Skip navigation
Sidebar -

Advanced search options →

Welcome

Welcome to CEMB forum.
Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email?

Donations

Help keep the Forum going!
Click on Kitty to donate:

Kitty is lost

Recent Posts


Do humans have needed kno...
Today at 09:57 PM

Marcion and the introduct...
by zeca
Today at 09:44 PM

Lights on the way
by akay
Today at 05:55 AM

Qur'anic studies today
by zeca
Yesterday at 07:11 AM

Gaza assault
Yesterday at 04:36 AM

New Britain
May 13, 2025, 07:40 PM

الحبيب من يشبه اكثر؟؟؟
by akay
May 10, 2025, 01:22 PM

Random Islamic History Po...
by zeca
May 10, 2025, 10:45 AM

What music are you listen...
by zeca
May 10, 2025, 08:24 AM

Pope Francis Signals Rema...
May 09, 2025, 05:32 PM

Kashmir endgame
April 24, 2025, 05:12 PM

عيد مبارك للجميع! ^_^
by akay
March 29, 2025, 01:09 PM

Theme Changer

 Topic: I believe in reincarnation

 (Read 15240 times)
  • Previous page 1 2 3 4« Previous thread | Next thread »
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #90 - March 26, 2010, 12:19 AM

    Precisely: the force is strong in this one!



    -Sith apprentice

    not to be taken too seriously
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #91 - March 26, 2010, 12:46 AM

    This precisely is the implication. Problem is that in order to make an assumption like that you would have to truly understand what he is talking about. Not saying that I totally understand him btw. It's all quite hazy.
    And I do apologise billy I didn't mean to diss you. lol
    I shouldn't have used the term "dissing" in my original post - way too strong. Hence the confusion.



    Kenan, I made a typo. I meant to say I think you got the wrong end of the stick. Anyway, doesn't matter. No offense meant to anyone.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #92 - March 26, 2010, 12:48 AM

    @The Tailor
    Lacan, on the other hand, can sometimes be best approached via secondary sources (like Zizek and even the various cartoon summaries aren't bad).

    link please
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #93 - March 26, 2010, 12:51 AM

    No offense meant to anyone.

    Likewise!
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #94 - March 26, 2010, 03:03 AM

    The Tailor - would you say that your conception of id and ego both being tamed by the prophecy is rational? In other words, do you expect to be able to give a completely reasonable account of exactly what it is and how it works or do you think that language can only approach this subjective view asymptotically?

    I ask because from the limited number of mystics and sufis that I have studied, ineffability seems to be the best description of the view that is opened up once one reaches this stage. Rationality, so to speak, is the ladder to get there but once you get to the top you have to throw the ladder away - is this a fair description of the subjective viewpoint that sufis aim to attain?

    I look forward to your answer.  Smiley


    Good question!

    A LOT of Sufis would say that these maps should be discarded: that signs of perception are not important, and instead the key of mysticism is to somehow "blend into" God through dissolution of the ego.

    For me, it is a bit more complicated than that. For me, Truth is linguistic and requires separation from God, not an immediate union as such. Divine Truth is found within speech, rather in than something "outside" or transcending rational thought (although rationality is a loaded word). Let's say I deviate a little from "naive" mysticism in that I don't believe in a climbing the ladder/throwing away the ladder principle. I believe the ladder, this map or structure of the psyche outlined ... is in fact something very much symbolic, linguistic, represented (if not rational in an ordinary sense) -- and that this ladder is in fact the best we can get in terms of a Divine contact. My slogan is "the garden abides within speech": that Truth is to be found within the signs we apprehend psychologically and subjectively ...

    [That said, I believe that maps of course have their limits ... that Truth is ultimately a physical encounter with Divinity ... and that Truth is fundamentally Feminine, a Wife that, as Zizek has correctly understood in his problematics of feminism, is a possible impossibility.]

    L&L,

    TT

    The Divisions of Love, second album by my Cabbalacore band, the Friends of Design, out now:

    https://vimeo.com/110528857
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #95 - March 26, 2010, 03:15 AM

    @The Tailorlink please


    @All

    Atheist philosophical summaries that might be of interest to people looking for something more interesting than boring old Dawkins?

