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Do you believe that God is personal?

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Shouldn't the question be do you experience God as personal? What does it matter what one believes? Is God a rational proposition?
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The idea of a personal God may sound irrational but impersonal God is highly probable...still i believe in Personal God
I think my question was getting at what do you experience? Not what we believe to be true with the reasoning mind.

But I would say if someone were to make a rational proposition about God being either personal or impersonal the answer would be of necessity paradoxical. The answer would be Yes. The answer would be No. Both, neither. These are questions from a relative point of view asking to understand the Absolute. It can never arrive at that and it remain an answer understood wholly from a relative point of view. At best it can be understood from that perspective. And it can be understood from another equally as well even if the proposition is an apparent contradiction.

Everything, all relative truths break down at the Absolute. So my question how do you experience God, moves you away from the rational into the non-rational (not irrational) mode of understanding. If someone doesn't have any experience, then the whole exercise is rather unbalanced. Hence, why I said God is not a rational proposition. That's an image of God, a model of God the mind in it's limited sight attempts to map out, creating an image of itself projected onto the face of Infinity. How do you suppose that is Truth?
 
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Orbit

I'm a planet
I That's an image of God, a model of God the mind in it's limited sight attempts to map out, creating an image of itself projected onto the face of Infinity. How do you suppose that is Truth?

This is intriguing. So are our conceptions of God really the mind trying to project itself? Is the mind what is divine, or does the divine reside in the mind?
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
This is intriguing. So are our conceptions of God really the mind trying to project itself?
I think there is a progressive line of how the mind conceives of something, and that without the benefit of direct experience, it relies on either a certain sensed intuition (faith), that gives the mind additional information from that limited sight attempting to reach beyond this shore to the other, or it is nothing but cognitive speculations, deductions, reasoning, etc.. In this sense if it is coming from a conception without experience, it is a projection of either rational speculation, or an expression of faith unrealized in experience. In either case, they are projections, but one which includes some sense of experienced faith, or intuition. If there is direct experience however, beyond faith or faith realized in experience, then that informs the mind with actual apprehended data. Then how God is spoken about or conceptualized becomes a description or expression of actual experience.

It would be like someone who has visited the ocean and swum in it, describing the ocean to someone who has lived in the desert their whole lives and have never been to one. That's not a projection of their mind, but an expression of their mind of an actual experience, trying to find concepts that describe the experience. The other analogy would be contrasting that with two people who have never been to the ocean taking what they hear others say about it, then projecting their imaginations onto what the ocean must be like and arguing with each who has the better idea, often resulting in an exchange of blows with each other over who is right. As someone once said commenting on Meister Eckhart, "Theologians may quarrel, but mystics the world over speak the same language." That's the language of experience.

But even with the mystic, there are of course variances in how we describe it, different symbol sets that are used, etc. The key difference though is that language is translatable through experience. One can hear the voice of experience, as one can also hear the voice of no-experience. It may be the right words, but the meaning is lost in the concretization of conceptual thought. Rather than the words being fingers pointing at the moon, they are the experience of the moon itself, defining the moon as itself. "Do you believe in the finger? If yes, you'll be save. If no, you're lost and do not know the truth!" That's a belief in a mental idea, not a faith or experience of what transcends the idea itself.

Is the mind what is divine, or does the divine reside in the mind?
I believe everything is divine. I also believe we live separated and unaware of this within our own minds, in how we identify reality as the mental models we create and interact with, including our own self-image, as reality itself. It's a "belief-world", be that religious or scientific, as opposed to a world of faith, or a world of an awakened enlightenment. It's that exclusive identification with the world of mental objects that creates this separation, and we become unaware, isolated, and angst-ridden as a result. As we move beyond that separation we see the nature of who we are, who we have always been, and that is the Divine. We already are that which we seek. :) But simply saying there's nothing to look for and just going off our merry ways without first seeing beyond that separation, is not living an awakened life. The words that say all there is is just this, is correct. But that doesn't mean remain asleep.
 
