Posted by:
hello
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Date: September 24, 2012 04:18AM
Gay Philosopher Wrote:
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> Hi All,
>
> I go back and forth in my belief or disbelief
> about "surviving" death. In one month, Eben
> Alexander, III, MD, a neurosurgeon who experienced
> an NDE as a result of bacterial meningitis, will
> be publishing his book, _Proof of Heaven_. He
> wasn't religious and used to believe that the mind
> is what the brain does.
>
> Not anymore.
>
> He now believes this:
>
http://eternea.org/My_message_from_beyond/My_messa> ge_from_beyond.htm
>
> I hope that he's right. Our lives--our
> existences--are riding on it.
>
> What I find very odd is that suffering never seems
> to be addressed by NDE'rs. There is so much of it.
> The world overflows with suffering because of
> external conditions, such as tsunamis and plagues,
> not to mention wars and abuse, and internal
> conditions, such as aging, bereavement, anxiety,
> depression, schizophrenia, and on and on,
> endlessly.
Do people "grow" as the result of suffering? I
> suspect not very often. Is suffering in any way
> good? I argue that it is NEVER good, but always to
> be avoided. I can find no moral purpose in
> suffering whatsoever: a child losing its
> grandmother. A mother losing her young son to
> leukemia. It's just unconscionable. Or the
> Holocaust! The sheer level of suffering and loss
> is just unimaginable.
Is it possible that the suffering we all experience is designed by our inner selves to wake us up? Unless we become thoroughly sick and tired of the suffering, we will not seriously try to find a way to escape it. The existence of universal suffering is what motivated Siddhartha the Buddha to seek for release.
> If we are, in fact, souls having a mortal
> experience, it seems to me that these bodies are
> our prisons.
Is it possible that the body-as-prison concept is an illusion, and that we might be able to escape the "bodily prison" at will, if we but seek for and practice the right tek?
I don't know about a heaven, but this
> life ultimately becomes a hell for nearly
> everyone. At bottom, most of us eventually and
> quite insistently want an answer to the question:
> WHY ARE WE HERE? And we hunger for a spiritual
> answer, not a Darwinian one that tells them that
> we're all nothing more than macaque monkeys
> flinging feces until we're snuffed out.
>
> There appears to be no way to know.
Appearances can be deceiving. Perhaps there IS a way to know. I think it is worth using some precious time to seek for a key to the secret door, that lets us down to the earth's deep core. We'll be back in time for tea, with a diamond to show thee.