--- In [email protected], "wayback71" <wayback71@...> wrote: > > I find your idea interesting, Barry- what would loss of a > belief in God do to a community like Fairfield.
That's why I threw the idea out. I thought it would be fun to trip on. :-) > If you lost your belief in God, would that necessarily > mean that enlightenment does not exist, at least in the > TM framework? Well, I don't believe in God and I still believe in enlightenment, although I don't give it the importance that TMers might. > Do they really go to the Dome to create world peace? That's what I was thinking. The virus spreads and all over town people wake up the next morning think, "Oh shit...I have to hurry or I'll be late for the dome. No...wait. Let me think this through. I'm about to rush around and skip my breakfast because I think I have to go across town and bounce around on my butt with a bunch of other people to...uh...create world peace. Hmmmmmmm. What could I have been thinking? Honey, get the kids... let's go out to a cafe for breakfast this morning." :-) > And if they believed there was no God but meditating in a > group did increase peace in the world, would people still > go to the Domes - or become more "selfish" with their time? > > And if you are in middle age, how much more time would you > devote to meditation if you knew that enlightenment (if > you achieve it) died when the brain died and there was > nothing else? Would you start to spend less time with > your eyes closed and pretty much give up on the > enlightenment? Or would you continue to devote hours a > day trying to train the brain to function in a manner > that creates feelings of enlightenment? Good questions all. I have no answers to them. > Or would people still head to the Domes because all that > meditation makes them feel calm and happy? Would the absence of belief in a God and the feeling that you *had* to do the things that He wanted you to or expected you to do manifest itself as feeling calm and happy, as if a great weight had been lifted off one's shoulders? > If you found out God did not exist, is there still a > possibility of an afterlife of some sort? Again, I don't believe in a God, but I believe in reincarnation. One is not dependent on the other.
