Philosophical Vegan Forum

Welcome Alexander. Don't you find it a bit peculiar that AJ and Mary are American? Wouldn't it be more likely that they returned to earth as Chinese or Indian? The fact that they have a great message shouldn't make anyone a believer. They need to start walking on water or similar before I am convinced.

Welcome!

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: If I at some point would decide that my experiences of God have all been an illusion (which I don't consider very likely to happen at this point) or that it was real but I don't want the relationship to continue (that could happen, theoretically, because the relationship confronts emotions that are in error, i.e. not loving, and releasing these emotions is painful), I would still remain vegan, just because I like what I eat and how I feel so much, and I love animals.

That's what I was asking in the other thread you responded to. I'm glad to hear it.

Jebus wrote:Welcome Alexander. Don't you find it a bit peculiar that AJ and Mary are American? Wouldn't it be more likely that they returned to earth as Chinese or Indian? The fact that they have a great message shouldn't make anyone a believer. They need to start walking on water or similar before I am convinced.

Thanks,

they're Australian actually. What they themselves say about it that when they decided to come back they could choose which parents and location. They chose Australia because of what they considered the highest receptiveness of Divine Truth and the highest potential for the truth to be spread. Being anglophone is a huge advantage, as by far most people on earth speak English to at least a small degree. They also have a team of volunteers translating their free material to other languages.

The fact they have a great message shouldn't make anyone a believer... Well, no not necessarily. But in my opinion their claims should be worthy of consideration if they seem to present unique information that seems to be strikingly true for whoever truthfully applies the lessons.

With regards to miracles what AJ says about that, is that it is dependent on achieving a particular condition of becoming in agreement with all of the laws of the universe. He says he's still going through the process of receiving love from God, a substance that will transform his soul and bring him into more love and harmony. So he can't do miracles yet. He denies having ever walked on water and turning water into wine, but the stories about healing the blind and the lame and casting out demons are supposedly true. I have visited AJ in Australia once, I am from the Netherlands myself. He did really help me through some social anxiety, fear, which I experienced in an intense couple of minutes, during a personal and private interaction with him. He is a very loving individual, and just being in his presence sometimes can trigger bottled up emotions, such as my fear in this case, and in that way can have a 'healing' effect.

If one were to thoroughly mistrust AJ, they might consider his claim to only be able to do true miraculous healing in the future, when his transformational process in love completes, to be 'convenient', I see that, but I don't have a reason to mistrust him at all.

EquALLity wrote:

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Yeah, initially. I decided I wanted to take responsibility in life, and be loving. Jesus said in one of his videos that treating animals the way omnivorous people do is unloving, so I decided to follow that advice. I then researched veganism a lot more.

If I at some point would decide that my experiences of God have all been an illusion (which I don't consider very likely to happen at this point) or that it was real but I don't want the relationship to continue (that could happen, theoretically, because the relationship confronts emotions that are in error, i.e. not loving, and releasing these emotions is painful), I would still remain vegan, just because I like what I eat and how I feel so much, and I love animals.

Ah, I see. I wish more Christians took the idea of loving others to heart, and I'm glad that you don't just care about it now because of your religion.

Well, I don't really see myself as religious, as you could tell from my previous posts. It is far too personal and individual what I'm doing. There's no group activities, congregation or rituals. It's about a personal voyage of discovery and growth in love. It's a method, rather than a set of beliefs. Although I do also accept some beliefs on faith I guess, but my definition of faith isn't "blind faith" as in, believing something completely without evidence. In my usage of it, it is believing something based on insufficient evidence, but extrapolating from the little evidence you do have of things you do know for sure.

Can you tell me a bit about your philosophical background?

I only finished my first year of university philosophy, which I passed with good grades. I decided that philosophy as an academic subject, the way it was taught, was too destructive, skeptical in a Pyrrhic sense, and in the end nihilistic, for me to continue it. Also the second year would entail a tremendous amount of reading, in which I wasn't interested. Philosophy should be a practice, not a study of dusty old books. I also felt at the time I'd discovered enough of a moral compass, and metaphysical truths, that I didn't want to deal with all the agnostic and skeptical and shoulder-shrugging stuff that happens in philosophy.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:As an aside, I don't believe in a punishing God, I only believe in a God that shows us the consequences of a lack of love in our choices.

What do you think happens after we die? No Hell?

I believe humans are tripartite: material body, spiritual body and soul. When we are awake our material body and spiritual body overlap. When we are asleep our spiritual body separates from our material body but remains attached by a silver chord. When we wake up we return to earth. When we die this silver chord is severed and the separation becomes permanent. What locations our spirit body is drawn too, both in sleep and in death, depends on our souls condition, which is the sum total if you will of truly held beliefs (i.e. emotional beliefs), emotions, memories, intentions for the future, and so on. This condition can be expressed in levels of love. So the level of love in our soul determines where we go. I for example have a number of houses in the spirit world. Places I visit regularly when I sleep. One of my houses is related to my drug use and loneliness in the past. The house, while it has a relatively nice location, surroundings etc., also has some painful associations with it. You can imagine that people that have a very unloving (dark) soul condition, that caused very unloving actions on earth, have locations that are highly unpleasant, to show them the importance of love. These locations could be called hells. There's a lot of channeled material about the spirit world available too, on the net, with descriptions of these and other locations.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:The video I linked was just part 1 of the chopped up version, the entire interview is about 2 hours long. I do believe he describes the experiment in short in the entire video, but there are other videos on the Divine Truth YouTube channel that go into more detail. I've described quite a bit already in the posts above, but in short the experiment goes as follows: It's the decision to feel "if there is a God, and that being has love for me, I would like to feel it." Notice that it's a conditional sentence, starting with 'if'. You don't have to pretend to believe it, you just need to wonder, what would it be like? And it has to come from your heart, not your head.


