From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.sufi,alt.islam.sufism,alt.religion.gnostic,talk.religion.newage,talk.religion.misc,alt.consciousness.mysticism,sci.philosophy.meta Subject: Sojourner: Truth Date: 13 Sep 1997 03:09:22 -0700 Organization: Bay Junction Technology, Inc. Lines: 158 Sender: tyagi@news.bjt.net Message-ID: <5vdooi$5fb@bay1.bjt.net> Reply-To: Sojourner X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) NNTP-Posting-Host: bay1.bjt.net Path: bridge!not-for-mail Xref: bridge alt.magick.tyagi:14899 alt.sufi:2575 alt.islam.sufism:2875 alt.religion.gnostic:8752 talk.religion.newage:80023 talk.religion.misc:323853 alt.consciousness.mysticism:13105 sci.philosophy.meta:46433 [from tariqas@world.std.com: Sojourner ] At 09:24 PM 8/21/97 -0400, Egeriae@aol.com wrote: >In a message dated 97-08-21 14:41:05 EDT, Sojourner wrote: > >> At 02:06 PM 8/21/97 -0400, you wrote: >>>I have been operating from a point of view that I must go through the >>>mechanisms of learning -- learning specifics to arrive at a destination >>>wherein other Sufis reside. In other words, do not all Sufis share the >>>same Truth? > >> No. What you've described is empiricism. > >Soooo, the Truth is person-specific? Let's see if I can put it this way. If you shine a light, a pure stream of photons, through a prism, you get the full rainbow of colors our eyes can see (plus many more our eyes cannot see like infra-red). Then you and I could sit down and I could say the world is green, and you could say the world is blue, and we would both be right. The Truth is a misused word in English, as it tends to represent objectiveness. Objectiveness is an incomplete tool used by science to gain footholds in absorbing new knowledge. The Truth of science says everything is made up of elements, which in turn are made up of atoms, in turn made up of electrons and neutrons, in turn made up of hadrons and quarks and subatomic particles, which in turn have the ability to disappear and re-appear a short interval away, but to not "exist" during the period of transit. So the whole truth of objectiveness is that nothing is true for more than a picosecond. The Truth you and I seek is another word for the source of that light. The world is the prism, each of us is a prism, every atom and blade of grass is the prism. There is a religious tenent that if you listen with true devotion, you can hear the "Ohmmmm" of the world -- the sound the world makes. Consider God or Allah or the Truth or the Good as the combined light of the world, the combined sound of the world, the combined everything. >Or is it that it is more likely that there is one Truth, but the perceptions >and the experiences of the people who are doing the perceiving are what >varies? > There is no giant super man God. God/Allah/The Truth/the Good is the entire sum of everything. When you seek to know what to do, where to go, what to strive for, what is the Truth, do this: make yourself as open to knowing the world around you, and then you will be on your way to aligning yourself with the world. Consider this: every cell in your body has its own world we barely consider. It has its battles, its needs, its work that it does, its DNA to follow, its decisions to make. No one cell in your body however contains that which is YOU does it? One cell makes you? And then you find you have a larger Oneness, which is your body as a whole, a functioning, producing One-thing, which works and has battles and has needs and desires, decisions to make. And yet no one person ever created a city, or a society, or a culture, or even a large building. And so societies and cities become a One-thing, a thing within itself, with its own identity, its own work, its own needs and desires. Who here is in favor of a war? A war where children and innocents suffer, people maimed and the land ravaged? Nobody. It is a society-one-thing versus another society-one-thing. And all the society-one-things together make up "humanity", which is a one-thing. It's hard to see humanity as a one-thing because there are no other one-things around to compare to. And if you take this up and up and up you get the original one-thing, the one-thing that is all-things, which is Allah or God or Truth or That-Which-Is-All-Things or the Good. >>>Thank you for responding. I am so pleased when others help me untangle the >>>cobwebs in my mind. >> >>>Egeria. > >> If I could leave your mind as tangled as when you first spoke, >> I would be happy enough for a camper. > >Why is that? > >I am finding it "awkward" to ask my questions here - on Tariqas. I have been >reading this list for quite a long time... silently. Because I have no >formal teacher, I've been trying to find books that are helpful. But >basically, what I'm doing is a "best guess" as to what might be the direction >in which to travel. Now.. you know what God is: everything. But you are not this God or Truth, so how do you know which books are the Truth and which are not? Or what people you can learn from about which things? Ahh... a difficult question but has a simple answer. As the Taoists say, water flows and fire burns. What do you do? Do you need a teacher or book to see the beauty of a sunrise? Of course not. Books and teachers are only more sunrises, more expressions of the Good. Everything you need to know God is already inside yourself. What you need to practice is listening to that God/Allah/the Good inside yourself and align yourself with it and become one with it and you will be and feel and see and live it and not be in conflict with yourself, which is really what you want. Conflict with yourself brings unease, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Else why would you seek if you had already found? Seek yourself, and find that God/Allah/the Good is as firmly in you as it is in a blade of grass, or a law professor shopping for beans or the sun's first rays on a newborn's face. > >I ponder a lot of questions from all the assorted things I read, but after a >while, I get myself so buried in the muddle of my thinking, I can't seem to >find my way out of the maze. So I really wonder why you think it is better >to have one's mind all tangled up instead of having some idea of how to >proceed. Is it explainable? > yes. Only when you do not know what to do, will you say "I do not know what to do" and then you will have to come to a new understanding ON YOUR OWN, and will have gained from it. A soldier, who always follows orders, is perfect, until his or her superior officer is killed, and then they do not know what to do. A soldier, who is well trained, comes into a situation where his/ her training does not cover, and then he/she does not know what to do. A person, well trained and educated, comes to a point where they do not know what to do. Every society and culture in the world makes you fear such a situation, and yet this is the perfect place! Becuase now you get to open your mind, and find out stuff for yourself, by yourself, through yourself, and have an unfiltered quality experience with the world. If you are seeking the Truth, it means that the truths you have been taught do not satisfy you. It's as simple as that. I, and hopefully everyone else here will not try to give you a new truth that you like better, a new truth or teaching which you can then cling to and say "thanks, i like this new truth better". My only goal is to provoke you into a state where the Truth that Is will reveal itself to you, and you will refract that Light through your prism-self with true purity. Dig? >Egeria. > EOF -- (emailed replies may be posted);join the AMT syncretism!!;call: 408/2-666-SLUG! see http://www.abyss.com/tokus; "Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan." - CGJung