Don't worry Scomm, I always struggle to understand Norbu too! 🙂
Ive remembered another time and space related experience which I thought might provide more food for thought . A friend of mine in Singapore where I grew up, had an abscess on her tooth. She relied completely on spiritual laws for healing as I do, knowing herself as a perfect spiritual idea of the one infinite Mind, rather than as a suffering matter-based body; but this time, the situation had not yet been healed through her prayers. She sent a telegram to London to a Christian Science practitioner (this was in the days before international telephone calls or e-mails), asking for help through prayer.
A few hours later, some words from Mary Baker Eddy's book on spiritual healing came into her thought: [COLOR="Blue"]"A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive." (Science and Health 463.) Instantly, all pain and swelling just disappeared and she was completely free.
I think it was the next day that she received a telegram back from the practitioner in reply and they contained the reference to the very same words that had come to her thought and when she checked the time the telegram was sent, it was the exact same time that she had her healing.
Does this not point to one-ness with the one infinite, divine Mind, the source of all intelligence? Its a bit like those monkey experiments, where, when one group solves a problem, other groups around the world also start solving it. As we understand it in Christian Science, intelligence etc isnt in a fleshly brain (has anyone dissecting a brain ever found a thought in there?) but we are IN divine Mind, as idea.
In John 4:46-54 there is a similar account of absent healing involving Jesus. He was up in the hills in Cana, and a nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum (on the coast, about half an hour's car journey today) journeyed up to beg him to come down to heal his son who was at the point of death.
John's account tells us: [COLOR="Purple"]"You can go home," returned Jesus, "your son is alive and well." And the man believed what Jesus had said to him and went on his way.
On the journey back his servants met him with the report, "Your son is alive and well." So he asked them at what time he had begun to recover, and they replied: "The fever left him yesterday at one o'clock in the afternoon". Then the father knew that this must have happened at the very moment when Jesus had said to him, "Your son is alive and well."
With similar healing taking place every day through Christian Science treatment, these Bible stories can no longer be dismissed as fairy tales and superstition. It is time that scientists and researchers opened their minds to the possibilities that are already understood and demonstrated and which have always been present for everyone! Science and religion will be found to be the same thing, once they each reach the true core of being.
Judy
Sorry Norbu, I'm lost.......One day, I may understand.....:confused:
mmm... perhaps I am too!
All I'm attempting to explain is that while nothing can be perceived unless there is a function of perception (and that perception is said to be a function of consciousness) this only means that "everything exists in consciousness" in that all that can be perceived is a perception which is dependent on a function we call consciousness. This doesn't actually tell you anything at all. It is a circular argument.
This statement "everything exists in consciousness" is otherwise used, in my opinion without valid reason, as an argument that mind is ultimate cause. Just because awareness, experience and the object of awareness are intrinsic to reality doesn't mean that reality is merely a function of what we name as "mind" as opposed to what we name "matter." To my mind these are false distinctions and reality can only be known directly even if patterns of causes and conditions can be identified idirectly in consciousness.
Would you, for example suggest that consciousness and awareness were equivalent terms? I don't think they are equivalent. From my point of view "consciousness" is something that is dependent on the perception of subject and object as separate. Whereas what is described by the word awareness doesn't depend on a the consciousness of a separate subject and object. For me the word awareness is inseparable from experience whereas consciousness is separable from experience. The word consciousness tends to suggest a permanent observer, separate from the the object of perception. And to my mind this is just a creation of the mind even if creations of the mind are part of reality - they are not all of reality.
Has that helped? 😮
Norbu
It reminds me of a book I've been reading...
[url]Self Aware Universe - How Consciousness Creates The Material World[/url]
A bit heavy to read, but good stuff. 🙂
All Love and Reiki Hugs
I agree Norbu, that mortal mind creates its own phenomena, but I'm talking about the one infinite divine Mind. I see the consciousness of divine Mind as infinite, therefore, there can be no separation.
You will have to argue with me on that, because you deny the existence of divine Mind, of unconditional Love, of eternal indestructible Life, of universal Truth, because of course, they are all synonyms for God. 😉
Judy
I agree Norbu, that mortal mind creates its own phenomena, but I'm talking about the one infinite divine Mind. I see the consciousness of divine Mind as infinite, therefore, there can be no separation.
You will have to argue with me on that, because you deny the existence of divine Mind, of unconditional Love, of eternal indestructible Life, of universal Truth, because of course, they are all synonyms for God. 😉
Judy
Hi Judy,
From my point of view nothing exists independently. Everything is interdependent. Interdependence means that nothing has primal cause, all is play of relationship. Interdependence between God and creation is even part of monotheistic traditions. God is know through his creation. So if there is no creation to know God can God exist unknown?
Just because I do not believe that one can say that unconditional love exists, in the sense that it exists independently from lover and beloved. This does not mean that I believe that unconditional love is not the fundamental function of reality.
In unconditional love, subject and object do not exist independently but remain boundless in mutual embrace. Knowing this is a state of awareness. There may be a permanence in the truth that is this state of awareness but awareness itself has no fixed state. Can you really say that awareness which is free of state exists? This is a bit like asking if space exists...
Norbu