Right now, I became very sad longing for it and writing it down, and that's an important quality to keep in mind too: humility. That if a feeling comes up, no matter if it's strong fear or sadness, you don't judge it, or try to be better than it, or keep your composure, but allow it, no matter what.

Oh, ok. I'll try that, but I'm not sure that it's good enough for me.

People of all different religions believe and feel that their god loves them (I used to also when I was a theist). How can I know which god it is if I do think that I feel something? Do I wonder about a specific god in particular?

No, not at all. Don't "pick" a god from a particular theology/mythology. We don't want to assume things before we start. The point of the exercise is to ask yourself the hypothetical question: if there was a source of love that created the universe, and that (thus far relatively nondescript) being has love for me personally, would I want to feel that love?
Let's just first answer that question honestly, verbally. What are your emotions about that hypothetical question?

Also, I think there might be a bit of confirmation bias there. If I want to or even just wonder what it would be like feel a certain way, I might think that I feel that way just because of that.

Well, that could be the case. You're inclined to go into intellectual analysis mode, rather than allow the feeling experiment.

I believe that what you said about personal proof coming only from personal desire supports this. You wanted to know about what it would be like to experience certain feelings, and then you felt them.

Can you tell me about your experience? I'm curious.

The strength and depth of the experience, when it has been a true longing, convinced me that it wasn't just me feeling whatever I wanted to feel, but that the feelings were coming from an outside source, a source greater than me.

P.S. It's fine if your honest answer to the hypothetical question is no, btw.

How does AJ make a living?

Jebus wrote:How does AJ make a living?

People donate money to him and his partner if they appreciate what he does. I have donated a couple of hundred euros to him spread out over various times, because I appreciate all the videos (roundabout 1000 hours probably) that are on YouTube for free. It's the same principle if someone provides freeware like adBlocker. If you'd take a university course you'd pay a couple of hundred euros usually as well, and I feel the wealth of information that is provided is much more valuable than a university course could ever be.

The experiment will certainly work, but the result is irrelevant -- it doesn't give you any information as to whether there is or isn't an external force, because it can be equally explained either way. There certainly is an internal one that can make you experience anything you imagine. This is the kind of spiritual experience Sam Harris talks about sometimes.

If the feeling motivates somebody to become a better person, then that's great. If Jesus (AJ) has taught people to be better, and shown them methods that inspire them, that's great too. If they're really promoting veganism, they seem like good people.
People who lie to make money and extort followers usually don't promote inconvenient practices like that, but rather pander to whatever the people were already predisposed to do and encourage their hedonism, giving them loopholes and vicarious redemption to absolve their guilt.

He seems harmless. Maybe in a few years we'll hear of a mass suicide... but I don't think so. Maybe his followers will go the way of the Seventh Day Adventists (hopefully not the Davidians), and we'll see a long lasting and growing group promoting more compassionate living.
It would be good it he stays away from the endorsements of faith healing, but that may be too much to hope for. Although he was saying he couldn't do it yet... so there may be something to respect there.

brimstoneSalad wrote:People who lie to make money and extort followers usually don't promote inconvenient practices like that, but rather pander to whatever the people were already predisposed to do and encourage their hedonism, giving them loopholes and vicarious redemption to absolve their guilt.

Maybe he needed a niche; something that set him apart from the other nutters out there.

However, I agree that this is a good thing. If he sticks to his current teachings it will bring mostly positive consequences.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Well, I don't really see myself as religious, as you could tell from my previous posts. It is far too personal and individual what I'm doing. There's no group activities, congregation or rituals. It's about a personal voyage of discovery and growth in love. It's a method, rather than a set of beliefs. Although I do also accept some beliefs on faith I guess, but my definition of faith isn't "blind faith" as in, believing something completely without evidence. In my usage of it, it is believing something based on insufficient evidence, but extrapolating from the little evidence you do have of things you do know for sure.

There's faith involved, and you follow a supreme being, and I think that that's what makes up a religion. But I guess it doesn't really matter.

If you don't believe that there is sufficient evidence, why do you believe anyway?

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: I only finished my first year of university philosophy, which I passed with good grades. I decided that philosophy as an academic subject, the way it was taught, was too destructive, skeptical in a Pyrrhic sense, and in the end nihilistic, for me to continue it. Also the second year would entail a tremendous amount of reading, in which I wasn't interested. Philosophy should be a practice, not a study of dusty old books. I also felt at the time I'd discovered enough of a moral compass, and metaphysical truths, that I didn't want to deal with all the agnostic and skeptical and shoulder-shrugging stuff that happens in philosophy.

Ah, I see. How long ago did this happen?

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Let's just first answer that question honestly, verbally. What are your emotions about that hypothetical question?

Well, I guess I would want to, yes.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Well, that could be the case. You're inclined to go into intellectual analysis mode, rather than allow the feeling experiment.

I can do both. I don't really think that turning off my mind and basing this truth solely on emotions is a good idea. I could believe anything that way, if I wanted to through confirmation bias.

AlexanderVeganTheist wrote: The strength and depth of the experience, when it has been a true longing, convinced me that it wasn't just me feeling whatever I wanted to feel, but that the feelings were coming from an outside source, a source greater than me.

Ah.

How long did it take you after you began wondering to feel these emotions and become convinced?