I am having a hard time grasping the material as I am a newbie to this, but I find it fascinating. Here are several questions that I have regarding the philosophies of Thomas Campbell:

1) What is it that created the entire "virtual reality"? I heard in an interview where he talked about how the big entity created bits and pieces of entities (human consciousness)....but what is the source?

2) If the purpose of life is to grow and love, then why has the history of Earth been filled with non-intelligent animals? Humans seem to be much more intelligent than anything else on Earth for no apparent reason. Also, why are most of the planets un-inhabitable for life?

3) Scientists believe that one day the solar system will be destroyed by the sun. So what is the point of bettering humanity?

4) Why is there suffering in this world like illness?

Hi community,
And welcome to the forum. You should really try to read the trilogy first, and then, the discussions here on this forum and the video lectures will mak much more sense to you. If you still have questions, after that, I am sure all of the conversations will be much more productive.

The book is available, for free. here

http://books.google.com/books?id=6To090 ... rs&f=false

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

community,

If you wish to make a faster start than reading 800+ pages first, you could look at this thread and go to the Wiki to read Tom's lectures, listed by subject, and also Tom's model in short form. It does get into some mathematical concepts but very simple ones. You may even have already heard of cellular automata as computer games. viewtopic.php?f=217&t=6967

Ted

These are good questions to ask one self, you are in the right place, what are we, and what are we doing here. Our deepest instinct knows we are more than human, this source is outside of this material world. The universe is evolving in a simulation that we perceive as matter, as to interact with to become more organized. It is not perfect, but interesting enough to be effective in helping us grow to become more productive, by using and organizing the available information at our disposal, we get instant feedback to let us know we are alive here, and how we are doing, in an up close and personal way. Think of this as a trainer like a plane simulator, a pilot would use to become more efficient when he goes back to his real world of flying. In that simulator nobody really gets hurt, or dies, it was just created to organize information in ones mind, as to make one more evolved. Sabby

I think what makes sense to me is something Tom said in one of his You Tube videos. He stated that the goal is toward growth, the opposite of death. If we, as part of it do not grow toward a lower state of entropy (higher development) there will be more disorder and therefore death. Basically, if we don't move forward to a state of love, it will all end. We are definitely in a learning lab and it is very difficult. Hopefully, with knowledge ( of what this is all about) it will become easier. The suffering will lessen. As I was told in another one of these forums, it's not about receiving love, it's about giving it.

Yes Diane,
There is no stasis, we are all (as is everything) either in a state of growth or decay.
And it DOES get easier, with practice. FEAR is a painful (decay) state. While LOVE is courage (painless), although sometimes, it can be sad when the people that we love still choose to hurt themselves (with fear anger and hate)
But the more we move towards LOVE the less fear we will experience. Tom said once, in a response about the nature of FEAR, "Fear is the absence of LOVE" I interpreted this as... much the same way that Darkness is the absence of light, and cold is just the absence of HEAT. So the more LOVE that is within your consciousness, the less fear can be present. The same way that darkness can only be measured as various levels of LIGHT. And cold is only measured as various levels of heat.
LOVE is not about receiving, LOVE is about giving.

Tom also said that ...
"There is only ONE kind of LOVE, and that is unconditional, anything else is NOT LOVE"

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

I would like to tweak that a bit. Love is not about getting or giving. Love is about being.

- suffering tempers the raw iron into something more useful. Note the superficiality of individuals who have not experienced suffering. Suffering chips away ego revealing the image contained within the raw stone. False suffering diminishes as ego diminishes. Ego as well may attract illness as feedback. It can also be random, and an inevitable part of aging and exit.

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Indeed this ego is not much help in diminishing suffering, once it starts to get out of our way we start to become aware that this a subjective reality. And the answers to lessening the suffering are subjective, some type of information we have to walk into. Which brings us back to why we are here, and that i think is to experience the feedback as to lower our entropy. Sabby

Interestingly Tom touched upon this during his radio podcast Friday.

Does the LCS intend suffering?

No – just interaction and choice. Suffering is our interpretation based on our fear, ego, belief, and expectation – that sort of thing. However, the LCS is aware that from our perspective we do suffer. As far as tests and challenges goes it falls in that last category. Yes, the LCS intends for us to be tested and challenged and it’s aware that we struggle. The tests and challenges are in front of us because we don’t grow unless we reach out and take a challenge. You might say taking a challenge is being tested. But this life is about the choices we make. And if we make choices that lead us toward growth – and my definition of growth of course is – raising the quality of your consciousness. Some people might call it spiritual growth. Also it is evolving your consciousness. Moving toward being Love might be another expression of it.

So these are all the things we are supposed to be doing. Growing up is another expression. And to do that we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Nobody can do it for us. And when I say pull ourselves up by our bootstraps that’s like if we were going to be an athlete and run a mile in five minutes, we’d have to work at it and work at it. We’d have to build up our ability to process oxygen more effectively. We’d have to build up our muscle. We’d have to do a lot of things. And how do we do that? We don’t buy more muscle. We have to work at it and work at it until the muscle grows and does what we need it to do.
It’s the same way with this. When I say, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” it’s something that you have to do. Just like nobody can help you run a mile unless than five minutes. You have to do it. It’s your thing. You have to build up your body, build up your mind, build up your wind – build up all the things you need. And you do that by practicing, by trying, by effort, by dedication. And this is the same sort of thing.