[please read Attribute of Power aswell as this, as they are connected]
There are three types of Knowledge.
Lets use the example of me describing to you honey and lets imagine you have never ever seen honey, you dont know anything at all about it.
I am telling you about honey. Now from my descriptions, you get an abstract idea, abstract concepts and models of honey in your mind. This is the first level of knowledge.
The second level, is if I were to bring out some honey and let you see. This is witnessing. You witness the colour, now you have a real image of the colour and look of honey in your mind, replacing that abstract idea of the look of honey. You may be able to smell and hear the sound honey makes when it is dropped, etc.
The third level, is experiencing. This is if you were to hold the honey in your hands, play with it, taste and eat it. Make other uses of it. Now you would have a more complete knowledge of honey, than someone who just witnessed it.
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You may apply this to any experience you have personally had. For someone to be told about having their arm cut. For someone else to witnessing the cutting of someones arm. Finally for a third person having their actual arm cut. These will create three separate levels of knowledge.
Now for something to be All-Knowing, as in the concept of a God. We have to see things like this. Now, most people see the idea of a God as a God witnessing things and just knowing things in way of maybe the first two levels of knowledge. However, not many people consider the third level of knowledge. Now this changes things, when you consider this.
Some religions, have the idea that God is in everything, so is always experiencing everything. However, it is clear that according to the Big Bang Theory, the Creator can not be exising in Time nor Space. A further understanding would be to say, that an All Knowing being, doesnt neccessary have to be in anything, doesnt have to actually experience anything. The only requirement is to have all three levels of knowledge of All things at All Times. Knowing what honey tastes like, without tasting it. For existing outside the Realms of time, there is not Learning.
An All Knowing Being, knowing All things at All times, means having knowledge that neither gains or decreases, instead being the only real source of knowledge, and all over things gaining and losing such reflections of this knowledge.
Now.. this leads to knowing that a Creator, of All Knowing capacity, knows what a sense of humour means to us, and what fear, pain, anger, mercy, compassion, love, lust and other feelings and emotions mean to us. An All Knowing, would have to know this all, before we knew it, cause we need to learn, existing in time and space, however a God would rather have known it all, outside the confines of Space and Time.
Alamiyah Institute : Tawheed Course 7/8 April 2012
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12 years ago
11 comments:
Hello prejudice,
I like the way you think. Thank God you don't have any borrowed thoughts... :) here is what I think. There is only one possible All Powerful, All Knowing, All Beautiful, All Wealthy God. And I don't mean cash when I say wealthy.
So lets say time and knowledge are separate from him. Correct, He knew everything before time started to hold meaning. So whichever state he is in, time holds no meaning. Now consider this. If you measure time using an atomic clock on the surface of the earth and move away from the surface of earth gradually, you will observe that time on the surface of the earth passes slowly, and at a large distance outside this galaxy, one millenium on earth is like a lightening flash - miniscule. Time is so fast that a day/ minute/ week on earth makes no difference at all. Time ceases to hold meaning there.
According to a hindu philosophical text called the Bhagvad Gita there are demi-gods who manage all the work for the Supreme Personality, they are his expansions that take different tasks or roles and perform them - like his hands. I'm sure you'll enjoy reading the text. If you want the best translation read Bhagvad Gita As It Is translated by Srila Prabhupada. But you must remember to be flexible, read the book for knowledge, not to prove the contents false. Read for self-enlightenment, not with prejudice and disbelief. Have some faith, don't distrust without giving a chance. Or you will never read and process in your brain what is really beneficial, thoughts will come and go and your life will continue unaffected. Ask your mind to speculate later.
Because God can do anything, he can take the form of a human if he wishes to. But his body is trancendental, it is beyond disease and aging. It cannot be harmed (in third perspective) unless the Supreme Personality wishes to leave it. I hope you find what you have been looking for.
wishing you eternal hapiness knowledge and love,
vyoma.
I dont agree with the Hindu concept, or concepts of God. Demi Gods, and Sub Gods, the idea gives rise to the need that a God is in Need and not self suficient. Thus, a God in need can not be Eternally All Powerful.
