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In Hinduism, God without attributes -- the Supreme Non-Dual Absolute (was it not Alan Watts who put it, "that than which there is no other") -- is Brahman. Brahman with attributes -- that is, the Non-Dual Absolute as the dual, personal God of the world -- is Ishvara. But even in Hinduism t...

Over the past few months I have been re-reading the Text volume of A Course in Miracles (ACIM), and I have to say I am once again very impressed by it. I first undertook A Course in Miracles in July of 1977, which was two years after its publication. Anna and I had read about it in Psychic magazine ...

Hello, Mick. Welcome to TZF’s Open Forum. Thank you for writing that you find the stuff here “uplifting and refreshing”. I am sure that all of Open Forum’s users will agree that a round of applause now and again is nice to hear. You asked, “if anyone can provide any insights, knowledge, stories or e...

John, You are very welcome here. There are many Open Forum registered visitors who choose just to read, not to post, and that’s fine. On the other hand, if you should be moved to post, that’s great, too. You wrote “There are obviously folks here who have advanced further along their chosen paths tha...

ihavesayso, Nicely put!

In the words of the wondrous Nisargadatta, Welcome the unexpected.

Here are a few interesting lines from a book on Zen by Osho (formerly Rajneesh … about whom, parenthetically, it is my opinion and experience that initially he was an excellent writer on many subjects of interest to seekers, including the Gospels, Tantra, and Zen, but that he misguidedly let himself...

The large tree to the left of the gazebo in the photograph on TZF's page The Gazebo is a plum. For the past several years, a pair of Eastern Phoebes have nested in the eaves of the gazebo. We have been delighted to have them there, because they're cute and they eat nasty flying & biting insects....

The last few days, I have been reading How To Know God - The Yoga Aphorisms of Patajali . Patanjali , who some scholars suggest never actually existed and is only a mythical character, is sometimes referred to as the "father of yoga". These aphorisms (also called Yoga Sutras) were written ...

This morning, I read a story at MSNBC reporting that the US Supreme Court has chosen not to hear a case presented by Jerry Falwell concerning his dispute with a website whose domain name is (undoubtedly intentionally) very similar to his own (fallwell.com vs. falwell.com) but whose perspective on ho...

On the New York Times website today (Saturday, 3/11) is a story about a Syrian-American woman who has spoken out against the violence being perpetrated by terrorists in the name of Islam. Here is an excerpt: Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living o...

I suppose that, from a seeker's point of view, and possibly from a physicist’s as well (which is not intended to suggest that the two are mutually exclusive), the real problem with discovering "an ultimate theory of everything" is that if day-to-day reality is in fact not something separat...

As I suggested at the post Evolution of Christianity in Open Forum's General Discussion area, Ehrman's book Lost Christianities offers some really interesting stuff (for those interested in the tendencies and vagaries of the human species) about the evolution of what we now know as the New Testament...

Anvil's post above raises two questions. First, about whether the mind works "reasonably well". If by "reasonably" is meant "in accordance with reason", then history suggests that Anvil is right; the mind rarely works so. However, I think my use of it was intended to me...

I am reading (as I write these words, I'm about half way through) an interesting book about the earliest days of Christianity: Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina (Chapel H...