[Do you believe in God and why]

1 hour ago, Hummin said:

Simplicity

 

Yup.  That certainly relieves you of any responsibility to have to think about things.

[Do you believe in God and why]

1 hour ago, Sunmaster said:

The First Book of Moses, called Genesis {1:1} In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. {1:2} And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. {1:3} And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. {1:4} And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness. {1:5} And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. {1:6} And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. {1:7} And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. {1:8} And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. {1:9} And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so. {1:10} And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good. {1:11} And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. {1:12} And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. {1:13} And the evening and the morning were the third day. {1:14} And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: {1:15} And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. {1:16} And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also. {1:17} And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, {1:18} And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good. {1:19} And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. {1:20} And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. {1:21} And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. {1:22} And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. {1:23} And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. {1:24} And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. {1:25} And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. {1:26} And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. {1:27} So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. {1:28} And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. {1:29} And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. {1:30} And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so. {1:31} And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. {2:1} Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. {2:2} And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. {2:3} And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. {2:4} These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, {2:5} And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground. {2:6} But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. {2:7} And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. {2:8} And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. {2:9} And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. {2:10} And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. {2:11} The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold; {2:12} And the gold of that land [is] good: there [is] bdellium and the onyx stone. {2:13} And the name of the second river [is] Gihon: the same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. {2:14} And the name of the third river [is] Hiddekel: that [is] it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river [is] Euphrates. {2:15} And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. {2:16} And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: {2:17} But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. {2:18} And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. {2:19} And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 2 the name thereof. {2:20} And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. {2:21} And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; {2:22} And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. {2:23} And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. {2:24} Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. {2:25} And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. {3:1} Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? {3:2} And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: {3:3} But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. {3:4} And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: {3:5} For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. {3:6} And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. {3:7} And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. {3:8} And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. {3:9} And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where [art] thou? {3:10} And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I [was] naked; and I hid myself. {3:11} And he said, Who told thee that thou [wast] naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? {3:12} And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. {3:13} And the LORD God said unto the woman, What [is] this [that] thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. {3:14} And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou [art] cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: {3:15} And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. {3:16} Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. {3:17} And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life; {3:18} Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; {3:19} In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art,] and unto dust shalt thou return. {3:20} And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. {3:21} Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. {3:22} And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: {3:23} Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. {3:24} So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. {4:1} And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. {4:2} And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. {4:3} And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. {4:4} And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: {4:5} But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. {4:6} And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? {4:7} If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. {4:8} And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. {4:9} And the LORD said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: [Am] I my brother’s keeper? {4:10} And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. {4:11} And now [art] thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; {4:12} When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. {4:13} And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment [is] greater than I can bear. {4:14} Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, [that] every one that findeth me shall slay me. {4:15} And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. {4:16} And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. {4:17} And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. {4:18} And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech. {4:19} And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one [was] Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. {4:20} And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and [of such as have] cattle. {4:21} And his brother’s name [was] Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. {4:22} And Zillah, she also bare Tubal- cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubal-cain [was] Naamah. {4:23} And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. {4:24} If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Page 3 Genesis Lamech seventy and sevenfold. {4:25} And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, [said she,] hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. {4:26} And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. {5:1} This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; {5:2} Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. {5:3} And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: {5:4} And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: {5:5} And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. {5:6} And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: {5:7} And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:8} And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. {5:9} And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan: {5:10} And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:11} And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died. {5:12} And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel: {5:13} And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:14} And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died. {5:15} And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared: {5:16} And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:17} And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died. {5:18} And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch: {5:19} And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:20} And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died. {5:21} And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: {5:22} And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:23} And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: {5:24} And Enoch walked with God: and he [was] not; for God took him. {5:25} And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech: {5:26} And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:27} And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died. {5:28} And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: {5:29} And he called his name Noah, saying, This [same] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. {5:30} And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: {5:31} And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died. {5:32} And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. {6:1} And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, {6:2} That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. {6:3} And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also [is] flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. {6:4} There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown. {6:5} And GOD saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually. {6:6} And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. {6:7} And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. {6:8} But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. {6:9} These [are] the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man [and] perfect in his generations, [and] Noah walked with God. {6:10} And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. {6:11} The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. {6:12} And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. {6:13} And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. {6:14} Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. {6:15} And this [is the fashion] which thou shalt make it [of:] The length of the ark [shall be] three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. {6:16} A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; [with] lower, second, and third [stories] shalt thou make it. {6:17} And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein [is] the breath of life, from under heaven; [and] every thing that [is] in the earth shall die. {6:18} But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. {6:19} And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every [sort] shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep [them] alive with thee; they shall be male and female. {6:20} Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every [sort] shall come unto thee, to keep [them] alive. {6:21} And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather [it] to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. {6:22} Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he. {7:1} And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. {7:2} Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female. {7:3} Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 4 {7:4} For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. {7:5} And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. {7:6} And Noah [was] six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. {7:7} And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. {7:8} Of clean beasts, and of beasts that [are] not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, {7:9} There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. {7:10} And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. {7:11} In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. {7:12} And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. {7:13} In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; {7:14} They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. {7:15} And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein [is] the breath of life. {7:16} And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. {7:17} And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. {7:18} And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. {7:19} And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that [were] under the whole heaven, were covered. {7:20} Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. {7:21} And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: {7:22} All in whose nostrils [was] the breath of life, of all that [was] in the dry [land,] died. {7:23} And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained [alive,] and they that [were] with him in the ark. {7:24} And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. {8:1} And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; {8:2} The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; {8:3} And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. {8:4} And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. {8:5} And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth [month,] on the first [day] of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. {8:6} And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: {8:7} And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. {8:8} Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; {8:9} But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters [were] on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. {8:10} And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; {8:11} And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth [was] an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. {8:12} And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more. {8:13} And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first [month,] the first [day] of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. {8:14} And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. {8:15} And God spake unto Noah, saying, {8:16} Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee. {8:17} Bring forth with thee every living thing that [is] with thee, of all flesh, [both] of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. {8:18} And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: {8:19} Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, [and] whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. {8:20} And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. {8:21} And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart [is] evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. {8:22} While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. {9:1} And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. {9:2} And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth [upon] the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. {9:3} Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. {9:4} But flesh with the life thereof, [which is] the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. {9:5} And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. {9:6} Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. {9:7} And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. {9:8} And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, {9:9} And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; {9:10} And with every living creature that [is] with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. {9:11} And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. {9:12} And Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Page 5 Genesis God said, This [is] the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that [is] with you, for perpetual generations: {9:13} I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. {9:14} And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: {9:15} And I will remember my covenant, which [is] between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. {9:16} And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that [is] upon the earth. {9:17} And God said unto Noah, This [is] the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that [is] upon the earth. {9:18} And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. {9:19} These [are] the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. {9:20} And Noah began [to be] an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: {9:21} And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. {9:22} And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. {9:23} And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid [it] upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces [were] backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. {9:24} And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. {9:25} And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. {9:26} And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. {9:27} God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. {9:28} And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. {9:29} And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died. {10:1} Now these [are] the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. {10:2} The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. {10:3} And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. {10:4} And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. {10:5} By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. {10:6} And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. {10:7} And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtechah: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. {10:8} And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. {10:9} He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. {10:10} And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. {10:11} Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, {10:12} And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same [is] a great city. {10:13} And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim, {10:14} And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim. {10:15} And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, {10:16} And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, {10:17} And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, {10:18} And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. {10:19} And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha. {10:20} These [are] the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, [and] in their nations. {10:21} Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were [children] born. {10:22} The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram. {10:23} And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash. {10:24} And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber. {10:25} And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one [was] Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name [was] Joktan. {10:26} And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazar-maveth, and Jerah, {10:27} And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, {10:28} And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba, {10:29} And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these [were] the sons of Joktan. {10:30} And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the east. {10:31} These [are] the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. {10:32} These [are] the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. {11:1} And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. {11:2} And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. {11:3} And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. {11:4} And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [may reach] unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. {11:5} And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. {11:6} And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. {11:7} Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. {11:8} So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. {11:9} Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. {11:10} These [are] the generations of Shem: Shem [was] an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: {11:11} And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:12} And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: {11:13} And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:14} And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: {11:15} And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:16} And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: {11:17} And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:18} And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: {11:19} And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 6 sons and daughters. {11:20} And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug: {11:21} And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:22} And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: {11:23} And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:24} And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: {11:25} And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. {11:26} And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. {11:27} Now these [are] the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. {11:28} And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. {11:29} And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife [was] Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. {11:30} But Sarai was barren; she [had] no child. {11:31} And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. {11:32} And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran. {12:1} Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: {12:2} And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: {12:3} And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. {12:4} So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram [was] seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. {12:5} And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. {12:6} And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite [was] then in the land. {12:7} And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him. {12:8} And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, [having] Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD. {12:9} And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south. {12:10} And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine [was] grievous in the land. {12:11} And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou [art] a fair woman to look upon: {12:12} Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This [is] his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. {12:13} Say, I pray thee, thou [art] my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee. {12:14} And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she [was] very fair. {12:15} The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. {12:16} And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels. {12:17} And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife. {12:18} And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What [is] this [that] thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she [was] thy wife? {12:19} Why saidst thou, She [is] my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take [her,] and go thy way. {12:20} And Pharaoh commanded [his] men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had. {13:1} And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. {13:2} And Abram [was] very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. {13:3} And he went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai; {13:4} Unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first: and there Abram called on the name of the LORD. {13:5} And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. {13:6} And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. {13:7} And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land. {13:8} And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we [be] brethren. {13:9} [Is] not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if [thou wilt take] the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if [thou depart] to the right hand, then I will go to the left. {13:10} And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it [was] well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, [even] as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. {13:11} Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. {13:12} Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched [his] tent toward Sodom. {13:13} But the men of Sodom [were] wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly. {13:14} And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: {13:15} For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. {13:16} And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, [then] shall thy seed also be numbered. {13:17} Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee. {13:18} Then Abram removed [his] tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which [is] in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD. {14:1} And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; {14:2} [That these] made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar. {14:3} All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Page 7 Genesis the salt sea. {14:4} Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. {14:5} And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that [were] with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, {14:6} And the Horites in their mount Seir, unto El-paran, which [is] by the wilderness. {14:7} And they returned, and came to En-mishpat, which [is] Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon- tamar. {14:8} And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same [is] Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim; {14:9} With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five. {14:10} And the vale of Siddim [was full of] slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. {14:11} And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way. {14:12} And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. {14:13} And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these [were] confederate with Abram. {14:14} And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained [servants,] born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued [them] unto Dan. {14:15} And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which [is] on the left hand of Damascus. {14:16} And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people. {14:17} And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that [were] with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which [is] the king’s dale. {14:18} And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he [was] the priest of the most high God. {14:19} And he blessed him, and said, Blessed [be] Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: {14:20} And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all. {14:21} And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. {14:22} And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, {14:23} That I will not [take] from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that [is] thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich: {14:24} Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their portion. {15:1} After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I [am] thy shield, [and] thy exceeding great reward. {15:2} And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? {15:3} And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. {15:4} And, behold, the word of the LORD [came] unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. {15:5} And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. {15:6} And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. {15:7} And he said unto him, I [am] the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. {15:8} And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? {15:9} And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. {15:10} And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. {15:11} And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away. {15:12} And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. {15:13} And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land [that is] not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; {15:14} And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. {15:15} And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. {15:16} But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites [is] not yet full. {15:17} And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. {15:18} In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: {15:19} The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, {15:20} And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, {15:21} And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girga<deleted>es, and the Jebusites. {16:1} Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name [was] Hagar. {16:2} And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. {16:3} And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. {16:4} And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. {16:5} And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong [be] upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the LORD judge between me and thee. {16:6} But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid [is] in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. {16:7} And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. {16:8} And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. {16:9} And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. {16:10} And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. {16:11} And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou [art] with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. {16:12} And he will be a wild man; his hand [will be] against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 8 he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. {16:13} And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? {16:14} Wherefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, [it is] between Kadesh and Bered. {16:15} And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son’s name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. {16:16} And Abram [was] fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram. {17:1} And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I [am] the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. {17:2} And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. {17:3} And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, {17:4} As for me, behold, my covenant [is] with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. {17:5} Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. {17:6} And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. {17:7} And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. {17:8} And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. {17:9} And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. {17:10} This [is] my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. {17:11} And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. {17:12} And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which [is] not of thy seed. {17:13} He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. {17:14} And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant. {17:15} And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah [shall] her name [be. ]{17:16} And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be [a mother] of nations; kings of people shall be of her. {17:17} Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall [a child] be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? {17:18} And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! {17:19} And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, [and] with his seed after him. {17:20} And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. {17:21} But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. {17:22} And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. {17:23} And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him. {17:24} And Abraham [was] ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. {17:25} And Ishmael his son [was] thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. {17:26} In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son. {17:27} And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him. {18:1} And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; {18:2} And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw [them,] he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, {18:3} And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: {18:4} Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: {18:5} And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. {18:6} And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead [it,] and make cakes upon the hearth. {18:7} And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave [it] unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it. {18:8} And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set [it] before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. {18:9} And they said unto him, Where [is] Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. {18:10} And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard [it] in the tent door, which [was] behind him. {18:11} Now Abraham and Sarah [were] old [and] well stricken in age; [and] it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. {18:12} Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? {18:13} And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? {18:14} Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. {18:15} Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh. {18:16} And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way. {18:17} And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; {18:18} Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? {18:19} For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. {18:20} And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; {18:21} I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. {18:22} And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD. {18:23} And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Page 9 Genesis righteous with the wicked? {18:24} Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that [are] therein? {18:25} That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? {18:26} And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. {18:27} And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which [am but] dust and ashes: {18:28} Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for [lack of] five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy [it. ]{18:29} And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do [it] for forty’s sake. {18:30} And he said [unto him,] Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do [it,] if I find thirty there. {18:31} And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy [it] for twenty’s sake. {18:32} And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy [it] for ten’s sake. {18:33} And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place. {19:1} And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing [them] rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; {19:2} And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. {19:3} And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. {19:4} But before they lay down, the men of the city, [even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: {19:5} And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. {19:6} And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, {19:7} And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. {19:8} Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as [is] good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. {19:9} And they said, Stand back. And they said [again,] This one [fellow] came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, [even] Lot, and came near to break the door. {19:10} But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. {19:11} And they smote the men that [were] at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. {19:12} And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring [them] out of this place: {19:13} For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it. {19:14} And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law. {19:15} And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. {19:16} And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. {19:17} And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. {19:18} And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: {19:19} Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: {19:20} Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, ([is] it not a little one?) and my soul shall live. {19:21} And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken. {19:22} Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. {19:23} The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. {19:24} Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; {19:25} And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. {19:26} But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. {19:27} And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: {19:28} And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. {19:29} And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt. {19:30} And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. {19:31} And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father [is] old, and [there is] not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: {19:32} Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. {19:33} And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. {19:34} And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, [and] lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. {19:35} And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 10 perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. {19:36} Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. {19:37} And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same [is] the father of the Moabites unto this day. {19:38} And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same [is] the father of the children of Ammon unto this day. {20:1} And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. {20:2} And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She [is] my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. {20:3} But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou [art but] a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she [is] a man’s wife. {20:4} But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? {20:5} Said he not unto me, She [is] my sister? and she, even she herself said, He [is] my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this. {20:6} And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. {20:7} Now therefore restore the man [his] wife; for he [is] a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore [her] not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that [are] thine. {20:8} Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid. {20:9} Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. {20:10} And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? {20:11} And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God [is] not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife’s sake. {20:12} And yet indeed [she is] my sister; she [is] the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. {20:13} And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said unto her, This [is] thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He [is] my brother. {20:14} And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants, and gave [them] unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife. {20:15} And Abimelech said, Behold, my land [is] before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee. {20:16} And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand [pieces] of silver: behold, he [is] to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that [are] with thee, and with all [other:] thus she was reproved. {20:17} So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare [children. ]{20:18} For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham’s wife. {21:1} And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. {21:2} For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. {21:3} And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. {21:4} And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. {21:5} And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. {21:6} And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, [so that] all that hear will laugh with me. {21:7} And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born [him] a son in his old age. {21:8} And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the [same] day that Isaac was weaned. {21:9} And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. {21:10} Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, [even] with Isaac. {21:11} And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son. {21:12} And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. {21:13} And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he [is] thy seed. {21:14} And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave [it] unto Hagar, putting [it] on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. {21:15} And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. {21:16} And she went, and sat her down over against [him] a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against [him,] and lift up her voice, and wept. {21:17} And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he [is. ]{21:18} Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. {21:19} And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. {21:20} And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. {21:21} And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. {21:22} And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God [is] with thee in all that thou doest: {21:23} Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son’s son: [but] according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned. {21:24} And Abraham said, I will swear. {21:25} And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech’s servants had violently taken away. {21:26} And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing: neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I [of it,] but to day. {21:27} And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant. {21:28} And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. {21:29} And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What [mean] these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves? {21:30} And he said, For [these] seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well. {21:31} Wherefore he called that place Beer sheba; because there they sware both of them. {21:32} Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Page 11 Genesis {21:33} And [Abraham] planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God. {21:34} And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines’ land many days. {22:1} And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, [here] I [am. ]{22:2} And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. {22:3} And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. {22:4} Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. {22:5} And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you, {22:6} And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid [it] upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. {22:7} And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where [is] the lamb for a burnt offering? {22:8} And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. {22:9} And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. {22:10} And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. {22:11} And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here [am] I. {22:12} And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me. {22:13} And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind [him] a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. {22:14} And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said [to] this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. {22:15} And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, {22:16} And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son: ]{22:17} That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which [is] upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; {22:18} And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. {22:19} So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba. {22:20} And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor; {22:21} Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram, {22:22} And Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel. {22:23} And Bethuel begat Rebekah: these eight Milcah did bear to Nahor, Abraham’s brother. {22:24} And his concubine, whose name [was] Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah. {23:1} And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: [these were] the years of the life of Sarah. {23:2} And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same [is] Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. {23:3} And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, {23:4} I [am] a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. {23:5} And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, {23:6} Hear us, my lord: thou [art] a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. {23:7} And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, [even] to the children of Heth. {23:8} And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, {23:9} That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which [is] in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a buryingplace amongst you. {23:10} And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, [even] of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, {23:11} Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that [is] therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead. {23:12} And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land. {23:13} And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou [wilt give it,] I pray thee, hear me: I will give thee money for the field; take [it] of me, and I will bury my dead there. {23:14} And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, {23:15} My lord, hearken unto me: the land [is worth] four hundred shekels of silver; what [is] that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. {23:16} And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current [money] with the merchant. {23:17} And the field of Ephron, which [was] in Machpelah, which [was] before Mamre, the field, and the cave which [was] therein, and all the trees that [were] in the field, that [were] in all the borders round about, were made sure {23:18} Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. {23:19} And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same [is] Hebron in the land of Canaan. {23:20} And the field, and the cave that [is] therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth. {24:1} And Abraham was old, [and] well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. {24:2} And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: {24:3} And I will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: {24:4} But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. {24:5} And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? {24:6} And Abraham said Downloaded from www.holybooks.com - https://www.holybooks.com/download-bible/ Genesis Page 12 unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again. {24:7} The LORD God of heaven, which took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. {24:8} And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again. {24:9} And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and sware to him concerning that matter. {24:10} And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master [were] in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor. {24:11} And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, [even] the time that women go out to draw [water. ]{24:12} And he said, O LORD God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham. {24:13} Behold, I stand [here] by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: {24:14} And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: [let the same be] she [that] thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master. {24:15} And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. {24:16} And the damsel [was] very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. {24:17} And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher. {24:18} And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. {24:19} And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw [water] for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. {24:20} And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw [water,] and drew for all his camels. {24:21} And the man wondering at her held his peace, to wit whether the LORD had made his journey prosperous or not. {24:22} And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten [shekels] weight of gold; {24:23} And said, Whose daughter [art] thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room [in] thy father’s house for us to lodge in? {24:24} And she said unto him, I [am] the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor. {24:25} She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in. {24:26} And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped the LORD. {24:27} And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I [being] in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren. {24:28} And the damsel ran, and told [them of] her mother’s house these things


