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Non commercial website, for knowledge sharing. Free to copy and use, if you find it useful.
Faith
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One live only by faith. The Vedanta is a difficult subject, because any amount of probing lead to nowhere. All philosophies looked very logical, very acceptable, very beautiful from outside, but inside it is hollow. So, look for belief based on experience and intuition along with Reason.
All living things are controlled by intelligent agency. Intelligence is the root cause of all functional aspects of all life. Humans ask complex questions such as “why is the sky blue?”, "why we exist?". We suffer discomfort with unanswered and even not well answered questions. What is needed is the belief system known for intellectual honesty.
Humans are programmed to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival.
What to believe?
Listen for Truth, what ever be the source. Let noble thoughts reach you from everywhere [Rig Veda].
Supernaturalism - a belief in forces beyond ordinary human understanding. Check and confirm.
Try to reduce/avoid superstitions - an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear.
Most will believe in God or Great energy/force or almighty. One can feel God's presence during focused attention, moral reasoning, prayer or meditation. Billions of people make important decisions in life based on spiritual and religious feelings and experiences. It's one of the most powerful influences on our social behavior. Religious and spiritual experiences activate brain like feelings of love, music and even drugs [from journal Social Neuroscience].
Seven basic kinds of thinking
Seven basic kinds of thinking, associated with a Hindu god:
- Dreaming - Indra
- Illusion - Shakti
- Reasoning - Brahma
- Natural thinking - Vishnu
- Determination - Shiva
- Status altering thinking - Shani
- Compulsive thinking - Yama.
Science and belief
To believe in God or to believe in science is a choice. Many will not want to give up on either one of them, because they recognize that they are both very very important for life to continue. To believe in a God gives them hope, to believe in science gives them certainty.
Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science deals with the observable. More we learn in science, the more we realize how little we know.
God, Beyond Science?
When a phenomena is explained by science, that means it can be shown to be consistent with this body of knowledge. Science is the best and most effective way for finding the truth about the Universe.
Belief systems were developed by the ancients as a means to explain what the science at the time could not explain. Higher power is an extrapolation. Science deals with the natural world. God is a supernatural being (extrapolation of natural world). God starts, where science breaks down.
Gods exist in the sacred or SUPERnatural space. Science is constrained to the domain of the physical universe that can be observed and measured, and whose behaviours and attributes can be empirically demonstrated with repeatable consistency. Concept of a higher power lies entirely outside that domain.
The existence of a higher power is based on faith. There’s no need for evidence if you’re a believer, and there’s no need for looking for scientific proof (or lack thereof) if you’re not a believer.
No concept that we call “existence”, or time or space or matter or energy, can be applied to God. As per sages, one cannot know “what is before, and what is after”, etc. “not measurable in the time dimension”.
Universe
Ancient rishis did try to understand cosmos. The Universe had no beginning and it will have no end. "the Big Bang is not a beginning of time but really just the latest in an infinite series of cycles. It will be extremely difficult to finally prove any model of the Universe. The “cyclic” views of time was also held by other ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci.
- UNIVERSE has no begining or end. It transforms and perpetuates. `MATTER IS INDESTRUCTIBLE.
- Universe undergoes endless cycles of creation, preservation and dissolution.
- Something cannot come out of nothing. This universe comes forth from the Divine, yet the universe takes nothing from the Divine and adds nothing to It. Divine remains ever the same. Since the universe has come forth from the Divine, all things and beings are sacred.
- God created the universe, and endowed it with order, with the laws to govern creation. Universe is balancing between order and chaos (adharma). Dharma is the law that maintains the cosmic order (physical and social order).
- Hindus in general believe that time is cyclical, much like the four seasons, and eternal rather than linear and bounded. Texts refer to successive ages (yuga), designated respectively as golden, silver, copper and iron.
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