URGENT! PLEASE HELP! Are the spirits that try to communicate will us ALL demons?

I think if you want to find the truth, truth has to be what you really want. Allowing prudential considerations to intervene strikes me as a recipe for self-delusion. In particular, I think it had nothing to do with how Pascal himself arrived at his views. "FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace."

 

My point was that Koester is hardly alone in his skepticism. Take a look at the Jesus Seminar, for example.

 

With respect, it actually doesn't matter who wrote the Gospels. Anyone who actually looks at the teachings of Christianity and also reads the words of Jesus in the Gospels can see that the religion is not based on those teachings! That you would ascribe conclusions based upon evidence-based, rational thinking to what might be demons and then urge the same kind of thinking as a way to find the truth is strange indeed.

The reason why I trust the Gospel words of Jesus on love, forgiveness, the nature of God, and the meaning and purpose of human life is a simple one: the dead consistently tell us those words are true! Some say it directly. Some simply tell us the same things, but in different words. I have never seen a single communication from someone who claimed to be dead that disagreed! On a purely rational basis, such extremely detailed agreement between two sets of information received more than a thousand years apart must be true, purely based upon odd-against-chance (if you're curious, all my Fun books except The Fun of Living Together contain an Appendix that lays out the correspondences). I am deeply skeptical by nature; but when every source of information consistently converges, then I am willing to accept as likely what are reasonable, facts-based conclusions.

But reasoning from evidence is just the start of the human journey toward Truth! And it is only at this preliminary point where we are building a basic understanding that rational thinking even is helpful.

This may come as a surprise to you, but reasoning as you do is not how you find the deeper Truths. On the contrary! Continuing to reason this way and forever giving negativity mind-space is how you court and build falsehoods that would not exist but for your insistence on giving them mind-space. Your mind - the small, limited sub-mind that each of us brings into each brief earth-lifetime - is, quite literally, the only place where evil and falsehoods reside. You are assuming the existence of some objective evil - a devil, if you will - that is entirely a human creation!

God is real. But God is nothing like the cranky and judgmental humanoid of Christian imaginings! Instead, God is what Jesus told us that God is: infinitely powerful and infinitely loving Spirit. God is all that exists! And you cannot develop a personal relationship with God unless you are willing to trust God sufficiently to leave this rationality that you love, to leave fear, and to altogether leave behind the illusion of separation that your way of thinking fosters. I urge you strongly to find a good A Course in Miracles study group and delve into this very advanced version of the basic Gospel teachings. Take it at least as far as what is called "the undoing of the ego." For me that took a year, and it was the worst experience of my life! Your ego fights like mad to survive, and it uses fear as its weapon: it makes you feel as if its death will be your own extinction. But it won't be. The death of the ego is the death of fear! It is the birth in you of "the peace that passes all understanding," and the beginning of a much greater spiritual voyage than I had even imagined could be possible back when I, too, thought that reasoning from evidence was what mattered!

Reasoning from evidence is block-stacking. It is an essential part of developing spiritually. But the three-year-old who is stacking blocks has no way even to conceive of the fact that one day he will soar among the stars!

 

Well, I just don't agree. It matters who wrote the gospels for the same reason the identity of any communicator, in any setting, matters. Moreover, you refer to "the teachings of Christianity" as if all self-described Christians profess the same things, which is simply false. On top of that, you refer to the "words of Jesus in the Gospels" as having some authority, but you discount the words of Jesus in the gospels that refer to things that you reject, such as Satan, judgment, and hell. So really it's only some of the words of Jesus that you accept. Which ones? What is your criterion for deciding which ones to accept and which to reject? You've already told us that you believe that some of the words of Jesus were later additions--so obviously it matters to you who wrote what!

