Perception & Attitude

This is a response to Fermin's post under "Science & God" which probably was a poor topic, and anyway, has a bad smell about it now.

The gist of the post was : From the perspective of Essense (to name the nameless) is there any difference between science and religion?

and secondly: Why do people believe in Fate?

Regarding the prior: Fermin, you have posed this as a question but I think you really just want confirmation of what you intuit. I would then confirm that, no, there is no difference from that perspective. We could chase our tails going into this ad nauseam, requiring much definitions and agreements, but to me, doing so misses the point.

Regarding the latter: I would agree that people believe in fate, at least in part, to avoid responsibility. Perhaps they enable this belief in hindsight to account for why things didn't turn out as planned, or in foresight as a solace in case new plans don't go as wished.

Now I have abbreviated your post considerably. I have done this not to duck some questions -although I am not sure I could adequately address them to any satisfaction -but to bring some awareness to the questions them self. IMO the nature of the questions and the reasons for asking them are usually far more important than the answers. Your questions were posed by the logical and discriminative mind, but was this their origin? Look and see. I might argue that you have an intuitive awareness of Essense and you recognise that the conceptual notions of science, religion and fate don't play well from that perspective. Indeed, from that perspective, ALL beliefs lack relevance.

An aside: A while back I would have said that all beliefs were false from this perspective, but notions of true/false, real/unreal, and so on, also lack relevance or meaning from here. This was my point when, on a previous post,
I stated that an arguement between N & B was like "arguing over the Bride for the Son of a barren woman" (a Nisargadatta quote I love).

So my apologises if this response doesn't satisify. The important thing to me is that you recognise the little taste of essense which prompted the questions in the first place.

Not to overload my friend Sri Nisargadatta, but when asked the difference between a Jnani (enlightened being) and an ordinary person, he said it was only "perception and attitude". You have the intuition of what this perception is like and I hope you will want to futher explore.

Enjoy,
s