snowyowl

Yes, that's the point of having low interest rates. Quantitative easing too. Trying to 'stimulate the economy' ever since the credit crunch recession. Spend don't save! Don't tie up your cash in your savings account, give it to the retailers, spend it on expensive houses or invest in shares. But don't keep cash. Then when the economy starts overheating, put up interest rates to encourage the opposite behaviour and keep inflation within targets. Trouble is many folks don't plan their finances long-term, don't have enough in savings or pension investments, and get trapped into debt and living hand to mouth, from one paycheck to the next (if you even have a decent job). We need less income disparity, more financial education, and more encouragement of things like prudent living and self-reliance. How to break our dependency on the big corporations and consumer society for everything.

Look what happened to Jesus after he got mixed up in the religious authorities and Roman politicians. He deliberately walked right into the trap and got himself killed, but is still the world's no 1 guru after 2000 years.

If he's enlightened then he's not attached to his career. Why then are you? He's just radiating love in different forms. You can still follow him spiritually whatever happens politically.

I agree, tho it's the same if you go to the most enlightened teachers and masters face 2 face - they only have pointers to give you. And how good are our words at expressing, manifesting the real existential problems in the form of written questions anyway? How can we show our true face in a forum? But I don't want to be without it.

It doesn't have to be seen as a simple Q & A space. I see this sub forum more like a group of conversations which may start of as questions but is more about sharing perspectives and, in a way, virtual community building. But online forums have their pros & cons vs face-to-face.

Whatever you say in public you're going to divide opinion, especially about religion & politics. Party politics is treacherous and you need to watch out for having your words twisted and quoted out of context for someone else's benefit. I hope he has the skill for it. What should he do if he believes this is part of his life purpose, be true to himself and his vision, or impose self-censorship to preserve his popularity? If I point that question back at myself I can see the difficulty. But I sympathise with you if he's moving away from what you want from a guru.

@itachi uchiha when you say enter politics do you mean he's running for office, or just talking about it? Leo talks about politics a lot too doesn't he? What are Sadhguru's political ideas?

Environmental destruction and social inequality have been features of many historical eras long before capitalism was invented. Here in the UK we started chopping down our primal forests in the neolithic and of course there's been much inequality. So capitalism inherited these features from its parents, and it could argue that, as it developed over the centuries, began to see the benefits in having a more highly educated and healthy workforce, who were rich enough to afford luxury products mass produced. But the dirty secret is that it required the serfdom to be offshored to developing countries to cut costs, also to not count the cost of environmental destruction in its bottom line. The Achilles heel with capitalism has been its short sightedness and short termism. We're now living in an exciting time when capitalism is being tested. Its chickens are coming home to roost. Can it adapt to: Social justice. Environmental sustainability. Demographics (capitalist countries don't have enough children to survive). So in short, I think a stage yellow capitalism would need to look different from both orange and green capitalisms. Probably by bringing in elements from other systems and compromising. Perhaps even change its name too if necessary. But hey, we need stage green economics to get tried and tested before we're ready for orange.

@Preety_India Interesting point, especially as women do most of the child care and junior school teaching around the world. (And these aren't high status jobs too). So in theory women have a lot of power to influence children, therefore society too, if they are free to think for themselves.

Newton's laws of motion are amazing, for their time (17th C) until Einstein came along with an even more accurate theory. Maths and physics are theoretical models built on the foundation of logic and philosophy. All mind stuff. Another amazing thing is that reality is so consistent over time and space. At least it appears to be. And that the structure is capable of evolving us on planets as one of its forms. It's one of the theologians' indicators of God, that the universe seems so finely tuned and stable. Apparently.

@itachi uchiha in hindsight I think that Sheikh I met was pretty conservative. I have heard of liberal Sufis nowadays, especially in the liberal countries, I wish them well but I guess it doesn't 'zing' for me. Thanks for the suggestion about Kriya, I may look into it (i already saw Leo's video on it) but I'm happy with my current practice for the time being.

@itachi uchiha Thanks! I met a Sufi Sheikh once, Sheikh_Nazim and one thing I remember was him saying Sufis are Muslims first. Which is why I didn't follow it up any more, because I'm not.

Nice. Do you think Sufism was also influenced by Hinduism, as it has some similarities such as God realisation and rebirth?

