WHY GOD? > You also mentioned having many lives spanning trilions of years, which is > something I've always wanted to believe in, but I've never quite been able > to set aside western philosophy, and the christian religion. What do you > believe is our purpose here, if we're not in a selection lottery to > determine who goes to heaven to spend the rest of eternity with god? First let me ask you, is that what you want to spend the rest of Eternity with a God who made you against your will and put you in a lottery knowing full well you might not make it? Will there be unix in Heaven? Let me cop out by saying that probably the answer is beyond our immediate comprehension, but that the truth will set you free. Thus if you can find a view of the cosmic all that puts you at peace with 'what you are doing here' it is undoubtedly right. Gotta be honest with yourself though, lot of people say they are at peace with 'God's ways', but ask them if THEY would have created this world and stuck creatures in it and "NO WAY MAN!" is their immediate answer. They will in fact tell you that God is a mystery to them, downright inscrutable in fact. My view is that man kind is evolving up through 4 Great Lies. The first lie was that the Earth was flat. Try going outside some time, and picture *BELIEVING* the Earth is flat. It is quite enlightening because it immediately defines and limits the larger context in which the flat Earth exists. It makes the All That Is *VERY SMALL*. Then man woke up to the fact that the Earth was not flat, and suddenly was faced with an enormous philosophic vertigo, like what the hell is keeping the Earth up then? My God we are all *FALLING*! :) But then for a long time they thought even though the Earth was round and out in space, that it was still the center of the universe. Again go out and imagine believing Earth is the center, and the whole universe revolves around it. See how the larger context becomes bigger compared to the Flat Earth but is still very small compared to your present view. Then they admited the Earth was not the center of the universe, but surely was the only one with Life. Christ, when he was hanging from the Cross was over heard to say "Only once, God damnit, only once!" Imagine having to die on many crosses on many planets to save everyone? It's nuts. So again people were faced with enormous philosphical vertigo when they realized that there are billions of suns in our galaxy and *BILLIONS* of galaxies for as far as the eye can see. Recent pictures from the Hubble show amazing pictures of star fields studded with galaxies as numerous as stars. Clearly life has formed many times in this galaxy, and will form again, the life of the galaxy is many times longer than the mere few billion years our Earth has been around, and the few thousand years of civilization has been here is but a flash in the pan. The universe is teaming with life like pond water, we just haven't run into it yet, Or more likely we are political exiles from the local cluster and Earth is a dumping ground for criminals, perverts, artists and geniuses, anyone who didn't fit the status quo in the vast inter stellar civiliaztion that is still out there. Of course we don't remember! Although that all may be colorful science fiction depending on your drug or religion of the moment, the fact remains that *CLEARLY* there is life everywhere in space and time and always has been and always will be. So those are the first 3 Great Lies, flat earth, center of the universe, and only one with Life. Breaking out of each one involved a huge step of philosophical and emotional vertigo, and the *LOSS* of knowing that one had been *WRONG* for a long time, and the gain of now having a bigger and grander future in store. The 4th great lie is about to unfold, we are at the opening edge of it, particularly those in the field of computers. The 4th great lie is that the external physical universe exists at all. The truth is consciousness exists, and the external universe is a holographic projection in the mind of an infinite number of micro gods all playing human or something similar. There is no "God", there is only the High Us, the All That Is, experiencing itself for its own edification, in a projected consciousness of virtual reality. The virtual reality is quite complete all the way down to the last quark. Clearly using dream machines to measure the dream reality will never prove that the dream reality is a dream. So one can't go banging on dream pianos with dream bodies to prove that the dream is not a dream. The piano plays perfectly, then you wake up. How much mathematics would a God Being have to know to create the physical universe either as an actual reality or a virtual reality? "Apparently God was a Mathematician first, and a Purveyor of Damnation second." Now talk about vertigo, this is quite a leap. The first three lies expanded the size of the earth and the universe and maybe even of God in people's conception, but they remained pretty much themselves in their own eyes. This fourth one changes everything. It means you and me were not made by God, but are co eternal with the underlying All That Is, that we *CHOSE* to enagage in all this virtual co activity including perhaps amnesia of our past and our *CHOICES* to engage! The 4th lie changes our *RESPONSIBILITY* for our condition, from almost none, to