Tim

Attachment is most strongly expressed in the survival instinct—a reflection, distorted by attachment, of the soul’s awareness that it is immortal. Clinging to the body, man fears to lose it, along with all the familiar associations he has built up over a lifetime. His heart pleads with death, “Must all this be really abandoned forever?” The things themselves must be left behind, yes, but not all the people. Their forms will change, but not their essence. We may find those we love decked out in fresh forms, attracted again by the magnet of mutual love. Desires are as multifarious as waves on the sea.

Philosophers have long toyed with the concept of consciousness as the underlying reality of everything. Some have proposed a theory called “solipsism,” which holds that only the ego-self can be known. The fallacy of this theory is that when the ego is traced to its source, it ceases to exist, as ego! The Self never ceases to be, but that Self is not the ego-self. The soul is a reflection of God; it is individualized Spirit. The problem with seeking truth by reason alone, instead of by direct experience is that the power of reasoning cannot take one to this deep realization.

When Conscious Bliss created the universe, it projected its own consciousness. In so doing, it assumed an infinity of points of awareness, like little reflections of sunlight scintillating in slivers of glass. The soul is individualized Spirit; in our true nature, therefore, we are bliss. Our egos are manifestations of that bliss. Because the ego’s attention is outward, however, it doesn’t often experience more than glimmers of bliss. Originally, there was only the Absolute Spirit. Stars, stardust, planets, oceans, continents, and all living beings were manifestations of that one consciousness. Surely, no other explanation is remotely plausible. From what else could anything have been created? There was only the Spirit’s consciousness. A simple way of explaining cosmic creation is to say God dreamed the universe.

my reply to - islam is much more better.... because in islam there's god, in buddhism not What Buddha wanted was to encourage people to take spiritual responsibility for their own lives, and not to depend passively on God, or on minor “gods,” for boons of temporary fulfillment. The fact that Buddha never said not to pray—indeed, Buddhists themselves pray to the Buddha—makes it clear that he didn’t exclude divine grace: He simply emphasized the importance of personal effort in addition to faith in God.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam—every true religion, in fact—is no merely cultural phenomenon. It is dedicated to doing the divine will, which is ever to uplift human consciousness. Could any religion take out a divine patent on what simply IS? Humanity has one common Father/Mother, whom it calls variously God, Dio, Dieu, Gott, Bog, Jehovah, Allah, Ishwara, Jagadamba, and by many other names. Universal truths, similarly, are the same everywhere. Religion is no mere ornament of civilization: It is the fundamental need of all human beings. Rightly understood, true religion offers hope and inspiration impartially. Its forms vary with different cultures and different social conditioning, but always its purpose is to raise human consciousness. Truth never endorses any one culture exclusively. People who seek truth earnestly find their understanding becoming ever-increasingly refined.