    The "graphic guides" are generally okay for certain authors:
    1) Lacan is pending
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introducing-Lacan-Graphic-Darian-Leader/dp/1848311834/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269572914&sr=1-1
    2) Heidegger
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heidegger-Beginners-Writers-Readers-Documentary/dp/0863161723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1269573003&sr=1-1-spell
    3) Something a bit more heavy going, but still very readable is the VERY atheist Zizek
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Interrogating-Real-Slavoj-Zizek/dp/0826489737/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269573085&sr=1-21
    4) The following should probably be accompanied by medium strength psychedelics to really grok:
    http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/welcome.jsp?action=search&type=isbn&term=0826476945
    The chapters on the Face of God and Moses are particularly cool (though blasphemous).

    L&L,

    TT


    The Divisions of Love, second album by my Cabbalacore band, the Friends of Design, out now:

    https://vimeo.com/110528857
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #96 - March 26, 2010, 06:06 PM

    I like sufism, and believe it is a far more healthy discipline than regular Islam.  [

    At a rough guess, do you know what % of muslims are sufi's? Do you reckon it is more or less than 5%?  Also do you think it is growing?

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #97 - March 26, 2010, 06:25 PM


    Sufis seem a nice bunch, there is much to say for them when they are genuine hippies. But as I understand it, many sufi orders were and are heavily into prosletysing and bringing the numbers into the fold of Islam, getting them hooked on peace and love, and then later on they get handed the crack pipe of hate and dogmatism and kuffar decrying that hardcore Islam is.

    Now I'm not saying that there aren't genuine peace-and-love sufis out there, I'm saying there are many that are not exactly like that.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #98 - March 26, 2010, 06:59 PM

    Well my family practises sufism, they pray to sufi saints, but they are moderate/liberal Sunni Muslims. However, according to the othordox and Wahabbi sects they are committing Bid'ah, which makes them heretics. Although they are not viewed as badly as the Ahmaddiyah Sect are, but to the Wahabbi and Salafis anyone who doesn't follow their version of Islam is an unbeliever, technically.

    I like sufism, and believe it is a far more healthy discipline than regular Islam.  [

    At a rough guess, do you know what % of muslims are sufi's? Do you reckon it is more or less than 5%?  Also do you think it is growing?


    Not sure, I would say less than 5%, as like 80-85% of the Muslim population are Sunni and probably 10% are Shia, so if we are classifying how many are proper Sufis I would lean to less than 5%.

    "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #99 - March 26, 2010, 07:57 PM

    Peace all,

    I'd go along with Billy -- there are all kinds of forms of Sufism, from versions more tyrannical and damaging than mainstream Islam at its worst, to your (still absolutely common and "mainstream" in Asia) folk forms involving syncretism with previous traditions (consulting shamans, praying at tombs of saints, etc) to forms of practice involving intoxication that are essentially indistinguishable from the 60s and 90s summers of love ...

    Buyer beware. The former versions are often the ones most likely to publicize themselves as "authentic" Sufism, with the beards and robes and turbans etc -- I'd go along with Idris Shah here, and assert that, in general, spiritual depth is inversely proportional to the elaborateness of the costumes and ceremonies involved in an purported "esoteric" sect. I'm particularly uncomfortable with the absolute veneration of head teacher you often encounter.

    That said, I've met a lot of "real" Sufis, the 5% of poor righteous teachers who possess the understanding. 10% recognize the understanding -- and keep it hidden from the rest of the 85%  who are innocent to the whole deal.

    [Suddenly stands on soap box and begins to rant prophetically.]

    It is my personal experience that this 10% are often the most obviously "religious" people. Their faces become dark when they hear Sufi knowledge -- specifically because they recognize it to be true -- they "keep" the texts, they recognize all the reference I make, but "conceal" the Truth of them from everyone with their tafsir -- and so they deny it out of the darkness in their hearts. (The other 85% just think what I am saying is mystical nonsense and can take it or leave it. No blame is upon them.)