😁 
 

 

On 2/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, Sunmaster said:

  

On 2/5/2024 at 4:04 PM, Tippaporn said:

You've admitted that his material is convoluted - meaning you don't understand much of what you did read.

Woa....slow down buddy. I said it's convoluted (at least some parts), not that I didn't understand it.

 

I think your post just confirms my suspicions, to which you indignantly protested as not being true.  You can fool yourself but I'm not so easily fooled.  Especially when the evidence is overwhelming.

 

Anyway, it was a sad reply. 

[Do you believe in God and why]

9 minutes ago, Tippaporn said:

It [the psyche] creates in physical terms that you recognize. On the other hand, you create physical time for your psyche, for without you there would be no experience of the seasons, their coming and their passing. There would be no experience of what Ruburt (Seth's "entity" name for Jane) calls "the dear privacy of the moment," so if one portion of your being wants to rise above the solitary march of the moments, other parts of your psyche rush, delighted, into that particular time focus that is your own. As you now desire to understand the timeless, infinite dimensions of your own greater existence, so "even now" multitudinous elements of that non-earthly identity just as eagerly explore the dimensions of earth-being and creaturehood.

 

Hmmmm . . .

[Do you believe in God and why]

You come into the condition you call life, and pass out of it. In between you encounter a lifetime. Suspended - or so it certainly seems - between birth and death, you wonder at the nature of your own being. You search your experience and study official histories of the past, hoping to find there clues as to the nature of your own reality.

Your life seems synonymous with your consciousness. Therefore it appears that your knowledge of yourself grows gradually, as your self-consciousness develops from your birth. It appears, furthermore, that your consciousness will meet a death beyond which your self-consciousness will not survive. You may think longingly and with an almost hopeful nostalgia of the religion of your childhood, and remember a system of belief that ensured you of immortality. Yet most of you, my readers, yearn for some private and intimate assurances, and seek for some inner certainty that your own individuality is not curtly dismissed at death.

Each person knows intuitively that his or her own experiences somehow matter, and that there is a meaning, however obscured, that connects the individual with a greater creative pattern. Each person senses now and then a private purpose, and yet many are filled with frustration because that inner goal is not consciously known or clearly apprehended.

When you were a child you knew you were growing toward an adulthood. You were sustained by the belief in projected abilities - that is, you took it for granted that you were in the process of learning and growing. No matter what happened to you, you lived in a kind of rarefied psychic air, in which your being was charged and glowing. You knew you were in a state of becoming. The world, in those terms, is also in a state of becoming.

In private life and on the world stage, action is occurring all the time. It is easy to look at yourselves or at the world, coma, to see yourself and become so hypnotized by your present state that all change or growth seems impossible, or to see the world in the same manner. You do not remember your birth, as a rule. Certainly it seems that you do not remember the birth of the world. You had a history, however, before your birth - even as it seems to you that the world had a history before you were born.

The sciences still keep secrets from each other. The physical sciences pretend that the centuries exist one after the other, while the physicists realize that time is not only
relative to the perceiver, but that all events are simultaneous. The archaeologists merrily continue to date the remains of "past" civilizations, never asking themselves what the past means - or saying: "This is the past relative to my point of perception."

Astronomers speak of outer space and of galaxies that would dwarf your own. In the world that you recognize there are also wars and rumors of wars, prophets of destruction. Yet in spite of all, the private man or the private woman, unknown, anonymous to the world at large, stubbornly feels within a rousing, determined affirmation that says: "I am important. I have a purpose, even though I do not understand what it is. My life that seems so insignificant and inefficient, is nevertheless of prime importance in some way that I do not recognize." Period.

Though caught up in a life of seeming frustration, obsessed with family problems, uneasy in sickess, defeated it seems for all practical purposes, some portion of each individual rouses against all disasters, all discouragements, and now and then at least glimpses a sense of enduring validity that cannot be denied. It is to that knowing portion of each individual that I address myself. Period.

I am not, on the one hand, an easy author to deal with, because I speak from a different level of consciousness than the one with which you are familiar. On the other hand, my voice is as natural as oak leaves blowing in the wind, for I speak from a level of awareness that is as native to your psyche as now the seasons seem to be to your soul.

I am writing this book through a personality known as Jane Roberts. That is the name given to her birth. She shares with you the triumphs and travails of physical existence. Like you, she is presented with a life that seems to begin at her birth, and that is suspended from that point of emergence until the moment of death's departure. She has asked the same questions that you ask in your quiet moments.

Her questions were asked with such a vehemence, however, that she broke through the barriers that most of you erect, and so began a journey that is undertaken for herself and for you also - for each of your experiences, however minute or seemingly insignificant, becomes part of the knowledge of your species. Where did you come from and where are you going. What are you? What is the nature of the psyche?

I can only write a portion of this book. You must complete it. For "The Psyche" is meaningless except as it relates to the individual psyche. I speak to you from levels of yourself that you have forgotten, and yet not forgotten. I speak to you through the printed page, and yet my words will re-arouse within you the voices that spoke to you in your childhood, and before your birth.

This will not be a dry treatise, studiously informing you about some hypothetical structure called the psyche, but will instead evoke from the depths of your being experiences that you have forgotten, and bring together from the vast reaches of time and space the miraculous identity that is yourself.

Now: The earth has a structure. In those terms, so does the psyche. You live in one particular area on the face of your planet, and you can only see so much of it at any given time - yet you take it for granted that the ocean exists even when you cannot feel its spray, or see the tides.

And even if you live in a desert, you take it on faith that there are indeed great cultivated fields and torrents of rain. It is true that some of your faith is based on knowledge. Others have traveled where you have not, and television provides you with images. Despite this, however, your senses present you with only a picture of your immediate environment, unless they are cultivated in certain particular manners that are relatively unusual.

You take it for granted that the earth has a history. In those terms, your own psyche has a history also. You have taught yourselves to look outward into physical reality, but the inward validity of your being cannot be found there - only its effects. You can turn on television and see a drama, but the inward mobility and experience of your psyche is mysteriously enfolded within all of those exterior gestures that allow you to turn on the television switch to begin with, and to make sense of the images presented. So the motion of your own psyche usually escapes you.

Where is the television drama before it appears on your channel - and where does it go afterwards? How can it exist one moment and be finished the next, and yet be replayed when the conditions are correct? If you understood the mechanics, you would know that the program obviously does not go anywhere. It simply is, while the proper conditions activate it for your attention. In the same way, you are alive whether or not you are playing on an earth "program." You are, whether you are in time or out of it.

Hopefully in this book we will put you in touch with your own being as it exists outside of the context in which you are used to viewing it.

As you dwell in one particular city or town or village, you presently "live" in one small area of the psyche's inner planet. You identify that area as your home, as your "I." Mankind has learned to explore the physical environment, but has barely begun the greater inner journeys that will be embarked upon as the inner lands of the psyche are joyously and bravely explored. In those terms, there is a land of the psyche. However, this virgin territory is the heritage of each individual, and no domain is quite like any other. Yet there is indeed an inner commerce that occurs, and as the exterior continents rise from the inner structure of the earth, so the lands of the psyche emerge from an even greater invisible source. That is the end of dictation for the evening.

Now: Dictation (on The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression): As the earth is composed of many environments, so is the psyche. As there are different continents, islands, mountains, seas, and peninsulas, so the psyche takes various shapes. If you live in one country, you often consider natives in other areas of the world as foreigners, while of course they see you in the same light. In those terms, the psyche contains many other levels of reality. From your point of view these might appear alien, and yet they are as much a part of your psyche as your motherland is a portion of the earth.

Different countries follow different kinds of constitutions, and even within any geographical area there may be various local laws followed by the populace. For example, if you are driving a car you may discover to your chagrin that the local speed limit in one small town is miles slower than in another, In the same manner, different portions of the psyche exist with their own local "laws," their different kinds of "government." They each possess their own characteristic geography.

If you are traveling around the world, you have to make frequent time adjustments. When you travel through the psyche, you will also discover that your own time is automatically squeezed out of shape. If for a moment you try to imagine that you were able to carry your own time with you on such a journey, all packaged neatly in a wristwatch, then you would be quite amazed at what would happen.

As you approached the boundaries of certain psychic lands, the wristwatch would run backwards. As you entered other kingdoms of the psyche your watch would go faster or slower. Now, if time suddenly ran backward you would notice it. If it ran faster or slower enough, you would also notice. the differences. If time ran backward very slowly, and according to the conditions, you might not be aware of the difference, because it would take so much "time" to get from the present moment to the one "before" it that you might be struck, instead, simply with the feeling that something was familiar, as if it had happened before.

In other lands of the psyche, however, even stranger events might occur. The watch itself might change shape, or turn heavy as a rock, or as light as a gas, so that you could not read the time at all. Or the hands might never move. Different portions of the psyche are familiar with all of these mentioned occurrences-because the psyche straddles any of the local laws that you recognize as "official," and has within itself the capacity to deal with an infinite number of reality-hyphen-experiences.

Now: Obviously your physical body has capacities that few of you use to full advantage. But beyond this, the species itself possesses the possibilities for adaptations that allow it to exist and persist in the physical environment under drastically varying circumstances. Hidden within the corporal biological structure there are latent specializations that would allow the species to continue, and that take into consideration any of the planetary changes that might occur for whatever reasons.

The psyche, however, while being earth-tuned in your experience, also has many other systems of reality "to contend with." Each psyche, then, contains within it the potentials, abilities, and powers that are possible, or capable of actualization under any conditions.

The psyche, your psyche, can record and experience time backward, forward, dash - or sideways through systems of alternate presents - or it can maintain its own integrity in a no-time environment. The psyche is the creator of time complexes. Theoretically, the most fleeting moment of your day can be prolonged endlessly. This would not be a static elongation, however, but a vivid delving into that moment, from which all time as you think of it, past and future and all its probabilities, might emerge.

If you are reading this book, you have already become weary with official concepts. You have already begun to sense those greater dimensions of your being. You are ready to step aside from all conventionalized doctrines, and to some extent or another you are impatient to examine and experience the natural flowing nature that is your birthright. That birthright has long been clothed in symbols and mythologies.

Consciousness forms symbols. It is not the other way around. Symbols are great exuberant playthings. You can build with them as you can with children's blocks. You can learn from them, as once you piled alphabet blocks together in a stack at school. Symbols are as natural to your minds as trees are to the earth. There is a difference, however, between a story told to children about forests, and a real child in a real woods. Both the story and the woods are "real." But in your terms the child entering the real woods becomes involved in its life cycle, treads upon leaves that fell yesterday, rests beneath trees far older than his or her memory, and looks up at night to see a moon that will soon disappear. Looking at an illustration of the woods may give a child some excellent imaginative experiences, but they will be of a different kind, and the child knows the difference.

If you mistake the symbols for the reality, however, you will program your experience, and you will insist that each forest look like the pictures in your book. In other words, you will expect your own experiences with various portions of your psyche to be more or less the same. You will take your local laws with you, and you will try to tell psychic time with a wristwatch.

We will have to use some of your terms, however, particularly in the beginning. Other terms with which you are familiar, we will squeeze out of all recognition. The reality of your own being cannot be defined by anyone but you, and then your own definition must be understood as a reference point at best. The psychologist, the priest, the physicist, the philosopher or the guru, can explain your own psyche to you only insofar as those specialists can forget that they are specialists, and deal directly with the private psyche from which all specializations come.

When I use the term "psyche," many of you will immediately wonder about my definition.

Any word, simply by being thought, written or spoken, immediately implies a specification. In your daily reality it is very handy to distinguish one thing from another by giving each item a name. When you are dealing with subjective experience, however, definitions can often serve to limit rather than express a given experience. Obviously the psyche is not a thing. It does not have a beginning or ending. It cannot be seen or touched in normal terms. It is useless, therefore, to attempt any description of it through usual vocabulary, for your language primarily allows you to identify physical rather than nonphysical experience.

I am not saying that words cannot be used to describe the psyche, but they cannot define it. It is futile to question: "What is the difference between my psyche and my soul, my entity and my greater being?" for all of these are terms used in an effort to express the greater portions of your own experience that you sense within yourself. Your use of language may make you impatient for definitions, however. Hopefully this book will allow you some intimate awareness, some definite experience, that will acquaint you with the nature of your own psyche, and then you will see that its reality escapes all definitions, defies all categorizing, and shoves aside with exuberant creativity all attempts to wrap it up in a neat package.

When you begin a physical journey, you feel yourself distinct from the land through which you travel. No matter how far you journey - on a motorcycle, in a car or plane, or on foot - by bicycle or camel, or truck or vessel, still you are the wanderer, and the land or ocean or desert is the environment through which you roam. When you begin your travels into your own psyche, however, everything changes. You are still the wanderer, the journeyman or journeywoman, but you are also the vehicle and the environment. You form the roads, your method of travel, the hills or mountains or oceans, as well as the hills, farms, and villages of the self, or of the psyche, as you go along.

When in colonial times men and women traveled westward across the continent of North America, many of them took it on faith that the land did indeed continue beyond - for example - towering mountains. When you travel as pioneers through your own reality, you create each blade of grass, each inch of land, each sunset and sunrise, each oasis, friendly cabin or enemy encounter as you go along.

Now if you are looking for simple definitions to explain the psyche, I will be of no help. If you want to experience the splendid creativity of your own being, however, then I will use methods that will arouse your greatest adventuresomeness, your boldest faith in yourself, and I will paint pictures of your psyche that will lead you to experience even its broadest reaches, if you so desire. The psyche, then, is not a known land. It is not simply an alien land, to which or through which you can travel. It is not a completed or nearly complete subjective universe already there for you to explore. It is, instead, an ever-forming state of being, in which your present sense of existence resides. You create it and it creates you.

It creates in physical terms that you recognize. On the other hand, you create physical time for your psyche, for without you there would be no experience of the seasons, their coming and their passing. There would be no experience of what Ruburt (Seth's "entity" name for Jane) calls "the dear privacy of the moment," so if one portion of your being wants to rise above the solitary march of the moments, other parts of your psyche rush, delighted, into that particular time focus that is your own. As you now desire to understand the timeless, infinite dimensions of your own greater existence, so "even now" multitudinous elements of that non-earthly identity just as eagerly explore the dimensions of earth-being and creaturehood.

Earlier I mentioned some odd effects that might occur if you tried to take your watch or other timepiece into other levels of reality. Now, when you try to interpret your selfhood in other kinds of existence, the same surprises or distortions or alterations can seem to occur. When you attempt to understand your psyche, and define it in terms of time, then it seems that the idea of reincarnation makes sense. You think: "Of course. My psyche lives many lives physically, one after the other. If my present experience is dictated by that in my childhood, then surely my current life is a result of earlier ones. And so you try to define the psyche in terms of time, and in so doing you limit your understanding and even your experience of it.

Let us try another analogy: You are an artist in the throes of inspiration. There is before you a canvas, and you are working in all areas of it at once. In your terms each part of the canvas could be a time period - say, a given century. You are trying to keep some kind of overall balance and purpose in mind, so when you make one brushstroke in any particular portion of this canvas, all the relationships within the entire area can change. No brushstroke is ever really wiped out, however, in this mysterious canvas of our analogy, but remains, further altering all the relationships at its particular level.