In other words, you are willing to use the statements of "the dead" to decide which of the sayings of Jesus in the gospels are authentic. That's fine, but I think it's good to make that explicit, rather than to suggest that your reason for rejecting some of the sayings of Jesus in the gospels is the undocumented editing of them at the Council of Nicaea. If, in your estimation, "the dead" have greater authority than some ancient texts, then we can consider that claim on its merits. I put "the dead" in quotation marks not to be snarky but simply to reiterate my point that we are in a very poor position to ascertain the identity of these communicators. The word "demon" itself is troublesome unless we have some definite idea as to what a demon supposedly is.

My views are no more negative than your own; in fact they are less so. Read your own words about Christianity in this thread. I'd say they are more negative and indeed more dogmatic than the doubts I express about the identity of those presenting themselves as "the dead." I don't claim to know they're not who they say they are, only that I don't see how we are supposed to know one way or the other. You, on the other hand, have made far more definite and negative assertions about what Jesus said and what he didn't say.

Finally, I did belong to an ACIM study group for about two years. I took it very seriously, but finally decided it was not what it purports to be, a view that I stiill hold. I don't pretend to know just what it is, but I'm satisfied it's not the true message of Jesus, channeled through Helen Schucman.

 

The same is, of course, true of Satan. If you think Jesus believed in Satan, which Satan is it?

How did you satisfy yourself on that point?

 

I am sorry, but I have answered your questions above and you have no interest in those answers, so my attempts to enlighten you further are at an end. You don't understand (and you seem to have no interest in understanding) what demons are, what negativity is, or - apparently - very much of anything that you haven't thought of yourself. As the shaman in the movie Avatar sadly says, "We cannot fill a cup that is already full." And since you have no wish to listen to or think about anything that is beyond your own particular notions, I am sorry, but I don't have time for more of this pointless back-and-forth. I am not at all surprised that you were not able to use ACIM to get to the undoing of the ego, since yours is particularly strong. I am sorry for you, sir, but since you are determined to listen only to yourself, I must just wish you joy in that!

I only feel the need to say here to others who are not so insistent that whatever they believe must certainly be true that indeed Jesus is genuine, He channeled His modern teachings in ACIM, and He also spoke through me in Liberating Jesus. I don't ask you to believe every word that I say, dear precious friends, but since you are here, each of you who is not Dingodile, and since you know that this is my website and what I say here is based not on my mere beliefs but on nearly 50 years of research, I imagine that you wouldn't be here unless you thought that on some level I am sharing with you objective truths.

And to each of you - everyone who is not Dingodile - I say that I am as certain based upon abundant evidence that what I say here concerning Christianity and the fact that Jesus is now seeking to get free of its false dogmas as I am certain of the fact that our minds are eternal and we will never die. Believe me or not - and believing me is not a requirement! - but I ask you only to keep your minds open so the perfect truth of Spirit will find a way to enter.

Dingodile, do not respond to this. There is no point to your doing that, and Mac and I will from now on remove every attempt that you might make to respond. I wish you joy in believing whatever makes you happy!

 

That's fair enough. I'm very familiar with the Jesus Seminar, and with its critics, which are many. Even among liberal scholars the work of the Jesus Seminar hasn't held up very well. It's also a fact that most (not all) of the members of the Jesus Seminar used a criterion of naturalism to help decide which sayings of Jesus were authentic. Clearly, if you reject supernaturalism you'll arrive at different conclusions about who Jesus was and what he said. Koester was a protege of Bultmann, who famously argued that our knowledge of Jesus is limited to the naturalistic methods of historiography.

But then, if we're going to presuppose naturalism in the study of the gospels, I suppose we have to do it when studying mediumship as well.

 

dingodile,
I mostly agree with your response to roberta. And since your response was civil and polite, I don't think you should be prevented from responding further -- such censorship does not speak well of this site.

 

Thank you, I have no objection to the restriction. I think we've both said what we have to say. Others will reach their own conclusions. These are not easy topics to discuss.

Edit: I do take exception to the deletion of my last post in this thread, which I only just realized has occurred. But since no one can read it, there's no point in discussing the matter. Life goes on.

 

Ouch! I have never had nor do I now have any "EVIDENCE" to support my many personal Disincarnate encounters so I may need to just shut up and bow out of this forum. Oh well...........