I just read a book called "Confessions of a Godseeker"
It reveals the lies and deceptions that came along with a path to god called "Eckankar" the ancient science of soul travel which became an organized religion calling itself "The religion of the light and sound of God."

This religion involved having a personal experience with God via soul travel and out of body spiritual experiences. The head of this cult calls himself "The living Eck master." He is God incarnate in this universe, or so he says.

The followers of this path were initiated into it. (What you might call anointed.) Some members of this path had inner spiritual experiences with the master and other beings that were said to be in the line of masters who taught this path. Personal experiences with this inner master proved to them that they were on the right path.

The point I want to make is,that the mind can create any experience for you if you believe it strong enough and focus on it enough. (The mind or the soul or the higher self, or whatever ... will create a vision of your inner master.)

You can see the master and experience him. You can even see Jesus or Mary or any figure that represents God to you. It is a spiritual experience that will change your life and prove to you that yours is the right path. It happens with any cult or religion to the person who is moving along the spiritual path in a sincere manner. Yes you can see visions and speak to your chosen master.

The book "Confessions of a God seeker" reveals that the founder of Eckankar and author of those books, Paul Twitchell was a plagiarists and a liar who created this cult for the money and the fame. He made up most of the stories and stole spiritual works from other authors. The line of masters he claimed to have been connected to do not even exist. AND YET his flock would see and experience them in visions and dreams etc.

When asked about this early on, by a friend, Twitchell's response was "People will believe anything if you tell it to them enough."

It looks closer to hypnotism than anything else, but the word hypnotism has a bad rap because is suggests illusion and trickery or mind control. But a good hypnotist can convince a person to see a vision of just about anything by manipulating the mind and the beliefs of the person.

People can also do this to themselves because we do create our personal experience and reality with our perceptions and beliefs.

Does that mean that everything is an illusion or delusion? Not really. It means that reality itself is simply personal experience and everyone has a different one.

If you believe you are going to heaven, you probably will. If you believe there is nothing after death you will probably find yourself in the middle of nothing. If you believe in hell you will probably find it. But it is all in the mind.

Some might say that the mind does not exist after death, but I can't see any truth in that as I see the body as a product of mind and consciousness, projected into a holographic type reality.

If we do indeed live in a holographic type reality as quantum physics seems to suggest, there are no limits on what we can see or create.

So what do you think the nature of reality is and why?

What is perceived as real is real in it's affects.

A minister friend of mine, after listening to some of my rambling on, then asked me if I thought that reality was completely subjective.

I surprised myself by my swift answer. "Absolutely." I said.

This surprised me because I never use to believe that way. Even now I like to stay grounded in the present moment and surroundings that seem so real. But part of me seems to know better.

Twitchell's remarks are exactly Adolph Hitler's conclusion.

"tell people something long enough and they will believe it"

that,s interesting.

The power of suggestion influences everyone to some degree.

even wishful thinking has an upside

Many years ago, my subjective reality led me into many business ventures that in the end were all boring and unfulfilling, and yet, I had a blast starting something out of nothing and selling them off when they were rolling along and showing hopeful signs of growth and revenue enhancement.
I observed that many people cannot do these things but that they are more than willing to assume the care and feeding of such subjections upon their lives quite readily.

Perhaps out of boredom or ambition, I am not sure.

Perhaps because many would like an opportunity to shape their future with some personal control over things seemingly out of their own control. I really don't know the answer. The answer is apparently up to the individual to choose from the choices available, in degrees,perhaps.
I was amazed that many people are looking for something and what that is, is sometimes not as important or as expedient knowing what as much as doing whatever.
That many people would endeavor to embark on a new adventure that is not born out of their own creativity, there is evidence that once something is created and has any momemtum at all going for it, it becomes attractive and the attention drawn to such things in life is an enhancement worth investing personal time and energy and resources in.

I almost turned this "business opportunity start=up" thing into a full time endeavor, from what I observed.

But thought better of it, since it too was the source of those same feelings that brought on boredom with the effort, and although I was making something out of nothing and had the knack for doing things like that, it was still a hollow waste of tme energy and resources.