total, including being responsibile for presently being unaware of our responsibility. Take a 3rd lie man, someone who has gotten over the first 3 great lies. He believes the physical universe exists, and made him. Did he have a choice? No. Did he make the stars? No. Did he make the Earth? No. Did he choose to come to Earth and choose his parents? No. How much in life did he actually choose compared to how much there is in life? One out of how much? Is there a fraction small enough to measure the total amount of responsibility such a being has for his own existence? He is a meatball and a microdot in the scheme of things. He wants to be responsibile, to say he is responsible, but he is overwhelmed by the infinitesimal amount of responsibility he actually has for anything to the point where he will start defining down 'responsibility' to mean his own level of irresponsiblity! Eventually you get people who think 'being responsible' means obeying orders, that's 'the responsible' thing to do! Now take a 4th lie man, he suddenly realizes he is in his own virtual game along with all his zillions of buddies who long ago designed and put into play everything that led up to now. *EVERYONE* is his friend from long ago, therefore there can be no hell forever. No one would choose that for themselves, and no one would choose it for another. They may all hate each other now, but that hate must be based on an original friendship and sanity back when everyone invited everyone else into play! Life is a Holodeck and we are the participants, and the 4 great Lies are the trappings we chose to wear. The ignorance was *DESIGNED*. *BY US*. Now this is a hard one, because emotionally for many it is preposterous, and this wall will keep most settled down into belief in the physical universe as a real actuality, and themselves as meatballs. But in a meatball's view, he has no chance of immortal life, as he is made of parts and once the parts are busted apart, so too is the consciousness that arose from the aggregation. But I would claim that Love and Shame can not of Force and Mass be made, so the idea that consciousness can arise out of ball bearings bouncing around with one over R squared laws is nuts. And so we are left with the only other alternative theory which is that conscious units are the primal fundamental actuality, and projections of three or 4 dimensional space and time are intricate and convincing but nonetheless projected virtual realities, virtual machines if you will in the minds of conscious units. Just as you don't move anywhere when you walk down a streat in a dream, just so you don't go anywhere when you walk down the streat when awake. The picture is recast as a virtual reality around you. As one guy said to me, consciousness does not exist inside the universe, the universe exists inside of consciousness. Once you admit to the possibility that the world is a virtual projection in consciousness, the possibility arises that there have been, are and will be, endless numbers of universes to play in, so again the context in which the All That Is exists becomes another order of magnitude bigger, almost infinite. The philosophical and emotional vertigo of an infinite future in an infinite number of games with an infinite number of eternal friends is almost breathtakingly insufferable. The standard books on all this stuff in the 60's were Be Here Now, The Only Dance There Is, and The Taboo against Knowing Who You Really Are. Also of course Johnathan Livingston Seagull, a neat story about a seagull who had to separate from the flock once he realized the truth. The sequel was a Diary of a Reluctant Messiah. None of the above denies the existence of Christ Consciousness, as a higher state of consciousness, but it kind of puts to rest the silly notion that people go to hell forever for the sins of one life. That's nuts, don't you see? "There is peace in the thought that one day, *ALL* men will attain the awakened state." "Class is an attitude, that *ALL* should live forever and be my friend. Cool is the ability to maintain Class. :) Desire is Sovereign. Majesty is the *SOVEREIGN* Desire that Desire NOT be Sovereign *FOR A WHILE*." The universe is as you would make it, once you find out how you would make it, you will know how it is. This is not a trivial undertaking. And why we don't remember our past lives is a major area of study. Why does anyone get amnesia? Why do we not remember prior dreams when dreaming in our sleep? If we call this waking state dream level 0, then our night dreams are dream level 1. When in dream level 1 we don't remember other dream level 1 dreams easily, although we can if we are very lucid, know we are dreaming, and keep our wits about us, and take a pause from feeling up girls to consider our past dreams where we were feeling up other girls. But once we wake up to this dream level 0, we can remember lots of dream level 1's from prior nights. Although we forget many also. Also sometimes we don't remember level 1 dreams even when we do wake up, until way later when something reminds us of them. Where did it go in the meanwhile? Where did our past trillion years go? Same place presumably. Perhaps when we die, we wake up to the next dream level minus 1 out from this one, and then we can remember our prior dreams or lifetimes at this level 0 we are at now. I have no clue really. Homer