The idea of taking forms, is also something I disagree with, it just doesnt work if you look at the needs of it. Why does a God need to come down and interact with his Creation? As a God would have the Three Levels of Knowledge of Everything. No need to be there to Witness, no need to experience to know what that experience is. No need to learn. All knowledge must somehow come from God, otherwise, if it were in any way the other way round it would not work.
demi-gods are not helping god because they feel like helping him out of pity. god created them to do exactly what they're doing. everything is doing what its supposed to. water remains water, it doesn't turn into wood. steel always reacts the same way steel should react with a chemical. everything does what its meant to be doing. and we, are actually doing just that, all of us are little programmed robots doing what a person like them would do. but we learn. we change. so does everything else, but its a slow change, like radioactivity.
why are all of us individuals with independant thoughts and activities? why are we capable of doing what we want? it's obvious that we were programmed to be intelligent. similarly the number of things that need to be taken care of : like creation, destruction, maintenance, are given to individuals. they obviously have to work with some rules. rules that bind us are like the pull of gravity. rules that bind those in charge of bigger tasks are more stringent. the energy that sustains creation, the energy that flows through everything and makes everything what it is, is separate from the person from whom this energy comes. so we are individuals, god is an individual, and his energy is the cause for everything there is and ever will be. if you build seven robots that need sunlight to work and put them in a sunlight starved place, they will trampel over each other and the strongest or smartest robot gets the most sunlight. the robots are your creation, you programmed them, and you gave them batteries to work on. but you're sitting and watching them struggle. you like the fact that they're trying to survive by themselves, unaware of you. one day humans will be intelligent enough to understand what life and death are, what the body and the soul are. what functions the body and soul have respectively. that day the soul will realise its separate existance and move on to the next stage or level of existence. after being through stages like matter, elements of nature, plants, animals and human. the next stage. no one will know what it is until of course they reach that stage. and once you pass all the stages, you'll win the game! whoo! you'll have learnt everything there is to learn, and whoa, you can have your own little universe maybe, do your own thing! it's just going to be the way you think. all you have to do is think, and voila your thoughts have turned into a reality! what amazing power, so why can't i do that right now? why can't i have amazing powers? because i haven't learnt everything i need to, with power comes responsibility, and you have to be smart, you can't let the individuals you created overpower you, no? hmm. long way to go. if you think of it like i think, then its a long way. and two of us seem to be on a somewhat correct track. we have extremely different ideas but then what would be the use if we thought alike. hmm?
oh and i forgot to answer your question. this is not just what i think, its the song of god that quotes this, it is said to have existed always before time held meaning, god explained it to his first human, but the knowledge was lost through the ages, people forget. so god incarnated, and reminded us. he sang the same song. the philosophical text Bhagvad Gita. well god doesn't come down to learn like the rest of us. if he incarnates its because he's frustrated with our progress and he's come to tell us "guys! this is a game! you have to make an effort to move to the next level, all you guys just come to this stage and get stuck! c'mon move beyond this, go ahead, finish your work here and proceed to the next door. you can do it!"
ok the text is really deep, but i just translated the bottomline for you. the text explains how to do what you need to do. it tells you whats going on right now, how it began, what the end point is, everything.
I have not read that Text. I have heard of Many Texts. This Blog, I did not want to talk about RELIGIONS, and start discussing religions or texts. I just wanted to define what a COncept Of God is. For the idea that there are many concepts, hence many religions is problematic. There either is a congruous cohesive concept of God, or not. For a congruous cohesive concept, there can not be many of them, there can only be one. Also, This essay is connected to the First Essay, about the Attribute of Power. You should read that one first, then read this one.
When you talk of God getting frustrated, that again is a weakness, that is God getting effected by us.
When you start talking about a Certain Religion, or a Certain Text. This discussion becomes a more NARROW discussion. YOU have to realise, an agnostic or athiest, or someone of another religion is not likely to see your point of view, if its only evidence and basis is a religion or text; especially if they do not believe in that religion or text.
So please, keep your arguments and views based on some logical reasoning. That is universal understanding. Texts and religious ideologies, are not universal.
ok. you don't have to get bugged. i read your blog and i felt like i learnt from it. so i thought of placing before you what i thought. i realise that none of it helps you. too bad. but good luck on your search for the truth, we're bound to meet again.
because there is a fixed end point to the existance of our world (i believe that there should be a fixed end point - i don't know how it can be reasoned and proved absolute beyond any reasonable doubt without assuming some one thing). no matter what the belief of any human, if that person sincerely wishes to progress, help will be given. the language of the universe is like thoughts that can be felt. no matter how absurd the belief of a person, if he endeavours to progress, the universe will conspire in his favour. some of the things this person may have fallacies about will then slowly move away. but most people think there is no need to progress spiritually. ok theres a god named so and so and thats all i need to know. its the attitude that ruins them. so many religiously motivated people are sincere in their effort to progress, i believe that they progress even if they think god is not a person, just a source of energy, light, sound, heat, matter, everything is energy, but the energy doesn't have life if its water, it has life only when its human so god could be either living or non-living (as humans define living - something that can die) and is probably just intelligent energy that cannot die. according to me that would be incorrectly said, i think god has a personality. but if you change your looking angle, you realise but wait, that makes the same amount of sense. its the same conclusion, just put differntly in the english language. languages are so inadequate that when i read RELIGION in caps in your comment i felt like you were scolding me. glad you weren't.
