Great tree! Nature seems to provide us with ways to express spiritual relationships, realities and understandings. I think that the Mormon experience probably fosters a more literal mentality, such as God being a physical, humanlike being. Every religion is based on a mystical experience of a Christ, a Buddha, a Muhammed, etc. If it's presented in a mundane way, then it loses that connection with the divine. Christianity has developed the concept of God as being "out there", whereas the Buddhist teachings address the God within, that Divine Reality is within all of us. My wife is from a Chinese Buddhist tradition, and they definitely believe in a Creator God, a Source. So my kind of mentality has no trouble allowing for ambiguity, where people may understand God in different ways from others. My view is that we'll never understand the ultimate Reality even if it is the most real thing in existence. We can't really understand our own reality, even though we live with it every day. It's mentioned that we don't understand consciousness. We can't even prove that consciousness is in our brain, it's just an assumption. Another way of understanding the brain/consciousness relationship is to think of the brain as a radio producing music. It may appear that the radio is producing the music, but the reality is that the music is being produced and transmitted from far away. If you smash the radio, the music will still be playing from its source. There is strong, and interesting, evidence found in the NDE experiences (Near Death Experiences) that our consciousness can exist even when the brain and body are clinically dead. This is independent of any religious belief, and these experiences don't support any particular religion. In fact, these experiences are always NOT what people traditionally expect, especially atheists. A Dr. Jeffrey Long, an oncologist, heard his patients describe their NDE experiences and created a Near Death Experience Foundation to record and study them. For those interested, it's NDERF.org where you can find thousands of these experiences. There are some common aspects of NDEs such as seeing a Light from which is flowing the greatest love, seeing deceased family members, seeing beautiful flowers with colors they can't describe, of feeling like they are home, of being told that it's not their time yet, that they have more to do in their life, that showing love and care for others is what life is all about. You made me ponder "spirit". I think you can find spirit at all levels. At the atomic level there is a force holding the atom together which could be called spirit. There is a spirit of growth found in plants. There is a spirit of the senses found in animals, and in humans we have the spirit of rational thought which allows us to seek and find the patterns of the universe. "Spirit" is real at all levels, but you can't put it under a microscope. It reminds me of quantum mechanics which has found that the material universe is an illusion, that what appears to be solid is actually empty space with electro-magnetic forces which hold together the stars, planets, minerals, etc. They all appear solid to us, just like in a dream where we experience "solid" things which our minds create for us. And physicists say that at the core of physical reality is a quantum field, think of a magnetic "field". This quantum field is undulating like an ocean with the matter of the universe always in a state of emerging from this field and being absorbed by this field. Nobody claims to understand all of this, but what they're learning is pointing in this direction. I think of "spirit" as being analogous to this quantum field. Maybe the "Field" is God, or an emanation from God. But this is a way of addressing the reality of God and spirit outside of the religious and cultural limitations from the past. It's ironic that science might just come to the rescue of religion.
![How Joseph Smith Created Mormonism [Mormonism Live 213]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lBUhr9xs3i4/mqdefault.jpg)
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Great tree! Nature seems to provide us with ways to express spiritual relationships, realities and understandings. I think that the Mormon experience probably fosters a more literal mentality, such as God being a physical, humanlike being. Every religion is based on a mystical experience of a Christ, a Buddha, a Muhammed, etc. If it's presented in a mundane way, then it loses that connection with the divine.
Christianity has developed the concept of God as being "out there", whereas the Buddhist teachings address the God within, that Divine Reality is within all of us. My wife is from a Chinese Buddhist tradition, and they definitely believe in a Creator God, a Source. So my kind of mentality has no trouble allowing for ambiguity, where people may understand God in different ways from others. My view is that we'll never understand the ultimate Reality even if it is the most real thing in existence. We can't really understand our own reality, even though we live with it every day. It's mentioned that we don't understand consciousness. We can't even prove that consciousness is in our brain, it's just an assumption. Another way of understanding the brain/consciousness relationship is to think of the brain as a radio producing music. It may appear that the radio is producing the music, but the reality is that the music is being produced and transmitted from far away. If you smash the radio, the music will still be playing from its source.
There is strong, and interesting, evidence found in the NDE experiences (Near Death Experiences) that our consciousness can exist even when the brain and body are clinically dead. This is independent of any religious belief, and these experiences don't support any particular religion. In fact, these experiences are always NOT what people traditionally expect, especially atheists. A Dr. Jeffrey Long, an oncologist, heard his patients describe their NDE experiences and created a Near Death Experience Foundation to record and study them. For those interested, it's NDERF.org where you can find thousands of these experiences. There are some common aspects of NDEs such as seeing a Light from which is flowing the greatest love, seeing deceased family members, seeing beautiful flowers with colors they can't describe, of feeling like they are home, of being told that it's not their time yet, that they have more to do in their life, that showing love and care for others is what life is all about.
You made me ponder "spirit". I think you can find spirit at all levels. At the atomic level there is a force holding the atom together which could be called spirit. There is a spirit of growth found in plants. There is a spirit of the senses found in animals, and in humans we have the spirit of rational thought which allows us to seek and find the patterns of the universe. "Spirit" is real at all levels, but you can't put it under a microscope. It reminds me of quantum mechanics which has found that the material universe is an illusion, that what appears to be solid is actually empty space with electro-magnetic forces which hold together the stars, planets, minerals, etc. They all appear solid to us, just like in a dream where we experience "solid" things which our minds create for us. And physicists say that at the core of physical reality is a quantum field, think of a magnetic "field". This quantum field is undulating like an ocean with the matter of the universe always in a state of emerging from this field and being absorbed by this field. Nobody claims to understand all of this, but what they're learning is pointing in this direction. I think of "spirit" as being analogous to this quantum field. Maybe the "Field" is God, or an emanation from God. But this is a way of addressing the reality of God and spirit outside of the religious and cultural limitations from the past. It's ironic that science might just come to the rescue of religion.