[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

Can anyone help me with the ideas that suffering and the world are illusions? There are no such things as Good and Evil? I want to understand. I have been reading "The Third Jesus" by Deepak Chopra, and I feel like he is speaking a foreign language. I was discussing my difficulties with my family, and my 12 year old said, "Well, if one of my friends gets a little cut, he makes a really big deal of it, but I just go on with my life, so maybe suffering is an illusion." Does he have the right idea? Is it really that we can choose what to make of our suffering (with God's help).

Jesus said to be in the world, but not of it. Is that what is meant by the world being an illusion - that it doesn't offer things of eternal value in many cases?

If there is no such thing as Good and Evil, where does murder fit, for example?

So much misunderstanding is language-related. God is too big to describe perfectly with words!

Thanks for any help! I really am seeking to understand...

[billmc]

AllInTheNameOfProgress, on Aug 15 2008, 07:27 PM, said:

Can anyone help me with the ideas that suffering and the world are illusions? There are no such things as Good and Evil? I want to understand. I have been reading "The Third Jesus" by Deepak Chopra, and I feel like he is speaking a foreign language. I was discussing my difficulties with my family, and my 12 year old said, "Well, if one of my friends gets a little cut, he makes a really big deal of it, but I just go on with my life, so maybe suffering is an illusion." Does he have the right idea? Is it really that we can choose what to make of our suffering (with God's help).

Jesus said to be in the world, but not of it. Is that what is meant by the world being an illusion - that it doesn't offer things of eternal value in many cases?

If there is no such thing as Good and Evil, where does murder fit, for example?

So much misunderstanding is language-related. God is too big to describe perfectly with words!

Thanks for any help! I really am seeking to understand...

I haven't read anything by Deepak Chopra, AITNOP, so my opinion is mainly one of ignorance. But I do believe in a real reality, real suffering, real evil, and real good. Is it possible that our existence is just some high-level mind-game in the psyche of some deity somewhere? Possible...but, IMO, unlikely. I don't think we exist in a "matrix" world where all that we see is illusion imposed upon us by some outside mind or system. I believe our world is quite real.

BTW, the "world" that Jesus mentioned not to be part of is not a reference to this planet, the Earth. It is a reference to "the system" by which culture operates. The "world" of Jesus' day was one of domination and exploitation. Rome had conquered Israel and was milking it for it's resources. Jesus was saying that his followers were not to be part of that domination system, where the poor and the weak were taken advantage of for the sake of the benefit of the rich and the strong.

Domination systems (subjugation, slavery, exclusion) always lead to injustice -- to human suffering. When we don't love one another as we should, the result is always suffering in some form, whether it be to ourselves, those around us, or to our environment.

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

Thank you. I'll have to see how my Deepak Chopra fan friend explains it Friday morning when we meet for coffee.

[JosephM]

AllInTheNameOfProgress, on Aug 15 2008, 08:27 PM, said:

Can anyone help me with the ideas that suffering and the world are illusions? There are no such things as Good and Evil? I want to understand. I have been reading "The Third Jesus" by Deepak Chopra, and I feel like he is speaking a foreign language. I was discussing my difficulties with my family, and my 12 year old said, "Well, if one of my friends gets a little cut, he makes a really big deal of it, but I just go on with my life, so maybe suffering is an illusion." Does he have the right idea? Is it really that we can choose what to make of our suffering (with God's help).

Jesus said to be in the world, but not of it. Is that what is meant by the world being an illusion - that it doesn't offer things of eternal value in many cases?

If there is no such thing as Good and Evil, where does murder fit, for example?

So much misunderstanding is language-related. God is too big to describe perfectly with words!

Thanks for any help! I really am seeking to understand...

Hi AITNOP,

Did you have that meeting with your friend yet?

I am not aware of the author or the book you mention but It seems to me I have an understanding of where someone who says that would be coming from. They have no doubt examined the workings of the mind and found that the terms 'Good' and ''Evil' are highly subjective terms that have changed with times, cultures, and the whims of society and leaders and for the most part depends on the perspective you are looking from. In fact they are meaningless terms without some sort of societal definitions because they are merely arbitrary points along a continuum.

