Uma if I could send you another green star I would. :) That is it exactly!

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Dear Brenda and Prashant you are SO right.Dixon you will know when you experience it that it is not a sensual experience but transcendent.That is, it transcends the senses which are part of the material world and lifts you up so you can see as if from a high hill. When the divine touches our consciousness, illuminating our entire being, it is a once in forever experience. To strive to repeat it is useless. When it happens again it will be different so trying to feel it again is a waste of time.Each of those eternal illuminated moments is different and comes differently. I remember hearing Shri Sivananda, a great yogic master, saying : "A man said 'last night I saw the moon' he had seen it before on many nights but on THAT night as it dawned as a great luminous pearl on the horizon, and the world became a shimmering quiet joy touched by it's light, was the first time that he really SAW it for what it was. After the possession of the vision began to fade he tried without success to have it back again and fell into despondency thinking that after a taste of the divine he was to go forever hungry."Of course he was deluded to think thus. The freshness of a new experience can not be repeated but fresh perspective sees the world freshly and the world and the vision are always new.

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The spiritual experience of the Presnce inside of you is like a climax. Once you have had THAT experience you KNOW that is what you had. Anything you thought might have been the experience before that was NOT it. Anything you have after that that you think could be it, ISN"T. Because, if you "think" it is then you are not KNOWING it is.

If the spiritual experience changes you for the rest of your life for the better; if you find yourself growing in love, patience, caring, finding acceptance and peace in spite of problems that occur; if you know that you are not the person you were before, then, you have had a REAL spiritual experience. You cannot not be changed for the better through the experience.

I will tell you that I don't go around having that experience over and over again. Peaceful feelings sometimes, yes, but not THE experience which will knock your socks off. But the affect that the exprience has had on me - expeically the first one, has completely changed how I live, how I make choices, and how I see things. And...

I am soooooooo grateful for it.

Nothing I was told, taught, or expected to believe could begin to do for me what the experience of "GOD" has done for me.

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Mr.Dixon, It means until now you have been talking w/out experiencing it & also with that limited sense what the senses perceive..I bet you you should give it a try to experience the unlimited thro' Yoga. I am not surprised that the Western countries are embracing Yoga to experience the unlimited Bliss in the Self. Today if you search websites on YOGA, you will find hundreds sites mostly from the Western world.....Why...because somewhere they feel Blissful while experiencing the unlimited.......

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Prashant -- Where is the guarantee that yogic experiemnces are any more genuine than sensual experiences?

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Continued from the previous comment ---

If these five senses go to sleep, you will neither know the world nor yourself. The sense organs are limited perceptions. They feel everything only in comparison to something else. Now if I touch a steel rod, it feels cool to me simply because my
body temperature is in a certain way. Suppose I lower my temperature and touch it, it will feel warm to me. So, this is not a genuine experience. This (sense perception) is an experience that is just sufficient to survive in the physical reality. Whatever
experience you have through the five sense perceptions is a sufficient experience only for survival in this existence. But if you are seeking something beyond survival, then the sense perceptions are not enough. So, all yogic practices are fundamentally aimed at giving you an experience beyond the five sense perceptions. Whatever you experience beyond
the five sense perceptions is not in terms of physical reality; it is in a different dimension. That dimension, if you want to call it God, call it God, or if you want to just call it power, power. Or if you want to call it myself, call it myself. You call it whichever way you like. Whatever name you give, it always gets misunderstood by people. The moment you give it a name, people misunderstand it in some way. Always. It does not matter what you call it. You call it ‘Shiva’, ‘Allah’, ‘God’, or
‘Divine’, but the moment you say it, within 10 minutes,

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Transcending Sense Perceptions, by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
You have never experienced any power beyond yourself, except Nature. Now, this wind that is blowing here, you are not blowing it, isn’t it? This much is very clear to you. The wind blows with tremendous power; but you did not start this wind. And you did not create yourselves; you just happen to be here. Without that energy or that something, which is beyond you, nothing can happen. Something must have created you. Now that you do not know what created you, the next immediate thing you will say is that God must have done it. Now where has God come from? Since you are a human being, you think that God is a big human being. If you were a buffalo, you would think God is a big buffalo. So, whatever your idea of God is, it is simply coming from the limited experience of who you are right now. It is not coming from any true experience. It is only coming from a limited imagination. You are in human form, so you think God is one big human being. So, whatever you call as God, you
are only either thinking or imagining it. It is only in your mind.
The only thing that you can really experience is that which is within you. And that which is within you, you have never really looked at in real depth. Whatever you have known till now, your experience is only limited to your five sense organs. Whatever you have known, either of the world, or yourself, has come to you only by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting. If

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Dixon -- First of all, radiocarbon can establish a pattern allowing the researcher to date stuff with a high degree of accuracy:

http://www.c14dating.com/agecalc.html

Secondly of all, you're the one making the assertion that the Aztecs knew about Jesus before the Spanish came to the New World; you have to provide the proof. It's not my job to prove a negative; you have to prove a positive.

Thirdly of all, your assertion that God spoke the world into existence is begging the question. And even if he did, we don't know which one.

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It's not on point for what we're discussing here but when Catholic Spain arrived in Azteca land: two cultures and religions with the most horrible extreme tortures and human sacrifice, in the mass (no pun intended) numbers of public executions, came together like they were two halves of a magnetized whole. In Spain thousands of people, out of step with their Royal Catholic Majesties were being burned alive in groups of hundreds, burned because the priesthood was forbidden to draw blood. In Mexico thousands of sacrifices were climbing up one side of the pyramids and falling down the other, there was so much blood and gore that the streets were flooded, their hearts being offered to the heavens as food for the sun. At least on that side of the equation the sacrifice was considered holy; not damned sinners unworthy of God's grace.On both sides of the ocean the amount of killing was vast and it seems to me that perhaps between the two a resonance was created by their mutual bloodthirstiness that bound their fates together in this continuum, it certainly makes it easy to understand how the natives of Mexico could take the faith of their conquerors to their hearts.With all the "auto do fe" taking place as they colonized their new asset it must have felt very familiar with just a different sacrificial philosophy to be digested. Even Quetzal-coatl the prophesied returning Aztec good god must have seemed like the gentle Jesus spoken of but never seen.

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Jesse,
Radiocarbon dating has several areas for POTENTIAL errors. The first is there is an assumption to the initial amount of radio carbon there was in the sample. This is usually a guess based on the assumption that the decay rate has remained unchanged. Another and even worse assumption is that the decay rate has been constant. Science has found that the decay rate can and does vary. These two could be big enough errors to bring dating in line with the Bible.
I challenge you to show archeological evidence that the Aztecs did NOT know about Jesus.

The big bang does not discount the Biblical description at all, in fact, when God spoke it all into existence - that was a big bang.

Thanks for your comments --- God's blessings upon you!

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