    For example, the Sufi knowledge is that the story of Noah is about me and you, about OUR journey today -- nothing more nor less. That Noah is "reincarnated" within our psyche, that the ark is nothing more nor less than your own headspace, floating above the ocean of the Divine flood of bewilderment that is sometimes called the state of fana or ego-oblivion. Upon hearing this, the 10%, the munafiq become angry and threatened and deny our Word emphatically. They say "No! These are stories of the ancients" (Qur'an 16:24), stories of people that existed BEFORE the "Now" that constitutes our psychological being. They deny the present reality of the Prophetic figures within our mental makeup -- deny the nature of "reincarnation" in the revelation -- and instead defer all these narrative to an imaginary historical "past". To mere historical narrations, astagfirullah, like a document of WWII or the Ottoman Empire.

    There "was" no Noah, no Dhul-Qarnain, no Muhammed in the sense of historical figures -- b/c they are not stories of ancient peoples. Their only reality is as present-tense theomorphic "reincarnated" aspects of our Self.

    [Ends prophetic rant, climbs back onto donkey and rides off to the pub.]

    Love and Light,

    TT

    The Divisions of Love, second album by my Cabbalacore band, the Friends of Design, out now:

    https://vimeo.com/110528857
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #100 - March 26, 2010, 08:29 PM

    Sufis seem a nice bunch, there is much to say for them when they are genuine hippies. But as I understand it, many sufi orders were and are heavily into prosletysing and bringing the numbers into the fold of Islam, getting them hooked on peace and love, and then later on they get handed the crack pipe of hate and dogmatism and kuffar decrying that hardcore Islam is.

    Now I'm not saying that there aren't genuine peace-and-love sufis out there, I'm saying there are many that are not exactly like that.



    Thats pretty much happened to pretty much everywhere outside of Saudi Arabia.  Although it took several generations to move from flower-power to fire-power.

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #101 - March 26, 2010, 08:34 PM

    Tailor - have you come across Shaaz Mahboob & Mohammed Abbasi, they are the only 2 sufies I know from my facebook account.

    Secondly, can you define the difference between mainstream Islam & Sufism, not your particular difference but one that most sufi's would agree with..  Also can you define which particular brand of sufism you adhere too - is there a website for more info?

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #102 - March 26, 2010, 08:41 PM

    from flower-power to fire-power.


    ha! Gold star for that one  Afro

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #103 - March 26, 2010, 08:56 PM

    @IsLame,

    I've come across them but don't know them personally. Tailorite Sufism is Uwaisi in origin:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwaisi
    I've got some links to the Yasawi order (see link below for details) and to ibn Arabi.

    I'd say one of the most balanced surveys of all Sufi perspectives is here:
      http://www.uga.edu/islam/Sufism.html
    There are some very clear "consensus" opinions on Islam and Sufism there, including a nice summary of "mainstream" Islam's various problems with Sufism throughout the ages.

    Generally speaking, I can't see much difference at all between Sufis (viewed as an entirety) and mainstream Islam (viewed as an entirety as well) -- apart from an acceptance that not everything in the Qur'an should be read literally ... but even that acceptance has degrees of difference.

    L&L,

    TT

    The Divisions of Love, second album by my Cabbalacore band, the Friends of Design, out now:

    https://vimeo.com/110528857
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #104 - March 26, 2010, 09:05 PM

    In that sense, everyone who is not a wahhabi, can be viewed as a sufi?

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #105 - March 26, 2010, 09:07 PM

    Sufis seem a nice bunch, there is much to say for them when they are genuine hippies. But as I understand it, many sufi orders were and are heavily into prosletysing and bringing the numbers into the fold of Islam, getting them hooked on peace and love, and then later on they get handed the crack pipe of hate and dogmatism and kuffar decrying that hardcore Islam is.

    Now I'm not saying that there aren't genuine peace-and-love sufis out there, I'm saying there are many that are not exactly like that.




    This is actually an excellent summarisation of how Islam came to the subcontinent (and other places too). It's strange but in many ways south asian muslims have become more intolerant in the modern era.

    Iblis has mad debaterin' skillz. Best not step up unless you're prepared to recieve da pain.

  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #106 - March 26, 2010, 09:09 PM

    @IsLame,

    I've come across them but don't know them personally. Tailorite Sufism is Uwaisi in origin:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwaisi

    You should edit it (only take a few minutes) and add your website as a source.

