agnostic-and-atheist/

 

Most of the modern Buddhists like you are not genuine Buddhists.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi-Buddha

 

 

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Adi-Buddha, or Adibuddha (Tibetan: Dang-po'i sangs-rgyas), is the "Primordial Buddha." The term refers to a self-emanating, self-originating Buddha, present before anything else existed. Samantabhadra, Vairocana and Vajradhara are the best known names for Adi-Buddha, though there are others. Adi-Buddha is usually depicted as dark blue.

The concept of Adi-Buddha is the closest to monotheism of any form of Buddhism. Even then, Adi-Buddha is recognized as the center of an extended array of peaceful and wrathful deities, which are considered reflections of it. All famous sages and Bodhisattvas are said to be reflections of Adi-Buddha, and many are identified as the "personality" of it.

 

Adi-Buddha is better compared to the abstracted forces of Brahman, Ayn Sof or Arche rather than a personal creator God in the mold of Yahweh or Ishvara. Also, Adi-Buddha is not said to be the creator, but the originator of all things. Adi-Buddha is a deity in an emanationist sense.

 

Adi-Buddha is a representation of the interdependence of phenomena, being an entity that can be regarded as a creator in a relative sense. Though phenomena can be symbolically represented in the primordial nature of Adi-Buddha and have in it their collective source, the universe is not regarded as being linearly created, being in a continuous, eternal co-relation with the deity. It also represents the non-duality between the noumenom (the individual's mind), and the phenomena (the cosmos), which are also seen as interrelated.

 

Will you accept your ignorance? or will you continue to show double standards just like majority of the modern Buddhists and modern hindus show? Let me make this one thing very clear the deities in Advaita Vedanta and in the ultimate enlightenment of Buddhood is very very important. There isn't much point in arguing with you. There is no place for atheism or non-theism to lurk here.

[immortal]

I guess you will keep coming back and post your misunderstood concepts here so I am going to end this confusion right here so that people know how ignorant secular/atheistic Buddhists are.

 

Hundred peaceful and wrathful deities

 

 

http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Hundred_peaceful_and_wrathful_deities

 

 

Padmasambhava said:

 

My father is the intrinsic awareness,

Samantabhadra

(Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality,

Samantabhadri

(Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

You guys know nothing of Advaita or about Buddha-hood and on the whole about non-dualism.

Edited December 22, 2012 by immortal

[CarbonCopy]

Hinduism and Taoism do have something to offer in terms of science. The problem is that they come with lots of cultural baggage along with them such as many myths and stories. I'm a hindu, so trust me when I say, that we have more than enough gods and stories based on them. Anyway, concepts like brahman, chi, the tao are interesting concepts.

Problem is we need empirical evidence for this. But, quantum mechanics and string theory I think are getting quite close to these concepts We might even have an equation for brahman soon ! But, until then these concepts belong to philosophy not science.

But, I do think that all scientists should at least read about taoism and stuff like vedanta, it provides a greater philosophical view.

And, I don't get this division of Eastern and Western Science, Science belongs to all of us. The laws of science are same in the east or west.

Oh, and immortal, this is not the way you start a thread. Ask a question and don't just start preaching vedanta without any empirical bases, especially to a scientific community.

It's like you are trying to mock us.

[immortal]

Hinduism and Taoism do have something to offer in terms of science. The problem is that they come with lots of cultural baggage along with them such as many myths and stories. I'm a hindu, so trust me when I say, that we have more than enough gods and stories based on them. Anyway, concepts like brahman, chi, the tao are interesting concepts.

 

No, the concept of Brahman cannot exist without the concept of Vedic gods. The only thing that the Upanishads and Taoism has to offer science is to show that scientific realism is false.

 

BTW, Can you tell me what it means to be a Hindu?

 

Problem is we need empirical evidence for this. But, quantum mechanics and string theory I think are getting quite close to these concepts

 

No, science cannot get beyond mere appearances of phenomena and the whole world is working based on a different theory which no one knows.

 

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/06-discover-interview-roger-penrose-says-physics-is-wrong-string-theory-quantum-mechanics#.UNXtFG_qmSo

 

Discover Interview: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics

 

"One of the greatest thinkers in physics says the human brain—and the universe itself—must function according to some theory we haven't yet discovered."

 

We might even have an equation for brahman soon ! But, until then these concepts belong to philosophy not science. But, I do think that all scientists should at least read about taoism and stuff like vedanta, it provides a greater philosophical view.

 

An equation for Brahman? Our ancients who discovered these truths neither knew about quantum physics or about any equations so will you stop linking these concepts with modern science, it has nothing to do with either quantum physics or modern science.

 

 

And, I don't get this division of Eastern and Western Science, Science belongs to all of us. The laws of science are same in the east or west.

 

No, we in the east see our world very differently from modern science.