I've seen to have missed the poll?

But no... God is not. God is publicly accessible to everyone, God does not discriminate against age, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, marital status or socioeconomic status.

in all actuality... you are personal to God
 

Kolibri

Well-Known Member
"Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you indecisive ones." - James 4:8

God wants to be personable with each of us, but he has standards if we are to be his friends.
 

Agathion

the Minister
Before i got to know him i would have said no. Logically there would be little reason for a being of his nature and power to want interaction with puny mortals. However given all that i have experienced since i did get to know him i most defiantly say yes. Much as i would like the universe to operate based on logic the reality is that the universe is often illogical. Why is an open question. And please... no Mr. Spock jokes lol.
 

whirlingmerc

Well-Known Member
Yes and he made man with personality in His image, to reflect on and reflect His glory

In Christianity believers are refered to in close personal terms 'he who hears God's word ... are my mother and sister and brother ...."
 

ShivaFan

Satyameva Jayate
Premium Member
I have a slightly different take.

I have had (and do) personal transcendental experiences with personalities of God viz Devatas and Devi. But I need to explain. Let me give an example of Hanuman.

These transcendental "episodes" with Hanuman indeed involve experiencing the presence of a personality, a God, a Friend, not some impersonal ethereal "concept" or "emptiness"... these were with powers that have personality. In the example of Hanuman, while being Angelic and full of light in some cases, these lights or light or presence or visions or persons or anthropomorphic Beings or Goddeses and so on - WERE (are) Personalities and not "philosophy".

But ...

My "end game" is not the Devatas, Devis, Friends and so on, but the ASSOCIATIONS and EXPERIENCES and adventures and so on... the experience of Hinduism, that experience which is NOT a personality but EXPERIENCE (which is ALL things including the "stagecraft" and "starships" and "transformations" et all) together and not one Person.

So my "God" if you will is The Experience.

So God is BOTH personal and impersonal - but my end game is The Experience (of Hinduism). And it goes really well with Gods as your fellow adventure co-panions.
 

whirlingmerc

Well-Known Member
Yes and that's why He might use personal pronouns for himself and mankind made in his image
There are many anthropomorphisms suggesting personality.

 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
I am just curious.

Yes, god is personal. If you live in gratitude, for others, for yourself, and environment. If your foundation is experiencing the nature of life through it's cause and affects, and you can help others see the same, then that goal or calling is personal. You are what makes up life and life is what makes up who you are. Unless we don't love our lives for whatever reason, whatever relationship with have in it that betters ourselves is personal. God is life.

How can god not be personal if the only way we can experience god is living within our environment, for others, and ourselves and be in a constant state of gratitude? That's personal to me.

Nam.
:leafwind:
 
I believe that the majority of theists and atheists are wrong about God.

God created a physical form of Him called the Creator. He can take any physical form he wishes. When God intervenes to the material world, hes no more immaterial. He takes the form of the Creator.

We have the testimony of people who saw God in the Bible. He was like fire in a throne of fire. He carries a huge amount of energy that can destroy anything.

He literally sits on the top of the world, up from the firmament which is a solid material separating the upper heavens and the sky of the Earth. Also above the firmament exist the upper waters.

Every symbolism is false esoterism and philosophy trying to marry atheistic <<science>> with religious texts, as Blavatsky and other new age atheists wished.
 

Ratzzable

Member
A lot of pagan religions alude to world creation from sexual intercourse and almost all modern monotheistic religions deny sexuality in Deities, both versions imply children and their evolvment into gods, their ressurection ect. so I would have to say that it can prove that they would have to have strong personal qualities connected with their deistic aspects since it would be improbable that humankind had answered more about them than they did abstract through human social and interpersonal structures
 

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
Taking "God" as the creator, then surely God must be a person. Creation involves design and choice, and a thing can do neither.
 
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