govern point

Yonder Mtn. String Band provides a great way to look at the Devil and the saving of the soul. Not sure they meant it this way, but it play wells and my kids dig it.

Proof of existence and trying to know if God is real is the center for many discussions. Is God real? Surprisingly, this fundamental question is simplistic in nature. It is solved by asking another question, “Where did everything come from?” Where did space, time, matter, energy and information come from?
Theists have always acknowledged an Intelligent Designer as being the source of all things.

Is God Real? The Evolution Paradigm

Is God real? Not if you ask British Naturalist Charles Darwin. In 1859, Darwin purposed a mechanism by which evolutionary descent from a common ancestor may be possible without resorting to a Creator God.

Kurt Cameron takes on the idea In March 2006 on “Nightline”.

The way of the master is a Christian ministry headed by Cameron and itinerant preacher Ray Comfort. Operating as a charitable trust, its intention is to educate and equip the church to preach the message of Christianity to nonbelievers. Cameron says he is motivated by a literal fear of hell.

“I believe the Scriptures teach that there’s a literal heaven and a literal hell, just like Jesus said,” he explained. “And without forgiveness of sins that, yeah, the place of punishment is called hell.”

The Way of the Master has a weekly television show for which Comfort and Cameron literally hit the streets in the name of Jesus, challenging nonbelievers that their sins against God will lead directly to hell.

“On the Day of Judgment,” Comfort tells one man on the streets of New York, “God will see you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer at heart. You have sinned against God. You need his forgiveness.”

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The Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer. It is perhaps best known for its celebrity members, among them Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Whether Scientology is a “religion” is a matter of debate, but for our purposes at govern point it is. Scientology presents itself as a “technology” that leads people to “true spiritual release and freedom.” It does not emphasize particular beliefs about God or other traditional religious topics.

Scientology focuses on psychological technologies that people can use to make their lives better.

As such, it has very little to say about God, the afterlife or other speculative religious ideas. Just as Scientology is focused on humanity, so are its beliefs.

Nevertheless, the Church of Scientology considers itself a religion because of its focus on the soul and spiritual awareness and does include some beliefs on other traditionally religious subjects.
God

Scientology includes belief in God, but offers no details or doctrine about God. In his explorations, Hubbard noted the prevalence and importance of belief in a Supreme Being to all peoples. God is therefore the Eighth Dynamic, which is also known as Infinity. Scientologists who progress to the Eighth Dynamic come to their own conclusions regarding the Supreme Being.
Scientology on Human Nature

Based on his personal research, L. Ron Hubbard concluded that a human is made up of three parts: the body, the mind and the thetan.

The body includes the brain, which is not to be confused with the mind. The purpose of the brain is to carry messages; it is likened to a switchboard.

The mind “consists essentially of pictures.” It is the accumulation of life experiences, memories, perceptions, decisions and conclusions.

The thetan is the soul, which is the true essence of a human being. Hubbard felt that “soul” had come to have too many meanings, so coined the term thetan based on the Greek letter theta.

A thetan is the person himself, not his body or his name or the physical universe, his mind or anything else. It is that which is aware of being aware; the identity which IS the individual. One does not have a thetan, something one keeps somewhere apart from oneself; he is a thetan.

The thetan can exist entirely independent of the body and the mind. Scientology teaches that, through a process called exteriorization, a thetan can leave the body but still control the body. This experience results in a person’s certainty that he is not identified with his body. A person who is able to practice exteriorization is called an Operating Thetan or OT.

The official Scientology website states:

Man is a spiritual being endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally envisages. He is not only able to solve his own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also to achieve new states of awareness he may never have dreamed possible.

Afterlife

Scientology does not include an official belief about the afterlife. However, it reports that during auditing, a person often recalls memories of past lives and that Scientology ascribes to the idea of being born again into another body.

Xenu

In Scientology doctrine, Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living. These events are known as “Incident II” or “The Wall of Fire,” and the traumatic memories associated with them are known as the “R6 implant.” The Xenu story prompted the use of the volcano as a Scientology symbol.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan Level III in 1967, famously warning that R6 was “calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it.”

Much controversy between the Church of Scientology and its critics has focused on Xenu. The Church avoids making mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story’s confidentiality, including legal action on both copyright and trade secrecy grounds.

Critics claim that revealing the story is in the public interest, given the high prices charged for attaining the level of OT III.

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Vamana

Vamana is the fifth incarnation of Vishnu, born as a dwarf into the household of a Brahmin priest.

Vamana tricked the demon king Bali to grant him as much of his empire as he could measure in 3 steps. With the first step he covered all of Earth. With the second step he covered all the heavens and while doing that Brahma washed his feet in his kamandula or water pot. Out of that pot, Ganga was born. With the third step, Vamana pushed Bali back to the underworld or Patala Loka.