These magical brushstrokes, however, are not simple representations on a flat surface, but alive, carrying within themselves all of the artist's intent, but focused through the characteristics of each individual stroke.

If the artist paints a doorway, all of the sensed perspectives within it open, and add further dimensions of reality. Since this is our analogy, we can stretch it as far as we like-far further than any artist could stretch his canvas. Therefore, there is no need to limit ourselves. The canvas itself can change size and shape as the artist works. The people in the artist's painting are not simple representations either - to stare back at him with forever-fixed glassy eyes, or ostentatious smiles, dressed in their best Sunday clothes. Instead, they can confront the artist and talk back. They can turn sideways in the painting and look at their companions, observe their environment, and even look out of the dimensions of the painting itself and question the artist.

Now the psyche in our analogy is both the painting and the artist, for the artist finds that all of the elements within the painting are portions of himself. More, as he looks about, our artist discovers that he is literally surrounded by other paintings that he is also producing. As he looks closer, he discovers that there is a still-greater masterpiece in which he appears as an artist creating the very same paintings that he begins to recognize.

Our artist then realizes that all of the people he painted are also painting their own pictures, and moving about in their own realities in a way that even he cannot perceive.

In a flash of insight it occurs to him that he also has been painted - that there is another artist behind him from whom his own creativity springs, and he also begins to look out of the frame.

Now: If you are confused, that is fine-for it means that already we have broken through conventional ideas. Anything that I say following this analogy will seem comparatively simple, for by now it must appear at least that you have little hope of discovering your own greater dimensions.

Again, rather than trying to define the psyche, I will try to incite your imagination so that you can leap beyond what you have been told you are, to some kind of direct experience. To some extent this book itself provides its own demonstration. I call Jane Roberts "Ruburt" (and, hence, "he" and "him") simply because the name designates another portion of her reality, while she identifies herself as Jane. She writes her own books and carries on as each of you do in life's ordinary context. She has her own unique likes and dislikes, characteristics and abilities; her own time and space slot as each of you do. She is one living portrait of the psyche, independent in her own context, and in the environment as given.

Now I come from another portion of reality's picture, from another dimension of the psyche in which your existence can be observed, as you might look upon a normal painting.

In those terms, I am outside of your "frame" of reference. My perspective cannot be contained in your own painting of reality. I write my books, but because my primary focus is in a reality that "is larger than your own," I cannot appear as myself fully within your reference.

So Ruburt's subective perspective opens up because of his desire and interest, and discloses my own. He opens up a door in himself that leads to other levels of his being, but a being that cannot be completely expressed in your world. That existence is mine, expressed in my experience at another level of reality, so I must write my books through Ruburt. Doors in the psyche are different from simple openings that lead from one room to another, so my books only show a glimpse of my own existence. You all have such psychological doors however, that lead into dimensionally greater areas of the psyche, so to some extent or another I speak for those other aspects of yourselves that do not appear in your daily context.

Beyond what I recognize as my own existence, there are others. To some extent I share in their experience - to a far greater extent, for example, than Ruburt shares in mine.

On some relatively few occasions, for example, Ruburt has been able to contact what he calls "Seth Two." That level of reality, however, is even further divorced from your own. It represents an even greater extension of the psyche, in your terms. There is a much closer relationship, in that I recognize my own identity as a distinct portion of Seth Two's existence, where Ruburt feels little correspondence. In a manner of speaking, Seth Two's reality includes my own, yet I am aware of my contribution to "his" experience.

In the same way, each of my readers has a connection with the same level of psychic reality. In greater terms, all of this is happening at once. Ruburt is contributing and forming a certain portion of my experience, even as I am contributing to his. Your identities are not something already completed. Your most minute action, thought, and dream adds to the reality of your psyche, no matter how grand or austere the psyche may appear to you when you think of it as a hypothetical term.

Ruburt has specialized in a study of consciousness and the psyche. Most of my readers are very interested, yet they have other pressing concerns that prevent them from embarking upon such an extended study.

You all have physical reality to deal with. This applies equally to Ruburt and Joseph (Seth's entity name for me.) Thus far, my books have included Joseph's extended notes. They have set the scene, so to speak. My books have gone beyond those boundaries, however. In your terms, only so much can be done in time. Joseph is even now involved in typing my previous manuscript (The "Unknown" Reality.) It was written in such a way that it tied the personal experience of Ruburt and Joseph in with a greater theoretical framework, so that one could not be separated from the other.

In this new book, therefore, I will sometimes provide my own "scene setting." The psyche's production, in other words, has escaped practical, physical bounds, so that from my level of reality I can no longer expect Joseph to do more than record the sessions. I will ask you, my readers, to bear with me then. In my own way, I will try to provide suitable references so that you know what is going on physically in your time, as this book is written.

Largely, the writing of this book occurs in a "no-time, or out-of-time context." Physically, however, Ruburt and Joseph take many hours in its production. They have moved to a new house. Ruburt, as usual, is smoking as I speak. His foot rests upon a coffee table, as he moves back and forth in his rocking chair. It is nearing midnight as I speak (at 11:42). Earlier, a great thunderstorm raged, its reverberations seeming to crack the sky. Now it is quiet, with only the drone of Ruburt's new refrigerator sounding like the deep purr of some mechanical animal.

As you read this book, you are also immersed in such intimate physical experiences. Do not consider them as separated from the greater reality of your being, but as a part of it. You do not exist outside of your psyche's being, but within it. Some of you may have just put children to bed as you read these lines. Some of you may be sitting at a table. Some of you may have just gone to the bathroom. These mundane activities may seem quite divorced from what I am telling you, yet in each simple gesture, and in the most necessary of physical acts, there is the great magical unknowing elegance in which you reside-and in the most ordinary of your motions, there are clues and hints as to the nature of the psyche and its human expression.

[Do you believe in God and why]

2 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

Reading is a mere surrogate for thinking for yourself. It means allowing someone else to lead your thoughts on a leash. What’s more, the only thing many books are good for is to demonstrate how many erroneous ways there are, and how hard we could get lost if we allowed them to guide us.

 

Bah humbug.

 

The Physical Universe As Idea Construction.  Understand it.  Or not.

[Do you believe in God and why]

On 2/7/2024 at 6:10 PM, Sunmaster said:

You even mentioned that you re-read Seth after some years and found new things in it, explored new aspects of it. Were you wrong about it before you re-read the material?
Same material, different understanding.

 

Just a correction.  Rereading of the Seth books always brings greater understanding as material that was previously not well understood becomes much more understood as my understanding progresses along with my experience of the material.  But it's never been a case where I've interpreted the material wrongly and had to correct myself.  It's never been a case where my understanding is now different.  Only that some information 'clicked' where before it hadn't.  Rereading just brings new epiphanies.

[Do you believe in God and why]

The importance and value of physical life to the physical self and it's source self.