    It will increase the exposure of your website, its rankings as well as make the entry more informative.  In fact you should go the full hog, and create an entry for Tailorite Sufism.

    When you're done send us the link  dance

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #107 - March 26, 2010, 09:41 PM


    The thing is, I looked into sufism and talked alot to a guy who followed the nashqbandi sufi sect, and when I read their stuff, they were all about converting the kuffar and the rest of it, the arrogant presumptiousness was the same. Not nice at all, and the dawah was very propaganistic like that. There are sufis though, especially in Asia, who genuinely are non conformist and mystical and full of love. But they are so very radical and outside the mainstream of Islam.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #108 - March 26, 2010, 10:06 PM

    I think the likes of al-Ghazali and Hasan al-Banna were sufis, but they still believed in Islamic supremacism and the eradication of non-Muslim states and the implementation of the Shari'ah.
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #109 - March 26, 2010, 10:50 PM

    Good question!

    A LOT of Sufis would say that these maps should be discarded: that signs of perception are not important, and instead the key of mysticism is to somehow "blend into" God through dissolution of the ego.

    For me, it is a bit more complicated than that. For me, Truth is linguistic and requires separation from God, not an immediate union as such. Divine Truth is found within speech, rather in than something "outside" or transcending rational thought (although rationality is a loaded word). Let's say I deviate a little from "naive" mysticism in that I don't believe in a climbing the ladder/throwing away the ladder principle. I believe the ladder, this map or structure of the psyche outlined ... is in fact something very much symbolic, linguistic, represented (if not rational in an ordinary sense) -- and that this ladder is in fact the best we can get in terms of a Divine contact. My slogan is "the garden abides within speech": that Truth is to be found within the signs we apprehend psychologically and subjectively ...

    [That said, I believe that maps of course have their limits ... that Truth is ultimately a physical encounter with Divinity ... and that Truth is fundamentally Feminine, a Wife that, as Zizek has correctly understood in his problematics of feminism, is a possible impossibility.]

    L&L,

    TT


    Thank you for your answer. I suppose if it is possible to articulate the ineffable and to bring into words the union with god, and if you have yourself experienced this union with god, can you put it into words? What does it feel like? How would you describe this divine contact/ this garden?

    (I find it interesting to note that you refer to the truth as feminine. I have always found it interesting that many sufi poets from many different cultures take on the female persona when they pine for the truth to come to them again. So, are we lead to believe that the union of the truth with the seeker of the truth is a lesbian relationship? I have always wondered about the adoption of the female persona by many sufi poets but it has never really been explained...)

    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #110 - April 08, 2010, 09:25 PM

    Thank you for your answer. I suppose if it is possible to articulate the ineffable and to bring into words the union with god, and if you have yourself experienced this union with god, can you put it into words? What does it feel like? How would you describe this divine contact/ this garden?


    Hey Zee,

    Sorry for not replying earlier. There are all kinds of Divine experiences that I could articulate. For example, the feminine/garden thing feels like your entire world -- every atom of everything you see, breath, think -- is Tranquility -- simultaneously, feels like woman moving toward you, as if about to move into a kiss. There are other experiences (I guess more fearful), where your entire being is split from the head to the navel (pretty much as it says on the Islamic tin, in fact) by a "Hand". Other times it might just be chillin with my peeps, having an icecream by the ocean, or seeing birds in flight, knowing these are all signs of Love fashioned just for "me" as this moment and this time, in deferral to the Love.

    Any good?

    This sounds pretty wild, perhaps (and I've only offered a couple of the lighter going ones). But it is always interesting how "mainstream" Muslims are very averse to talking about any kind of direct "contact" -- in fact, guys in the style of Ahmed Deedat like to mock the Christians who pretty much uniformly value the concept of Grace and direct experiences of being personally in communication with Jesus. I HAD previously said -- this is because a scientism/rationalism has "infected" the ummah.