Our mind makes opposites of them just like 'hot and 'cold' yet there is no such thing as 'cold' except as subjectively used for a language convenience. There are only degrees of 'heat' because heat exists and cold does not. Cold is merely a relative term used to denote a low level of heat.

Perhaps this short writing I did under a pen name will explain it better...

http://home.fuse.net...0and%20Evil.htm

Joseph

[soma]

Greetings, Salutations to the divinity within you. Here is my attempt to answer a great question.

All there is, is God, otherwise there is no God. If there is anything that exists which is not God, then there is no God; therefore, God is the source of all things that means evil as well as good. All things and circumstances are generated out of God, the power of the universe (God the Father). The individual minds in God create what we call evil. The root of this evil is not seeing the unifying force, withholding love and condemning others. The opposite is love, a magnet that attracts and unites the best of everything in a greater and greater good. We do not create this expanding wholeness because it is a divine idea, but we can become aware of this divine Reality that has existed since before the beginning of time by opening up and accepting it, when it creates a wonderful new good in our lives.

As we perceive God's pure consciousness pervading all things, we understand more clearly that God has absolute control over all creation, and that each individual is already one with God, inseparable from Him. People are not aware of this because they are immersed in creation and the idea of materiality. We are deceived into thinking that disease (not being at ease, dis-ease) is real, and that the devil and sin are everywhere. Until a higher view is cultivated through prayer and purification of thought, it will certainly appear that the devil can control our lives, but this is a false and temporary view because under God there can’t be a broken harmony in creation.

When our souls are enlightened with God's pure consciousness, we don’t attempt to control others by condemning them or manipulating them with the devil because we understand that it is through love that God governs everybody and all of creation. The personal desire to control others comes by mistakenly believing that man is evil and indicates a distrust of God’s ability to govern His own creation. If we worship God by basing our thoughts and our actions on Him who is the strongest force, then the devil has no power. When we see God as one, it will have a beneficial influence upon our minds, our bodies and all of creation because we will be moved to great clarity and good actions. We will become a clear-seeing soul, when we refuse to tolerate evil.

I feel Jesus is trying to teach us this and we learn this by experiencing God within and then fluctuating back out to materialism. The contrast teaches us and guides us to heaven. Heaven on earth is possible. It is like those 3d stereograms where one can see the 3d picture within a picture sometimes if crossed eyed, but most of the time the mind is caught in the physical image and not the spiritual. Thanks for the question.

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

Wow, Joseph and Soma!! THANKS for the food for thought. Both your responses have helped immensely.

My friend who recommended the book didn't even remember that part of the book, so she had no answers for me.

Sometimes I think I think too much!
Janet

[Shekinah]

This is one of those spiritual/philosophical conundrums that has been debated since the more evolved mystical traditions came into being.
I believe that there is a great fallacy in going on and on about the Absolute, just based on spiritual teachings and without a mature integration of the experience into everyday relative experience.
For one thing, massive amounts of issues and psycho/energetic energies must be integrated before one can see what is called "Holy Perfection." By a particular 4th way school.
There's an interpretation of a Zen Koan by the late Daido Roshi, where a king asks a Buddhist teacher something along the lines of "the last military seige I waged caused the deaths of thousands. Is there any Karmic repercussions?" The Buddhist replied something like: "I'm still watching." This has been interpreted through the ages that he could not make judgements on the situation, being that all is emptiness and Good and evil don't exist and all that. Well, Daido Roshi says that this ancient teacher is basically a moron. He could not understand that Good and Evil are contained in emptiness(absolute nature of reality) and missed an opportunity to teach the wrongs done in killing.
Legend has it that when the Buddha told his inner circle that the true nature of reality was pure perfection, some in the audience fainted. So, emphasize, difficult to understand. But I have no direct experience right now, so I don't know what I'm talking about.

This problem occurs when people get too abstract and spiritual and forget what's right in front of them that needs to be taken care of, and end up in abstract LaLa land.

Never been a fan of Chopra. His stuff doesn't sit right with me.