Your turn of phrase is very helpful, it triggered another thought. We say 'faith IN God', not 'faith OF God'. Therefore, it means 'letting go IN God', not letting go OF God'. Collapses the separation between me and God, doesn't it? That's what's being let go of

If you go to a teacher, they usually start you on a vanilla technique like mindfulness of breathing, Om mantra, or body scan etc. You don't know what you want, because that's why you're going to the teacher. The teacher doesn't know you yet, so they give you vanilla until there's some experience to learn from, so the choice of meditation is based on the real person, and their needs at that time. Hopefully. Depends how good the teacher is, and how open the student is. It goes in iterations, don't worry about doing an unideal technique. Better that than spend too much time reading and not enough practicing

Meditation which is being done, and from which we are learning, is ideal. Even if it's the 'wrong' technique for us, the insight that it is wrong, and why it's wrong, is development. We get to know ourselves better. We can choose ourselves a better technique next time. That's ideal.

To give an analogy, what's beyond your perception? Does anything exist which we can't see? Well, perhaps, but it's theory and speculation. What's beyond your speculation? (Key. Perception: observable universe. Theory and speculation: science eg the big bang, string theory).

I don't remember the source, but I saw a quote recently that runs something like: Living in the past is depression, living in the future is anxiety, living in the present is happiness. Having my own share of all 3 I can relate, even if it's a tad simplistic. Glad to hear you've making progress @Someone here Happy new year everyone! And happy present moment!

Judging by the quotes I did, we're speculating about something which has no scientific evidence yet, by which to measure accuracy.

https://www.space.com/whats-beyond-universe-edge "But even if the universe is finite, it doesn't necessarily mean there is an edge or an outside. It could be that our three-dimensional universe is embedded in some larger, multidimensional construct. That's perfectly fine and is indeed a part of some exotic models of physics. But currently, we have no way of testing that, and it doesn't really affect the day-to-day operations of the cosmos. The universe simply is. It is entirely mathematically self-consistent to define a three-dimensional universe without requiring an outside to that universe. When you imagine the universe as a ball floating in the middle of nothing, you're playing a mental trick on yourself that the mathematics does not require." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe " In principle, the other unconnected universes may have different dimensionalities and topologies of spacetime, different forms of matter and energy, and different physical laws and physical constants, although such possibilities are purely speculative." So even if there is an outside to 'our' space-time, why should it obey the same rules of science, logic, mathematics etc? Our models may be way off!

The universe is the container. Ie the space-time continuum, which contains things like stars, planets, black holes etc ("the 10,000 things" in Buddhism). But I'm wrong too because I'm using dualistic language (container/contained). What contains the container? Nothing because I'm defining the universe as the entire space-time. The only thing outside the universe is nothing. So if you insist, I could say nothing contains the universe. But not really because there's no boundary between them. It's not like the universe is on the inside, and nothing is on the outside.

Maybe the reason for your discomfort is that you're trying to understand a paradox with your linear-thinking mind. Existence is another name for everything and everywhere. Asking where something is located is assuming there is a larger space outside that thing, inside which the smaller thing occupies a definable part. When I was a kid I'd write my address something like: 4 Acacia Avenue, Croydon, London, England, UK, Europe, The World, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy, The Universe. You're asking what comes next? Everything is very different to something is because it has no boundary to define what's inside vs outside it. And we aren't used to thinking about or visualising boundless things. You are trying to shoehorn the boundless into boundaries and it isn't working. I think that's why we say that everything has more in common with nothing, than something. Nothing is also boundless. It's uncomfortable because it's challenging us to jump out of our regular way of thinking about things, our map of reality. Did you do set theory at school? We used to draw a big rectangle to represent the universal set, everything, and then circles inside the rectangle to represent things and groups of things within the universal. It's as if we are imagine the whole of existence like that big rectangle, but of course you can never draw a rectangle large enough to encompass everything.

This raises a question for me, is it possible for you and your tulpa Crysty, between the two of you, to create another tulpa? Doesn't have to be a dinosaur lol

Doing what, during those years? If it's this: "my friend says I must pray to jesus only as God has image." Then what about all the other millions of Christians who pray to Jesus for years and have different beliefs as a result? If I were you, I'd politely listen, remind him we're all free to believe what we want, but you want your own direct experience (if indeed you do). Live and let live. Then carry on with your own practice and have your own experiences. His words are worth listening to, as he's your friend, but have no authority apart from what you give them. When you see God for yourself you'll have something powerful to reply to him. Is this really about the concepts, or are you unsure what to do about it? What your practice should be to experience a vision of God?

What's his epistemology, how does he explain how he knows any of this?