    But more engagement has led me to realise -- their position is UNIQUELY (and naturally) culturally "Muslim". Because scientific rationalism as we know it was perfected by Muslim culture -- it was a genetic experiment that went out of control.  Two vague ideas I'm playing around with, following my 5 percenter Islam flirtation:
    1) Richard Dawkins (aka "the devil", aka "white man" humanist rationalism par excellence) is the product of a brilliant Muslim scientist known as Yakub, who was performing alchemical genetic experiments, funded by the Meta-Sultan at the height of the Caliphate over 6000 years ago, when it ruled over both the continents of Lemuria and Atlantis. Yes, Dawkins is a MUSLIM invention (like the Jewish myth of the Golem, a Frankenstein's monster made by humans of clay) that has now run out of control. At some point, about 70 to 60 years ago, Dawkins entered the fringes of the Caliphate and laid with the Muslim women, producing half-human children, of which Ahmed Deedat is one, and these in turn produced more. Dawkins has been part of the system for a while, but only recently emerged publicly. I challenge anyone to produce his birth certificate if you don't believe me!

    Why is this experiment not in the 1001 Muslim inventions exhibition at the so-called "Science" museum currently running in London? Why is it not mentioned in this paper? A GLOBAL conspiracy must be the only answer!

    2) We will only become Scientists again if we begin teaching the supreme mathematics and recover the Idrisian muqatta'at. But this would require a real Sacrifice, one of Abraham and Issac/Ismail.

    Love and Light,

    The Tailor

    Oh, more detail about Yakub and his creation of Dawkins here (but it's been adulterated somewhat with water of parochialism, I am repairing it as above):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakub_(Nation_of_Islam)

    The Divisions of Love, second album by my Cabbalacore band, the Friends of Design, out now:

    https://vimeo.com/110528857
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #111 - April 08, 2010, 10:03 PM

    1) Richard Dawkins (aka "the devil", aka "white man" humanist rationalism par excellence) is the product of a brilliant Muslim scientist known as Yakub, who was performing alchemical genetic experiments, funded by the Meta-Sultan at the height of the Caliphate over 6000 years ago, when it ruled over both the continents of Lemuria and Atlantis. Yes, Dawkins is a MUSLIM invention (like the Jewish myth of the Golem, a Frankenstein's monster made by humans of clay) that has now run out of control. At some point, about 70 to 60 years ago, Dawkins entered the fringes of the Caliphate and laid with the Muslim women, producing half-human children, of which Ahmed Deedat is one, and these in turn produced more. Dawkins has been part of the system for a while, but only recently emerged publicly. I challenge anyone to produce his birth certificate if you don't believe me!


    I think Islam may have perfected the purely mechanical and un-spiritual mindset that we now find manifest in salafist Muslims and ardent atheists alike.

    In that sense, maybe a mindset that is so vehemently averse to the numinous is indeed an Islamic creation.
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #112 - April 09, 2010, 03:24 PM


    Not sure, I would say less than 5%, as like 80-85% of the Muslim population are Sunni and probably 10% are Shia, so if we are classifying how many are proper Sufis I would lean to less than 5%.

    I am not sure about 5% because sufis are also found in sunni and shia sects.

    "When one bright intellect meets another bright intellect, the light increases and the Way becomes clear -- Rumi
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #113 - April 13, 2010, 07:37 AM



    This sounds pretty wild, perhaps (and I've only offered a couple of the lighter going ones).

    2) We will only become Scientists again if we begin teaching the supreme mathematics and recover the Idrisian muqatta'at. But this would require a real Sacrifice, one of Abraham and Issac/Ismail.





    thank you for the reply tt. Do you feel any certainty of knowledge along with these experiences? I mean to say, are you certain that what you think is happening actually is happening? I don't mean to offend you and question your honesty with this question, I am just genuinely curious about the experience itself. I have always been struck by the words of Rumi that "he who tastes, knows." Do you know? Is the knowledge of the experience really that certain, that all-encompassing, that indubitable?

    This does sound very fascinating and please do not worry about this sounding wild, I would like to hear as much as possible about your own mystical experiences.

    Also, could you please elucidate this concept of an Idrisian muqatta'at?


    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
  • Re: I believe in reincarnation
     Reply #114 - April 13, 2010, 08:03 AM

    reincarnation=recycling  Afro


    ...
  • Previous page 1 2 3 4« Previous thread | Next thread »