Written by Mathew Naismith
I’m going to try to put the following into perspective straight
up, try to realise this is only my perspective and shouldn’t be taken to heart.
Karma = western hell + misjudgements + ignorance
Dharma = western heaven + judgment + awareness
This is basically stating that we can produce a heaven or
hell on Earth or both simultaneously. The
following was my replies to certain other threads in relation to religion,
spirituality, judgement and misjudgements but mainly to do if religion is
viable or not, you might be a little surprised.
G'day Lisa
"it is also a
handy tool to control the masses"
I was just talking
about this with a self-proclaimed atheist recently who believes in an
afterlife, western religion in particular seems to be based on fear, this of
course is to control the masses, can we just judge this as a bad thing though?
I think it’s a very
good thing to control the masses if the masses are ignorant or unaware of their
true nature for only in ignorance can we destroy. This kind of control based on
fear stopped the masses from destroying themselves, however, as the dark ages
proved, it can be used to be very destructive as well.
What does ignorance
give us, unbiased or bias judgment? It of course gives us bias judgment
(misjudgements), if we were to continually misjudge, we would indeed destroy
ourselves. Control over this misjudgement saved us from ourselves to some
extent.
Now the quote I made
up, “For only in ignorance can we destroy”, is quite definable in that
ignorance creates misjudgements and destruction, in actual fact only in
awareness will we not destroy.
Basically what I am
saying is religion, based on fear, is for the ignorant only for the ignorant
need to be controlled to save them from themselves, the aware no longer need
religion to control them by fear. Why are so many people pulling away from
religion? I think it’s because we are becoming more aware.
G'day Rajendranath
Separating religion
from spirituality is very hard to do especially when so many spiritually aware
people use eastern religion to form their spirituality. The big difference
between religion and spirituality is one is based on fear and the other one
isn't or shouldn't be.
Let's look at karma
which is an eastern concept, it's fear based but not quite to the same extent
as going to hell but it's still based on fear. Spirituality itself isn't based
on fear even though we have taken on the concept of karma within spirituality;
we have the awareness that we could have to redeem ourselves in the next life
if we don't practice in dharma.
You could define karma
as living in ignorance and dharma as living in awareness, would we accumulate karma
if we were truly aware? The answer is of course no so dharma is certainly in my
mind in reference to awareness.
Dharma is a religious concept
practiced in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, to practice in dharma is
to be aware in my mind but of course you need to be aware to practice in dharma
in the first place. What is one of the fundamental traits of dharma? Unbiased judgment, this unbiased judgement quite
automatically defuses (neutralises) bias judgments (misjudgements), in other
words chaos and destruction.
You could also relate
hell with karma and dharma with heaven; this to me wouldn’t be far from the
truth, however not in the same context as when we die we go to hell. To me
karma and dharma are saying heaven and hell can be created on Earth or even in
the afterlife.
What I am saying is
true spirituality is about dharma, an existence that is no longer based on fear
but an awareness that no longer needs a fear based religion.
I should point out that defining people ignorant or aware is
determined by observation, being the observer, not judgement, is it a bad or
good thing to be ignorant? It’s neither of course; it’s just another way to
exist and experience consciousness.
