I don’t refer to God as “universal consciousness”. To me, consciousness is an emergent property of the affectance that forms the physical universe.
Mine does.
I suspect a definition of “reality”, “physical reality”, or “existence” would be in order. You seem to be either a solipsist, relativist, perceptionist, or mentalist (or some combination thereof).
I refer to the metaphysical paradigm based upon the Upanishads as “corporate solipsism,” as opposed to what I term “radical solipsism.” Again, see my aforementioned post, if interested. For now, rest assured that I believe that you exist as I wouldn’t be wasting my time communicating with a figment of my imagination. 
Ohhhh … don’t count on that one … (said the guilt complex to the paranoid) :-"
I don’t know … with any degree of certainty … that I don’t know.
In my life … I have already traveled 61.5 billion kilometers and I never experienced … as in conscious recognition of this travel … a single kilometer.
How can I say … with any degree of certainty … that God hasn’t "held my hand’ during all of this travel?
As soon as one believes in God, then one automatically believes that there is a particular relationship with God. God interacts with the world in some way, He interacts with others in some way and He interacts with the believer in some way.
So when one talks about a “true believer”, then one is referring to a better way of interaction as compared to an “average believer” or “hypocritical believer”.
Certainty is only a minor aspect of it.
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An appealing ‘cornerstone’ Phyllo … let me try to ‘lay a stone’ beside it. If I err in understanding the underlying intentions of your above comment … the error is mine … fruit of my arrogance … and I beg forgiveness in advance.
The words “better way” point to an ever-increasing understanding … knowing … fueled almost entirely by personal experience.
Let me try to illustrate by sharing a personal experience from yesterday.
First some context.
My wife is farming 2-3 acres … largely by hand … and she has dragged me into participating in her enterprise. My reluctance to participate is shrinking … I’m learning a lot through participation … though I’m still selfish enough to keep some time and energy for my personal enterprise.
Yesterday afternoon we went on an inspection tour … walked around her gardens … her garden is not one contiguous parcel of land.
My keen observations lead to some profound thoughts:
We have had very little rain in the past month or so … the soil is like a dust bowl The young unhealthy plants seemed to be crying out … water … water … water … please! The seeds that have yet to germinate and sprout seem to be uttering the same plea.
Shortly after this observation I experienced a gut-wrenching feeling of angst. On reflection I understood my feelings to be rooted in how much we take food for granted. For most of the people in the world food security is a trip to the local supermarket. This wasn’t always the case … and today’s supermarkets may not always exist.
Reflected on the feast still celebrated in the West … Thanksgiving. I felt … at a much deeper level … the underlying intentions of the first instances of celebrating Thanksgiving Day. The feast is a relic of the past with no significance today. Western people might better celebrate a Zuckenberg proclamation … since he embodies what almost all people in the world aspire towards. Namely … fortune and fame … and by association the power that comes in it’s wake.
I better understand why more than one billion Chinese people work so hard every day … it’s in their jeans. Their ancestors survived generation after generation of hardship(s) … and that impressive survival was largely the fruit of hard physical labour.
I don’t think that St Teresa’s actions point to increased understanding. I think they point to increased confusion.
You (or at least some who you respect) seem to think that she did have some “ever-increasing understanding”. The question is why do you think so?
Take for example, her ordering weekly flagellation in the convent. Isn’t that completely out of sync with God and Jesus?
The entire concept of “mortifying the body” seems to point to confusion. It’s a denial of the physical nature of existence. If God did not want you to have a physical body and a life on Earth in that body, then He would not have made you or the world.
More intentional deflection Phyllo?
You raised the flagellation issue with me before … my feelings haven’t changed … I have no urge to punish … mutilate … my body … yet … I understand why other people have/do … different strokes for different folks.
Seems there is little or no hope of bringing e-exchanges to a discussion of personal experiences as they unfold … ergo today’s personal experiences are more relevant than yesterdays … despite their being connected by a thread(s).
Endless discussion of the experiences of “other individuals” always seems to lead to a dead end street.
I don’t know what you mean. I’m still trying to figure out what you mean by “true believer”. I have been doing that consistently in all my posts in this thread.
This is the part that I don’t get :
Believing in God and consuming, or engaging in politics or economics is “hypocritical” but flagellation is just “different strokes for different folks”. (And presumably flagellation is done by “true believers”.)
Why isn’t consumerism, politics or economics just “different strokes for different folks”?
Take running a business, for example : A business might raise the standard of living for thousands of people. So running a business and believing in God are not exactly incompatible. Yet you and quite a few other religious people seem to frown on it.