[tariki]

AllInTheNameOfProgress, on 15 October 2008 - 05:18 AM, said:

Sometimes I think I think too much!
Janet

Janet,

I KNOW I think too much! Yet I am gradually learning to "rest in the mystery", learning the wisdom of not knowing. The Christian mystic St. John of the Cross said......If we wish to be sure of the road we tread on we must close our eyes and walk in the dark Faith comes into it somewhere! If "God" is all, and God is light and love, then somehow, someway, "evil" and "suffering" are or will be "non-existent". I think the great Christian thinker St Augustine argued that "evil" had no positive existence in and of itself, but was merely the absence of good. I suppose thats one line of argument, but not much cop when suffering ourselves or watching the suffering of others (In which case we need to respond and reach out, not muse and reflect)


Eastern thought can prove a quicksand for the unwary, and I've been pretty unwary at times! But I have learnt that "non-duality" is not the opposite of duality, but embraces it. There is indeed a sense in which the various opposites "exist" within an ultimate unity. One master once said that no sooner do some people hear that "good" and "evil" are relative or are "illusionary" than they think that good is evil and evil is good, which is a tragic mistake.

Another Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, said......they can truly enjoy the feast who would just as willingly fast. In the face of what can happen to us in this world, this is a true way to live within reality. Such choiceless awareness, not seeking comfort as opposed to suffering, not hoping for good rather than evil, is the way of faith and trust in God, Reality-as-is. Beyond me at the moment.

For me the important thing is not to get ahead of ourselves yet to walk on

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

Thanks for your replies. I can see that I have grown much in my understanding in the past 14 months. Praise God!

[Mike]

If speaking in the context of Buddhism (is Chopra a Buddhist? Or a Hindu), it would be an error to think Buddhism teaches that suffering is illusory. Suffering, you might say, is the basis of Buddhism and is dealt with seriously and extensively in that tradition. In my understanding, the crux of the matter is that it is how we relate to suffering and to the world generally that is 'illusion', arising out of a mistaken view of 'self' - what it means to be a self. So, a Buddhist might say that there is suffering, but no one to suffer.

Peace to you,
Mike

This post has been edited by Mike: 11 November 2009 - 10:35 AM

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

I think Chopra is attempting to find commonality between eastern and western ways of thought. He was born in India, but I think would fall more under the category of New Age?

You've done a good job explaining. Often quotes such as "all suffering is illusion" are taken out of context and point to truths. Many people I know look at something they originally saw as suffering and now see it as God's beauty.

[rivanna]

Janet,

I think you’re right that Chopra was trying to reconcile the two perspectives – he says “it is only provincialism that divides spirituality East and West.” Not sure if his particular mix of Hinduism and Catholic schools makes him New Age or what. I was surprised to read in an article on the Tao, that Hinduism is considered Western (unlike Buddhism). To me, Chopra’s view seems close to Gnosticism – denying the existence of anything except spirit; focused on redeeming oneself-- the path of contemplation rather than that of service. Individuals and the world at large need both, it seems.

I had mixed feelings about The Third Jesus. A lot of it was persuasive, helpful, but for me it doesn’t contain the whole truth about Jesus’ life and teaching. The book seemed to interpret new testament passages on social justice, as messages about changing consciousness alone. I don’t think the bible was written with that intention. I did like the fact that Chopra’s last chapter, “What would Jesus Do?” dealt with social issues from a PC position.

[Mike]

Hinduism is Western, as far as I know, in the sense that we in the West share a common linguistic heritage with Hindu culture. I have often heard of 'Indo-European languages' as opposed to far East languages, like Chinese. But Buddhism, while extending all over East Asia, is historically and originally an Indian religion as well, so I'm not sure why Hinduism and not Buddhism might be considered Western, aside from the fact that, as mentioned, it now belongs not only to India but to the far East. In any case, whenever you hear of 'Western' philosophy and religion, India seems to be excluded, yet 'Indian' philosophy and religion are also regularly distinguished from Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean/etc. So Hinduism is Eastern but, more Western than some.

I've never paid Chopra much attention because, to be totally honest, he rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because I'm not into the 'New Age' scene.

Peace to you,
Mike

This post has been edited by Mike: 12 November 2009 - 06:15 PM