 

Read this link to see how the east views the cosmos-

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/papers/2005 SA AgniAndSoma.pdf

 

 

“He who discovers that all this is Agni and Soma, and is not affected by extraordinary feelings, is truly liberated”.

 

- Mahabharata

 

Contrary to what you think there is empirical evidence for this and its the very fact that Ayurveda and ancient medicine works even today and are being taught in Universities. The whole cosmos is working according to Agnisoma Mandala and it exists in the macrocosm(The universe) as well as in the microcosm(every individual). Other schools of philosophical thought and other sciences are as much in the cards of providing a complete model of the cosmos, it isn't necessary that it has to come from modern physics.

 

Oh, and immortal, this is not the way you start a thread. Ask a question and don't just start preaching vedanta without any empirical bases, especially to a scientific community.

 

I am not preaching anything, all I am showing is that eastern philosophical systems should be considered and not thrown into the dustbin especially when there is enough empirical evidence to consider them, its really foolish to throw them into the dustbin at this point of human history.

 

Science is done by meritocracy and not by majority, Bernard didn't stated his claims as opinions but he stated them as facts, just because some people doesn't want to accept facts of nature since it shatters their cornerstone beliefs one shouldn't be compelled to hold a defensive position and state them as opinions and its by falsification that science progresses and there is no point in going back to the same classical world-view just because some people are not willing to accept facts of nature as they are, few of my claims are indeed backed up by science.

 

It's like you are trying to mock us.

 

Its because the esoteric religions of the world knew about this and there is much to learn from them and their views should not be ridiculed as childish or compared with books of Harry potter, stop mocking religion first but that doesn't mean we are sacred cows.

 

[Moontanman]

Immortal, you have no empirical evidence, science doesn't support you at all, your religious stories are indeed, when viewed as literature inferior to Harry Potter or any decent novel. When your religious stories are viewed literally they fail as completely as Harry potter does at describing reality...

 

All you have are claims and assertions of interpretations of your scripture you cannot back up with anything other than interpretations of science that may very well be shown to be completely contrary to what the science actually indicates.

 

Give it up Immortal, believe what you want but your obsession to prove your religion is scientifically accurate is not supported by empirical reality...

[immortal]

Immortal, you have no empirical evidence, science doesn't support you at all, your religious stories are indeed, when viewed as literature inferior to Harry Potter or any decent novel. When your religious stories are viewed literally they fail as completely as Harry potter does at describing reality...

 

All you have are claims and assertions of interpretations of your scripture you cannot back up with anything other than interpretations of science that may very well be shown to be completely contrary to what the science actually indicates.

 

Give it up Immortal, believe what you want but your obsession to prove your religion is scientifically accurate is not supported by empirical reality...

 

Why should I give up when my beliefs are based on facts established from experiments? Atheists aren't any better than those religious type one's who continue to believe in their fairy tales despite what the evidence is saying, right.

 

http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html

 

Alain Aspect is the physicist who performed the key experiment that established that if you want a real universe, it must be non-local (Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”). Aspect comments on new work by his successor in conducting such experiments, Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues, who have now performed an experiment that suggests that “giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.”

 

 

Be clear what is going on here. Quantum mechanics itself is not crying out for such experiments! Quantum mechanics is doing just fine, thank you, having performed flawlessly since inception. No, it is people whose cherished philosophical beliefs are being threatened that cry out for such experiments, exactly as Einstein used to do, and with exactly the same hope (we think in vain): that quantum mechanics can be refined to the point where it requires (or at least allows) belief in the independent reality of the natural world it describes.

 

Quantum mechanics makes no mention of reality (Figure 1). Indeed, quantum mechanics proclaims, “We have no need of that hypothesis.” Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality⎯and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: “it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked”). Non-local causality is a concept that had never played any role in physics, other than in rejection (“action-at-a-distance”), until Aspect showed in 1981 that the alternative would be the abandonment of the cherished belief in mind-independent reality; suddenly, spooky-action-at-a-distance became the lesser of two evils, in the minds of the materialists.

 

Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.

 

There is no place for an atheistic universe in our cosmos, all evidence is pointing towards a theistic view of our existence, atheism is almost dead.

 

BTW, who told you take the stories seriously, its not the stories that are important, its the hidden message that is important.

 

Gnostic Paul by Elaine Pagels:

 

 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01202.x/abstract

 

“QUANTUM PHYSICS AND VEDANTA”: A PERSPECTIVE FROM BERNARD D'ESPAGNAT'S SCIENTIFIC REALISM - Jonathan Duquette

 

Its the works of religious scholars which is defining reality for us which you ignorantly compare it with works of Harry potter. Quite ridiculous.

 

 

[iNow]

Why should I give up when my beliefs are based on facts established from experiments?

You don't have to give up, but you really ought to share those experiments in context. Thus far, all you've given are quotes from people and books that were written by others who already shared your preconceptions. Evidence would be quite welcome, but the evidence must scale with the extraordinary nature of the claim(s) you are making.