Dhumavati

Dhumavati is the smoky form of Shakti. She is also known as the eternal widow, the Shakti without Shiva. She is ugly and also called Alakshmi, the one who is without lakshmi or radiance (see Lakshmi).

Dhumavati is the Divine Mother at the time of the deluge, when the Earth is under water. While being ugly and fearsome, she is blessing with her right hand those who can still see the Divine Mother in her. The black crow on her flag is the symbol of dark forces and black magic.

Dhumavati is one of the ten Mahavidyas – the others are Kali, Tara, Shodashi, Bhuvaneshwari, Bhairavi, Chinnamasta and Matangi, Kamala and Bagla Mukhi. The Mahavidyas represent some or other incarnation or manifestation of the Divine Mother. They are in this sense also to be regarded as Vidyas or different approaches to (tantric) knowledge.

Kali

Kali is a ferocious form of the Divine Mother, who sent her Shakti, the Mother Gauri, to free the gods from the dominion of the demonic forces Shumbh and Nishumbh, who had conquered the 3 worlds of earth, the astral plane and the celestial plane.

Kali is the goddess of time and of the transformation that is death (Kala). Lord Shiva and Mother Gauri in their destructive form are known as Mahakala and Mahakali or Kali.

Kali is the Kundalini energy that paralyses the attachments produced by the solar and lunar currents (both demons mentioned above). This attachment causes fear of death. In the ignorant ones she creates fear, while for others Kali removes the avidya (ignorance) that makes us fear death, the basic insecurity of the First Chakra , a fear rooted in the brain stem or primitive brain.

Krishna

Krishna is the eight incarnation of lord Vishnu and was born in the Dvarpara Yuga as the “dark one”. Krishna is the embodiment of love and divine joy, that destroys all pain and sin. Krishna is the protector of sacred utterances and cows. Krishna is a trickster and lover, an instigator of all forms of knowledge and born to establish the religion of love.

Kurma

Kurma (or the Koorm Avatar) is the second, turtoise-incarnation of Lord Vishnu.

At the Churning of the Ocean, the Mount Mandara that was used as a churning stick, began to sink into the soft ocean bed. This caused Vishnu to assume the form of the turtoise-avatar, diving to the bottom where his back became a pivot for the churning stick.

Vishnu

In the basic Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Hindu god Vishnu is the preserver and protector of creation. Vishnu is the embodiment of mercy and goodness, the self-existent, all-pervading power that preserves the universe and maintains the cosmic order Dharma.

The Kurma incarnation also represents the stage in the development of life, when the ability to breathe air and walk out of the water developed. The turtle is also the symbol of perseverance.

Krishna was born as the 8th child of Devaki, sister of the cruel demon king Kamsa. The sage Narada had predicted that Kamsa would be killed by his nephew, so the king killed Devaki´s first six children.

Brahma

Within the hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Nevertheless, Brahma grew in a lotus out of the navel of the sleeping Vishnu. The daily alternation of light and dark is attributed to the activity of Brahma.

Brahma’s mind born sons are the seers Marici, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratuj, Pracetas, Vashishta, Bhrgu and Narada. From Brahma’s body came his nine sons Daksa, Dharma, Kama, Anger, Greed, Delusion (Maya), Lust, Joy, Death and Bharata and one daughter called Angaja.

Shiva

Shiva is the destroyer of the world, following Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver, after which Brahma again creates the world and so on. Shiva is responsible for change both in the form of death and destruction and in the positive sense of the shedding of old habits. In Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram or Truth, Goodness and Beauty, Shiva also represents the most essential goodness.

Shiva is the god of the yogis, self-controlled and celibate, while at the same time a lover of his spouse (shakti). Shiva’s first wife was Sati and his second wife was Parvati, also known as Uma, Gauri, Durga, Kali and Shakti. His sons are Ganesha and Kartikeya. Shiva lives on Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas.

Shiva’s main attributes are the trident that represents the three gunas and the snakes that show he is beyond the power of death and poison and also stand for the Kundalini energy. The vehicle of Shiva is the white bull called Nandi (the joyful). He is often seated on a tiger skin or wears a tiger skin, with the tiger representing the mind.

Shiva & Parvati dancing in the Himalayas – Click for a larger imageShiva has many forms, which are visible in his Panchavaktra form with 5 heads, a combination of all Shiva energies : Aghora (resides in the creamation grounds), Ishana (most often appears as the shivalingam), Tat Purusha (meditating), Varna Deva (the eternal Shiva) and Saddyojat or Braddha Rudra (the old wrathful form). The last also forms the connection to the Rudraksha mala – a rosary made of the dried fruits of the Rudraksha tree.

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