 

The outsideness of the physical world is connected, then, with a multidimensional "insideness." That exterior world is thrust outward, however, and projected into reality in line with your conscious desires, beliefs, and intent. It is important that you remember this position of the conscious· mind as you think of it. Each physical experience is unique, and while the energy for it and the creation of it come from within, the pristine, private, and yet shared quality of that experience could not exist in the same way (more emphatically) were it not so exteriorized.

The exteriorization has great purpose and meaning, then, and brings forth a different kind of expression. Though I may emphasize the importance of inner reality in this book, therefore, I am in no way denying the great validity and purpose of earthly experience. Any exercises in this book should help you enrich that experience, and understand its framework and nature. None of the exercises should be used to try to "escape" the connotations of your own earthly reality.

[Do you believe in God and why]

The multidimensional aspects of the electron cannot be perceived within your three-dimensional system, using instruments that are already predisposed or prefocused to measure only certain kinds of effects.

While this may sound quite sacrilegious scientifically, it is possible to understand the electron's nature and greater reality by using certain focuses of consciousness: by probing the electron, for example, with a "laser" [beam] of consciousness finely focused and attuned - and more will be said about this later in the book. So far in any of your investigations, you have been probing exterior conditions, searching for their interior nature.

To make this clear: When you dissect an animal, for instance, you are still dealing only with the "inside" of exterior reality, or with another level of outsideness. (Pause.) In a manner of speaking, when you probe the heavens with your instruments you are doing the same thing. There is a difference between this and the "withinness" out of which all matter springs. It is there that the blueprints for reality are found. There are various ways of studying reality. Let us take a very simple example.

Suppose a scientist found a first orange, and used every instrument available to examine it, but refused to feel it, taste it, smell it, or otherwise to become personally involved with it for fear of losing scientific objectivity.

In sense terms he would learn little about an orange, though he might be able to isolate its elements, predict where others might be found, theorize about its environment - but the greater ''withinness" of the orange is not found any place inside of its skin either. The seeds ate the physical carriers of future oranges, but the blueprints for that reality are what formed the seeds. In such dilemmas you are always brought back to the question of which came first, and begin another merry chase. Because yo:u think in terms of consecutive time, it seems that there must have been a first egg, or seed. The blueprints for reality exist, however, in dimensions without such a time sequence.

Your closest point to the withinness of which I speak is your own· consciousness, though you use it as a tool to examine the exterior universe. But it is basically free of that reality, not confined to the life-and-death saga, and at other levels deals with the blueprints for its own physical existence.

In the entire gestalt from cellular to "self' consciousness, there is a vast field of knowledge - much of it now "unconsciously" available - used to maintain the body's integrity in space and time. With the conscious mind as director, there is no reason why much of this knowledge cannot become normally and naturally available. There is, therefore, a quite valid, vital, real and vastly creative inner reality, and an inward sequence of events from which your present universe and life emerges. Any true scientist will ultimately have to learn to enter that realm of reality. So-called objective approaches will only work at all when you are dealing with so-called objective effects - and your physicists are learning that even in that framework many "facts" are facts only within certain frequencies, or under certain conditions. You are left with "workable facts" that help you manipulate in your own backyard, but such facts become prejudice when you try to venture beyond your own cosmic neighborhood and find that your preconceived, native ideas do not apply outside of their context.

 

Because of your attitudes, ideas do not seem as real to you as objects, or as practical. Thoughts are not given the same validity as rocks or trees or beer cans (two of which sat on the coffee table between us at the moment) or automobiles. In your terms an automobile gets you somewhere. You do not understand the great mobility of thought, nor grasp its practical nature. You make your world, and in an important manner your thoughts are indeed the immediate personal blueprints for it. When you manipulate objects you feel efficient. The manipulation of thoughts is far more practical. Here is a brief example.

Your medical technology may help you "conquer" one disease after another - some in fact caused by that same technology - and you will feel very efficient as you do heart transplants, as you fight one virus after another. But all of this will do nothing except to allow people to die, perhaps, of other diseases still "unconquered." People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. (Emphatically:) A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being. In your terms they are regulated by emotions, desires, and thoughts. A true doctor cannot be scientifically objective. He cannot divorce himself from the reality of his patient. Instead, usually, the doctor's words and very methods literally separate the patient from himself or herself. The malady is seen almost as a thing apart from the patient's person - but thrust upon it - over which the patient has little control.

The condition is analyzed, the blood is sampled. It becomes "a blood sample" to the doctor. The patient may silently shout out, ''That is not just a blood sample - it is my blood you are taking." But he [or she] is discouraged from identifying with the blood of his physical being, so that even his own blood seems alien.

The blueprints for reality: In greater terms they reside within you. In private terms they are part of your being.

To some extent I am suggesting in this book a different approach. So far the blueprints for reality have been largely unknown. Your methods make them invisible, so here I am suggesting ways in which the unknown reality can become a known one. I have mentioned the dream-art scientist and the [true] mental physicist (in sessions 700-1). I would like to add here the "complete physician."

[Do you believe in God and why]

5 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

What is it with all this pop spirituality? 
Just kidding 😁

Welcome back Tippa

 

I've left.  Kinda.  Just on temporary assignment. 

[Do you believe in God and why]

Food for thought, is all.  Each will do with it as they wish.

[Do you believe in God and why]

Each individual is innately driven by a good intent, however distorted that intent may become, or however twisted the means that may be taken to achieve it.

As the body wants to grow from childhood on, so all of the personality's abilities want to grow and develop. Each person has his [or her] own ideals, and impulses direct those ideals naturally into their own specific avenues of development — avenues meant to fulfill both the individual and his society. Impulses provide specifications, methods, meanings, definitions. They point toward definite avenues of expression, avenues that will provide the individual with a sense of actualization, natural power, and that will automatically provide feedback, so that the person knows he is impressing his environment for the better.

(Long pause.) Those natural impulses, followed, will automatically lead to political and social organizations that become both tools for individual development and implements for the fulfillment of the society. Impulses then would follow easily, in a smooth motion, from private action to social import. When you are taught to block your impulses, and to distrust them, then your organizations become clogged. You are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example — but you are denied the personal power of your own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing your personal abilities. You are left with an undefined, persisting, even tormenting desire to do good, to change events, but without having any means at your disposal to do so. This leads to lingering frustration, and if your ideals are strong the situation can cause you to feel quite desperate.

(Pause in a forceful delivery.) You may begin to exaggerate the gull between this generalized ideal and the specific evidences of man's "greed and corruption" that you see so obviously about you. You may begin to concentrate upon your own lacks, and in your growing sense of dissatisfaction it may seem to you that most men are driven by a complete lack of good intent.

You may become outraged, scandalized — or worse, filled with self righteousness, so that you being to attack all those with whom you do not agree, because you do not know how else to respond to your own ideals, or to your own good intent (with much emphasis).

The job of trying to make the world better seems impossible, for it appears that you have no power, and any small private beneficial actions that you can (underlined) take seem so puny in contrast to this generalized ideal that you dismiss them sardonically, and so you do not try to use your power constructively. You do not begin with your own life, with your own job, or with your own associates. (Louder:) What difference can it make to the world if you are a better salesperson, or plumber, or office worker, or car salesman, for Christ's sake? What can one person do?

Yet that is precisely where first of all you must begin to exert yourselves. There, on your jobs and in your associations, are the places where you intersect with the world. Your impulses directly affect the world in those relationships (intently).

