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So...for some there really is nothing to pursue.

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So does that mean I am enlightened...or just don't care?

I don't know...what do you think? I'm just trying to 'think' my way to integrating an archaic concept into a more modern context. Something more 'palatable' to the Rational Man.

Things are as they are...only the perception changes.

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Things are as they are...only the perception changes.

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And that is exactly the point...and is true for either accepting a larger religious/philosophical cosmology, or disregarding it.

Things will be as they are, our appreciations of them may change, but the difference can only be measured in individual terms---and not outside one's self. And there in lies the dilema.

I didn't say anything about religion or cosmology...which I think of as different from 'spiritual'. Again...begs for a definition of the word.

I guess it would be very hard to define religion or spirituality. But if you take spirituality to mean something exisiting outside the self or having an undefined existence beyong what we can measure in scientific terms, then I think we are at an impasse again.

Just as in that little philosophical mind game, where the tree falls over in an empty forest---when I am gone, it will not matter (sound or not), since I will take my awareness with me, despite accepting or trying to decline death's invitation.

*absorbing*

here's how this secular humanist views it:

'enlightenment' in an individual is a human-made construct, and therefore flawed.

enlightenment over millions of years to a species, is true gain in knowing...it becomes part of DNA. anything else is pretending.

the small realizations, wisdom and knowledge we accumulate and pass on during our lives is like how a single grain of sand contributes to making a beach.

we are each, almost insignificant.

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I'm just trying to 'think' my way to integrating an archaic concept into a more modern context. Something more 'palatable' to the Rational Man.

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Heaping illusions upon illusions. The "Rational Man" cannot be satiated. The rational, discriminating mind does not know that it isn't the one and only "true god". It is a part of the whole, but you cannot tell it that. While you are in its house, you obey it as though it were your father, without question. When you get older, you start to move away from it. After much experience, you realize it is just an old man grasping at anything that will support it. All children will realize someday that their father is not "god", and see the bigger world, but there's no forcing the issue. Every moment, everything is where it Is. Time is an illusion.

I agree...but still leaves the thinkers in the audience stumped.