You can see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants. Why start from scratch when others have already done so much hard work that you can use to your advantage?
That’s the entire point of education. If we had to rely only on our own experiences, then we would still be living in caves and trying to figure out how to make a fire.
If someone did something well in the past … learn from it.
If someone did something poorly in the past … learn from it.
It’s anything but a dead-end.
APPEND after a search of the forum:
Odd. I haven’t used the word ‘flagellation’ on ILP until this thread. Nor did I use ‘mortify’ or ‘mortification’.
I can’t imagine what you are referring to. 
It appears my senility is more advanced than I figured.
I apologize.
OTH … I am yet again amazed by the mystery of ‘spirit’ … my fickle memory lead me to this “gem”
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Phyllo … seems you are making progress … progress as in breaking the chains that bind you … I encourage you to be patient
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About business … let me cite a hypothetical example … hypothetical yet it happens every day every where.
An artisan patiently and lovingly crafts an equisitely beautiful sculpture … gives it to his friend as an expression of his love for his friend.
His friend sells the gift for profit(business).
Is the ‘selling for profit’ an expression of gratitude to the giver?
I see where this is going.
Have a good one.
Given the following;
The “Fear of Death” [inhibited as a subliminal angst] is THE Primary Motivator of Religions and other human activities.
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The current lower state of the spiritual and secular competence of the majority;
theism is the current default paradigm for the the majority.
Non-theism [atheism] is nevertheless on a rising trend [natural progress] to replace and will become the default in the near future [optimistically].
That would depend on who you asked. People who share similar beliefs might think so.
My point of view is that she represented what she “believed” and “felt” God wanted or expected from a believer like herself. Her personal journey led her to her beliefs. I don’t know if she ever felt cause enough to question and doubt them.
Not everyone is or could be a mystic and not everyone would or could torture their own body (masochism) in the name of purifying their so-called sexuality and humanity.
It seems to me that what God so-calledly wants or expects is a projection from within.
That sums up the relativist/subjectivist perspective.
Do you find there to be any validity in my perceptions?
If atheism is defined as the position that God can’t or doesn’t exist, than Atheism is a negative faith, no matter how rational atheists insist they are, unless they can logically prove why God can’t or doesn’t exist. However, I’ve heard atheism defined similarly to agnosticism: I don’t believe in God, but it might exist.
No matter how silly something is, like flying purple unicorns that defecate rainbows, it could exist, just not in our dimension, according to our laws of physics, in all likelihood, and these entities or this entity that exists on another plane or realm, could be interacting with, or even hath created the whole of our plane or realm, or aspects of it, like it might’ve created life, but not the earth life inhabits, or the stars.
It’s possible, unless you can demonstrate why it’s impossible.
Whatever can’t be logically or empirically demonstrated to be impossible, is possible.
Many contemporary theoretical physicists believe in alternative universes, they believe they can infer them from our universe, using some pretty wild and sketchy math, just as theologians use some pretty wild and sketchy logic to infer an intelligent designer from our universe, but neither of these claims can ever be empirically tested, in all likelihood, so who cares?
Pick your poison.
Gloominary
But what IS faith? Why would the atheist actually need faith albeit negative faith in order to see “no” God?
Paul says that “faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.
I don’t think that all atheists can be viewed in the same way. Perhaps some atheists have a deeply, psychological need to deny the existence of God (ergo, faith and hope of such) and for some ~~~ there is, simply put, NO GOD.
In other words, no need to argue a moot point.
We couldn’t see galaxies a couple of centuries ago, does that mean they didn’t exist?
We couldn’t see infrared or ultraviolet either, does that mean they didn’t exist?
Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means that if it does exist, it doesn’t exist in your vicinity, or at least can’t meaningfully or observably interact with you.
I define faith as believing, or disbelieving without any proof, or against proof.
Yes, atheists could have psychological reasons for why they think they know God doesn’t exist.
Like maybe their mommy or daddy sent them to a private Christian school where they were physically or sexually abused by a priest or nun *shrugs.
Or maybe they don’t like the idea of some entity watching them all the time, even when they go the toilet.
I have no idea, but it makes for an interesting query.
Why do atheists insist there is/are no God(s)?
Yea different atheists likely have different albeit subconscious reasons.
What I find interesting is that lots of people who hold relativist positions, get really upset by other people’s actions.
If I said that the way to higher spirituality was in disemboweling newborn babies … it wouldn’t just be “different strokes for different folks” for most relativists. But it’s just as reasonable as any other relativist/subjectivist perspective on spirituality. Right?