It bought financial freedom to be independent and the liberty to be unique and help others at the cost of time.
It burned up time without enriching my restlessness.

One thing set over another thing, day in and day out.

It is still like that, even though I do not pursue that dogged path anymore.

Life does ebb and flow between prosperity and abundance on the one hand and adversity and lack on the other hand.

It all seems so subjective.

Like the shades between restlessness and satisfaction.

I am sure many here embrace the ebb and flow in life.

Human endeavor is shaped by our collective desires to some degree. I have observed that tendency.

I wonder sometimes if that is born of temptation or of benevolence.

We are all on the treadmill yearning for answers and finding that unique balance that fills the voids with the contents of our longings that deliver us to the very pursuit of which we are not completely cognizant of.

I seek truth. To say that I have found truth and am not longer seeking truth because I have truth would be dangerous and disengenuous to concude of myself, being that the pursuit has taught me that as much as I seek, I find.

Truth doesn't appear to be a conclusion or a destination to me.
Truth appears to be an apprehension that is fluid and not contained by any vessel, nor quantifiable, but infinitely vast.

To subject myself to limiting truth's sway on my attentions would return me to the ebb and flow of restlessness and satisfaction and their subjective borders.

IT SEEMS...We are but mere mortal constructions with an infinite capacity to chase dreams and ambitions and fill ourselves with everything and that we should only miss out on nothingness.

IT SEEMS....killing ourselves or dying is only the surrender of our inherent longing for life.

I find myself embraacing death as embracing life to its fullest, because I have come to believe that life is found but wanting were it not for death, which has been appointed to life.

But that limitation is upon the carnal construction of man, not the force within that is alive.

The life within is immortal. It must be. For though self preservation is about living, living is not about self preservation.

It is about being.

Going to school to learn was only difficult in the grasping of the knowledge taught, but the knowledge gleaned from learning made knowing restful. Knowledge is not difficlt, but moving from the lack to the abundanceof acquired knowledge requires the effort of will.

Perhaps death is in not seeing the forest for the trees.

The garden is still a garden, but for walls placed in the garden. The garden is not as small as it appears, but for the wall itself, in the midst.

Truth awaits. Life is in truth. Love is the joy of truth.

I have always thought that "Truth" is not seen for the same reason.

We are truth.

Yet we seek it. LOL ....

Jeannie, interesting post. Our perception of reality, based solely on sensory data, is just a model of what we believe to be true. When we have a gap in understanding, we automatically fill in the blanks. (Think optical illusions and how they work) This feature, coupled with ignorance, can create all kinds of fantastic dilusions that can, in many situations, be counter productive, and harmful. (Waco TX, Northern Ireland, Muslim Radicals, etc.)

As our collective knowledge increases through technology and research, we can eliminate more and more gaps, however, tradition and culture seem to have a firm hold on a large majority of the population who insist on believing in their own version of deity when evidence clearly indicates no such thing exists.

Personally, I think you can tell me that the flying spaghetti monster exists, and I wouldn't be able to prove you wrong, but it'd be pretty unreasonable for you to expect the rest of the world to blindly accept your point of view.

I have heard of the flying spaghetti monster before....mmm
Perhaps in some alternate reality he does exist. LOL I am sure if I can figure out how to operate this holodeck we are in, I could write a spaghetti monster program for those who wish to worship him. Personally I love spaghetti, but only to eat.

If String Theory is correct the entire universe may turn out to be made of spaghetti.

Maybe there's more truth to the spaghetti monster than we realize.

String theory... Yes ... It makes perfect sense.

In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.

An astonishing theory called the holographic principle holds that the universe is like a hologram: just as a trick of light allows a fully three-dimensional image to be recorded on a flat piece of film, our seemingly three-dimensional universe could be completely equivalent to alternative quantum fields and physical laws "painted" on a distant, vast surface.

The physics of black holes--immensely dense concentrations of mass--provides a hint that the principle might be true. Studies of black holes show that, although it defies common sense, the maximum entropy or information content of any region of space is defined not by its volume but by its surface area.

Physicists hope that this surprising finding is a clue to the ultimate theory of reality. Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely to be told "matter and energy."

Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient.

The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness.

Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain -- as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical.