GENIUS FORUMS

I changed the title from :"Is the Collapse of American Empire Nigh", to this present one. The post about that accompanies the change is this one The Bailout demolished whatever facade remained of the US Democracy. People oppose the bailout overwhelmingly, and yet both candidates go ahead a...

The Bailout demolished whatever facade remained of the US Democracy. People oppose the bailout overwhelmingly, and yet both candidates go ahead and approve it wholeheartedly. These elections and debates are a sham, if there was any doubt that a select elite run the show, it is all gone. Makes me won...

Is it possible for 'intelligent analysis' to occur without an ego involved? Has an accurate causal model ever been created? How do we know our causal model is accurate? Is there a difference between accurate and true? There is nothing other than to observe and then deduce some pattern, or repetitiv...

The body/mind is a sensory instrument, in addition the mind is also able to conceptualize and model, thorough analogies/visuals etc. Let us define ego as the model that the mind uses to refer to itself. So does an ego have to be present in order to see accurately? Or even to see at all? No because t...

I think it's pretty obvious what egotism is. I think you mean egoism. Egotism means to have an exaggerated view of oneself, whose opposite is to have an accurate view. If you meant egoism it is not so obvious. Most actions and thoughts are the result of habits, rather than intelligent analysis and ...

"Was Jesus just crapping on like your average idiot cult leader demanding complete personal devotion? Of course not. " Of course not? Rowden, how the fuck could you even be remotely certain of such a thing? I can't be certain that Jesus wasn't pure hearted and wise, but I sure as hell can...

I understand that the teachings of Jesus are held in high regard here, which leads me to conclude that there are maybe a few misguided people on this forum. I do not hold his teachings in high regard. I picture (perhaps incorrectly) him as deluded but sincere (with a healthy dose of megalomania) . ...

Finally the govt has bailed out everyone on WALL Street. Democrats and Republicans united in handouts for the Fat Cats. Socialism for the rich and well connected, ruthless capitalism for others. http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/news/2008/09/18/news.bipartisan.091808.cnnmoney http://money.cnn.com/2...

Maestro, what makes you think that the economic U.S. empire is going to fall any time soon? The current financial crisis for one. The US has been running on empty for a while. It has become a debt based economy fueled by the status of Dollar as a world currency, and the mortgage bubble fueled by sp...

Do you feel that American prosperity built on its role as the world's consumer is about to end? Is the stage ready for the end of this illogical charade of economic power based on debt and printing the world's currency?

maestro’s musings I like the sound of that. If the proposition is that information is recycled and passed on to the next generation, isn’t that already the exact proposition addressed by DNA, genetics, epigenetics (cellular memory/program), natural selection, etc., based on concrete evidence? The p...

Certain skills, like understanding the complex beauty of music or the feelings how to resonate with an instrument, or to 'see' through a mathematical problem - might be not that related to practice as we currently think. I had in mind more mundane "skills" (for example a fawn), how to pro...

If there is, then it doesn't work very well, since nobody can remember their past lives. Perhaps the memories do not carry survival value, or even hinder it, thereby a mechanism has evolved to suppress those or perhaps they are volatile and get destroyed in the cycle. The volatility hypothesis is p...

That all seems like pretty empty and wild speculation to me. What motivates you to make it? The purpose of this speculation is to show that rebirth can be logically plausible. That current scientific explanation of evolution may not be its only mechanism. Diebert: While it's hard to prove where the...

Is it possible for information to be carried by material other than DNA? Could adaptation occur besides chance mutations? Perhaps there is a mind cycle, where the mind/consciousness being composed of a different variety of material (perhaps information), is recycled and passed on to the next generat...

What you say sounds right and wise. Maybe the best one can hope for is just to be able to recognize when what one thinks is true is not lining up with what one observes. And maybe it's unrealistic to to think that this "tinkering" will ever not be required. How much tinkering do you have ...

Glad to see this discussion Turbatio. All these issues are close to my heart. Is There Peace in Enlightenment? Depends on how you define enlightenment. Sufficient skill in self-observation and control can bring peace as explained below: Peace is disturbed by self perpetuating habits. Chains of thoug...

Kelly Jones wrote: What kind of experience are you talking about?

Simply that one cannot reason about the world without interacting with it.

The reason that a rational undertaking is involved is because the default mind, as your quote says, tends to fool itself. Which better method there would be than such an alien, cold, abstract invasive activity like reason might be described as. It's like a doctor's scalpel - it's not the end result...

But to reject a 'living relationship' with that-which-provides-life, with Life, with the higher dimensions in our own consciousness, in the context of our relationships, our struggles, our hard-to-define interior life, our coming into existence and our going out of existence, and to remain within a...

Any relation between them at this point is a symbolical one which must first be defined as it is also abstract and only then is it a logical fact that 1 + 1 = 2. So if 1 + 1 = 2 can not, or need not, be verified by science, it must be at least tacitly agreed upon. Just as causality is a tacit assum...

If delusion can mean "the ability to fool oneself [as no one else could]" and enlightenment is understood on this forum as "the unconditioned mind" (as per Quinn: "... perceiving the very Reality before us without any distortion or mental projection"), then delusion eq...

There may be some young people who read that forum, and perhaps some that are not so young, who haven't yet bought into the whole thing, and suspect that there might be a lot more to the Buddha's teachings than what they are being told. Someone blustering in and fearlessly speaking the plain truth ...

Kelly writes: "[Mikiel's] not an appropriately aesthetic, well-read, priapic, exceedingly thoughtful type who loves to go right to the essence of all the Great Questions, who possesses a wonderful, an ENVIABLE imagination, who understands how important is art in human culture, like our own dea...

brokenhead wrote: For example, I first saw my own chakras - many times, under the influence of a substance which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent.

Yeah you told me before. From which locus of observation did you view the Chakras, was it an out of body perspective, or your normal visual perspective?