You want proof of the last incarnation of Vishnu? "Over the years, I saw him levitate, as in sitting in lotus and just lifting up off the chair and hovering there in midair for minutes at a time, sometimes telling a joke the whole time. Or in the desert, he'd just step up off the sand and onto a "staircase" that wasn't there, and just climb up and down it for a while, several feet above the ground." - TurquoiseB
http://www.mail-archive.com/fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com/msg12287.html http://www.mail-archive.com/fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com/msg12287.html ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Pastor Barry, You've been asking the same questions for many years now. You've been told the answer, but you don't listen. You should do your own research and find out for yourself the true answer. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : I am aware of the problems with establishing the historical existence of many religious figures, Xeno, but that isn't what I was getting at with JR. I have noticed in him a tendency that I doubt he is aware of -- or, if he is, he probably sees nothing wrong with. When claiming to believe in the existence of Krishna or similar figures from religious myth here in the past, he has cited as proof "scriptures" such as the Gita. Bzzzzzzt. Thanks for playing, but no win. Religious scriptures are NOT factual, no matter how many people believe they are. Scholars often don't even know the *century* many of them were written in, much less who wrote them. Best to consider them creative fiction written with the intent to inspire IMO. The only *other* mechanism by which JR can claim to have "done research" on the question of whether someone like Krishna existed in real life or not is "seeing" -- meaning some kind of subjective realization or vision or intuition. While I admit that such things exist -- subjectively -- I do NOT admit that any of these "seeings" have anything to do with fact. If they did, more people who claim to be able to see the future would be millionaires. :-) I was just hoping to see JR try to actually posit and then defend some mechanism by which he thinks "proof" could be offered of Krishna's existence. If he actually tried, it might wake him up to the fact that the only reason he *does* believe in such silliness is that someone he holds as an "authority" said so. In other words, his only "proof" is the word "Maharishisez." Now, as for Schroedinger's cat, I for one have no problem with someone being both alive and dead at the same time. Just look at Keith Richards -- the guy has looked like death on a stick since the 1960s, yet he still manages to tour and play some pretty good guitar. If that's not an example of Schroedinger's paradox, I don't know what is. :-) As for the answer to "What's in the big pink box, man?" that is as much of a koan as it was when posed in the movie "Buckaroo Banzai." Me, I kinda doubt it's enlightenment. :-) From: "anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 8:08 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Could it be...Satan? Establishing the historicity of various religious characters today is pretty much impossible. Of the following, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Shankara, only the latter two have much evidence that would just suggest they existed, primarily because they are a bit more recent. It seems more logical with the lack of definite evidence that these names can be used as 'bookmarks' that delineate a certain point in the development of a tradition, a personification of what had transpired up to that point. If we were to take the TMO holy tradition, only Shankara, Brahmanda Saraswati, Maharishi, and King Tony have a believable amount of evidence, and only the last three have really good historical evidence as to their existence. If we assume enlightenment exists, we could say that the 'tradition' of enlightenment is something generated in one's own mind as a means to remove the delusion that there is something called enlightenment that one can gain. Barry, I read your post with the cartoon about the cat. It was heartbreaking for a friend of mine to look in the box, because it was her cat. She probably should not have opened it. In a way enlightenment is kind of parallel to this. You are looking for something you already have, and as long as you keep looking, you never find it. When you stop looking, truly stop looking, then you discover your search was in vain. What a relief! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : I am asking you to explain to us how ANYONE could possibly "research" such a question as the historical existence of Krishna and come up with an accurate answer. You seem to base a lot of your beliefs on "Maharishisez," meaning that *he* said something that you consider fact. What I am asking you to do is explain to us HOW he (or anyone else) could *possibly* determine that "Krishna" actually existed sufficiently that you would believe it to be fact. Don't be coy. You obviously believe this stuff. Now explain to us how you think it works. From: "jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 4:34 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Could it be...Satan? Pastor Barry, I said below that I did NOT research the matter personally. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : John, we've all seen you post things on this forum that leave no doubt that you believe that such mythical personalities as Krishna actually existed. You've actually said as much in the past, so there is no need to try to hide the fact now. What is more interesting, since you *are* trying to hide it, is HOW you claim you could "research the subject" and come up with a definitive answer stating that "Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu here on Earth." Please explain to us HOW you or any other person could determine the validity of this statement. NOT that "some people believe it," but that's it's actual fact. Please share with us how a person convinces himself that he or she "knows" such a thing. From: "jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> MMY believes Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu here on Earth. I personally have not researched the subject. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : Do you believe Krshna was an actual personage on the earth or a religious myth? If real, was he just a man or an avatar of Vishnu? From: "jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 9:07 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Could it be...Satan? MJ, I'm paraphrasing what Krishna said to Arjuna, who was reluctant in fighting his relatives in the battle of Kurukshetra. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : "If you don't fight, then you're deluded or a coward and deserve to die." Seems a rather narrow minded point of view. What if the person being killed is a committed practitioner of ahimsa? A Jainite or a fanatic pacifist? One who would rather be killed than raise their hand in violence to another even in self defense? Or suppose the about to be killed already had a terminal illness with a bleak prognosis and a short time to live, thus the killing would actually be a favor to the kill-ee and the killer, while perhaps having evil intent, would actually be giving a blessing and liberation to the kill-ee. Could there be some planet in your chart that is debilitated that gives you such a judgmental and combative feeling about all this? From: "jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 4:34 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Could it be...Satan? Xeno, I would assume that you would fight to save your life if the Islamic State rebels got a hold of you to cut your head off as propaganda for their cause. Are you going to assume that you're imagining things? As you've seen in the news, these rebels have cut the heads of Brits and Americans in the recent past. It's real and true. If you don't fight, then you're deluded or a coward and deserve to die. If you fight and win, you save your life and become a hero to the world. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : You know jr_esq, you are assuming that your idea of good and evil is real. I hold they are simply conceptual mappings onto reality, but they have no real existence except as a convenient and arbitrary way to categorise certain forms of activity. There was an episode of Star Trek in which an alien species, the Excalbians, investigated good and evil. They concluded that good and evil use the same methods and achieve the similar results. The writers of the episode used science fiction as a template to discuss the nature of good and evil. How are you defining good and evil, and why do you feel those definitions are somehow true or real? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Pastor Barry, IMO, it's unfortunate that human beings have to die. But circumstances happen where a person or a leader of a nation has to act to prevent evil or to eradicate evil from existing. Under these circumstances, it would be justified to take arms and fight. Any deaths that come from a justified war would be dignified and would be considered necessary to deter evil. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Surveys of deaths in the two Iraq wars show that (depending on the survey), between 151,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis died in the two US-led wars between 2003 and 2013. One study, conducted by the Iraq Body Count project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project, found that 174,000 Iraqis were reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants. Meanwhile, the total number of US troops killed during this period was 4,491. Now, JR, please tell me. Was that "good" or "evil?" From: "anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 3:14 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Could it be...Satan? About 12,000 or so people die every day. About 10% of those are killed by other people one way or another. The Islamic State is one of those ways. This is what happens. One method of reducing those killings is to bomb or send troops to kill the members of the Islamic State, by substituting other killings in place of the ones the Islamic State perpetrates. Then there is the question of who or what is killing the other 11,000 people who die every day, which is a far greater number. From their point of view, the killers in the Islamic State are doing their god-given duty to remove infidels and betrayers of their faith from the world, a good thing. We don't know what the people killed think of it, but those in the West do not seem in favour of the idea, thinking it a bad thing. In almost every year, anyone born more that 120 years ago is dead. As pointed out recently God killed something like 2,000,000 people as reported in the Bible, while Satan, bless his reticent soul, only 10. So it would appear the best killers are in the service of what is called 'good', for a good cause, by their own estimation. They truly believe something is good and worthy, and carry out killings in the service of that. That probably means we should be rather suspicious of the good people who want to purify their environment in the service of that good. For our own good, maybe we should kill them, just to be on the safe side. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Pastor Barry, If you say there is no "good" or "evil", how do explain the fact that groups, like the Islamic State, kill innocent people in Iraq and Syria?