"as humans define living - something that can die)" - no.. something that is alive, is basically something that is not dead. Not something that is going to die. This is why its important to get wordings and understandings clear, especially to make a concept of God clear. This should be possible, if there is such a thing as a God.
As I have tried briefly to explain in the Attribute of Power Essay before (see bottom bit of this Blog), that if you can fully conceptualise God, the same way as you can conceptualise something you can witness and experience, such as energy of Light, then that is a restriction, a limit upon God. However, I try to keep close to saying, I am trying to define Abstract Concepts of Attributes. I have not yet wrote about the Idea of Attributes and Essence. You see you have the outward appearance of someones personality, that is an attribute. The Attribute is the outward manifestation of the inner reality. You can never really look into someones heart and mind, to know the true reality of their personality, only attributes. Thus, if God is something we are to know. Its pointless there being a God, if there is not a degree to which we can know God. However, I believe that it must correlate with humans, if he created us. In, meaning, we can know Abstract Concepts of Gods Attributes, but to know anything more than that would be bearing on placing limits on God.
I need to discuss a few essays. There are a lot of angles to discuss, when talking about such a concept as that of a God. So.. we are going to have to be patient here, whilst I go through and get done other essays on other attributes that I believe a God must have to be a God.
I am thankful for your participation here. Im am glad certainly if these readings bring joy, or open peoples minds up. I always like to get people thinking, anything better than not thinking.
I think, in this day and age, when you got so many ideologies, religions, and things going on.... i think its important to discuss and work out, whats really going on. I just wanna really get to that. Whats really going on, they cant all FIT and be right. Which one fits. I ask the first one, about a concept of God. Reason being, how did such an Idea of a Creator or God come about to Man? I want to know, how people get to conclusions, I want to go deep and see where I find myself.
You know when your losing an argument? Or when an argument is weak? Its when you cant stick to the subject and dont have any solid structure to your argument; thats when fancy words and imagery are usually used.
Living? I shall go with the dictionary definition. Your going to have to use another word for whatever it if your trying to define, cause thats not living.
Past Lives? Well you can choose to believe that if you wish. Some person goes into a state and start blabbering.. great clinical evidence.
And dont you believe so much that you are without prejudice. Your comments here are wholy one sided and only about showing the side of your religion, without giving consideration to the fact that your religion aint the only one here, and it certainly has no grounds for 'supremacy'.
so can you prove anything beyond any reasonable doubt? can you prove me wrong? i use a form of logic that uses contradictions to prove one thing right and another thing wrong.
i don't think religions should compete with one another. don't start personal attacks and say "you think your religion is supreme and you're so wrong". i've given you no reason to believe that i'm a fanatic. and i even said it doesn't matter which religion you follow, make up your own religion.
i gave my religion a chance because the texts i've read aren't written with hidden motives, they're not being insincere, they're not harmful, and the only thing that can go wrong is that they can be misinterpreted. so i have to be careful with understanding it, i'm not practicing black arts, its not like the magic potion will turn to poison if i misunderstand. its religion, as long as you get the main point, you're fine. and if you think i practice some form of prayer and idol worship you're wrong. i only use the philosophy to give me direction and understanding.
i agree that sometimes what seems to make sense and fit the pieces of the puzzle together isn't real or true. but you should try and look for a loophole before you discard it. without that you have nothing going for you.
why are so many psychiatrists around the world saying the same things, doing regression? i want to think so many people wouldn't lie about the exact same things independant of each other. these are people who need to keep their licences, they can't afford to be decried and put out of jobs. plus most of them knew that if they took a strong stand, people would want to suspect they're trying publicity tactics. so these guys wrote books. i don't know how many tried to cash in on the idea by misusing it. i won't believe any crazy dude - but too many coincidences are hard to digest.
i totally understand you need to reach to conclusions with some other kind of reasoning, i guess thats what i lack and thats why i sometimes goof up. i need you to tell me what your method is. how do you start with a question and go about answering it with perfect unfalwed logic? maybe i could use it and be less disillusioned.
vyoma, I do apologise for taking so many years in replying. I have a little hope that you may read this.
The most helpful I found in being so logical. Is to read "How To Read A Book", "How to Speak, How to Listen" and "How to Think about God, all by Mortimer J. Adler.
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