(Pause.) Many of you are convinced that you are not important — and while [each of] you feels that way it will seem that your actions have no effect upon the world. You will purposefully keep your ideals generalized, thus saving yourself from the necessity of acting upon them in the one way open to you: by trusting yourself and your impulses, and impressing those that you meet in daily life with the full validity that is your own.

[Do you believe in God and why]

To some extent the greater expression of consciousness can be experienced under usual waking conditions, but only when a personality is flexible enough and secure enough to alter the focus of consciousness. This way, other unperceived data become available. The unknown reality is not beyond your experience, therefore. Any of your scientific or religious disciplines could benefit from a study of the dreaming consciousness, for there the basic nature of reality exists as clearly as you can perceive it.

[Do you believe in God and why]

Many of you are fascinated by theories or concepts that hint at the multidimensionality of your beings, and yet you are scandalized by any evidence that supports it.

[Do you believe in God and why]

It is one thing to be theoretically convinced that other worlds exist, and to take a certain comfort and joy from the idea It is quite another thing to find yourself in such an environment, and to feel the worlds coincide. Reality is above all practical, so when you expand your concepts concerning the nature of reality, you are apt then to find yourselves scandalized, appalled, or simply disoriented. So in this work I am presenting you not only with probabilities as conjecture, but, often, showing you how such probabilities affect your daily lives, and giving examples of the ways in which Ruburt's and Joseph's lives have been so touched.

For a while, many of you will play with the concepts while avoiding all direct encounters with any other experience, save that already acceptable. Yet the immensities of your own abilities speak in your dreams, in your private moments, as even inaudibly in the knowledge of your own molecules.

[Do you believe in God and why]

You cannot explore the nature of reality, hoping to discover its unknown aspects, if you insist that those aspects correspond with the known ones.

[Do you believe in God and why]

The Nature of Personal Reality: Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know.

 

In this perennial bestseller, Seth challenges our assumptions about the nature of reality and stresses the individual's capacity for conscious action. Included in this book are excellent exercises for applying these theories to any life situation.

[Do you believe in God and why]

You are used to a particular kind of orientation, accustomed to using your consciousness in one particular manner. In order to study the "unknown" reality, however, you must try to see what else you! consciousness can do. This really means that you must learn to regain the true feeling of yourself.

There are two main ways of trying to find out about the nature of reality - an exterior method and an interior one. The methods can be used together, of course, and from your vantage point must be for the greatest efficiency. You are well acquainted with the exterior means, that involve studying the objective universe and collecting facts upon which certain deductions are made. In this book, therefore, we will be stressing interior ways of attaining, not necessarily facts, but knowledge and wisdom. Now, facts may or may not give you wisdom. They can, if they are slavishly followed, even lead you away from true knowledge. Wisdom shows you the insides of facts, so to speak, and the realities from which facts emerge.

Much of the remainder of "Unknown" Reality, then, will deal with an inside look at the nature of reality, and with some exercises that will allow you to see yourself and your world from another perspective.

[Do you believe in God and why]

On 2/28/2024 at 4:23 PM, Sunmaster said:

Nice. Since beliefs are made of thoughts, this means the best and safest of all drugs is your own mind.

 

Slight correction for the sake of accuracy.  Thoughts are thinking about ideas.  So technically beliefs are made of ideas.

 

On 2/28/2024 at 4:23 PM, Sunmaster said:

Placebos work when the individual believes them to have beneficial effects.

 

Beliefs create experience.  Full stop.  Placebos work for some people.  They work for those people whose beliefs about them are in line with the effects they expect.

 

On 2/28/2024 at 4:23 PM, Sunmaster said:

What if we could strengthen our minds . . .

 

It's not a matter of strengthening one's mind.  It's a matter of choosing one's beliefs.  Beliefs which are beneficial rather than detrimental.  There are only two things one can think about - what is wanted and what is unwanted.  What is wanted is beneficial and what is not wanted is detrimental.

 

On 2/28/2024 at 4:23 PM, Sunmaster said:

. . . to consciously harness this mental power?

 

This mental power is nothing new.  You and everyone else have been using it all of your lives.  If one wishes to 'harness' this mental power, e.g. consciously direct it, then the way to do that would be to choose beneficial ideas over detrimental ones.  As to detrimental ideas, "Argue for your limitations and they're yours."

 

If you're interested in arguing for your unlimitations then this video shows how you go about doing it.

 

 

[Do you believe in God and why]

On 2/28/2024 at 4:05 PM, VincentRJ said:

In such circumstances, any cure, or reduction of symptons, is due to the belief of the individual. Such belief is a pre-condition for any cure. It's known as the placebo effect.

 

You're headed in the right direction.  If you keep going in that direction you'll eventually discover that every facet of life is about beliefs.

[Do you believe in God and why]

Well, since you spent the time and the effort to produce this masterpiece of pop psychology I feel it only polite to give you a response so that you might feel that your effort was for naught.

 

I laughed my ar$e off reading that, Sunmaster.  The assumptions you make about me which are the basis for your interpretations are truly of the grandest and most fanciful pure fiction.  I applaud you for ability to not get a single thing correct.    You've provided us all a most wonderful example which so beautifully illustrates the power of belief.  As long as you believe it to be true then true it is for you.  That almost deserves a standing ovation.  But since those aren't available then another hand clap will have to suffice. 

 

Poor Sunmaster has "seen the light" and believes that no one else has if it is not experienced in the identical fashion of his once-in=a=lifetime Kundalini Awakening.  Which he will strive for the rest of his life to hopefully repeat again.  Though he knows full well that it is not up to him - for he must have the blessing of some deity or other imagined force (can't remember what you called it but you mentioned it twice that I know of).

 

I can only give praise to God, or Buddha, or Brahman, or All That Is, or The One, or maybe all of them for sparing me a life imprisoned in the head of Sunmaster.  I would be fated to a miserable existence of cutting the overgrown and strangling weeds of so many useless beliefs and never denting them.

 

It was certainly a magnificently creative piece of pop psychology for which you deserve another round of applause.    Not rooted in science but firmly rooted in fantasy.  Though it is true that the two are often indistinguishable.  But it was highly artistic.

 

I first appeared an ally for my criticisms and insights were directed at our mutual "foes."  I was applauded    But once I dared turn those criticisms and insights in the direction of Sunmaster then I was suddenly transformed from a guy with great perceptions and wisdom to a verbose dolt who just didn't "get it."  The world can indeed turn on a dime. 

 

Well, this thread is all yours now, Sunmaster.  Good luck trying to "help" those who aren't looking for help, nor want help, nor seek help, and they really don't even need help.  They're all fine just the way they are.  You cannot alleviate any of their "suffering."  But go ye forth and do the work of Brahman. 

 

[Do you believe in God and why]

26 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

Sorry, but this is just nonsense. Of course everything is Brahman, there is nothing that is not Brahman. The distortion is in your head.
And of course, this body and this mind are also spiritual. Everything is "spiritual", even the dump I produced this morning. 
You are saying "Oh, everything is spiritual. We are all already enlightened. No need to do anything. Why striving to realize Brahman?" 
And another thing is BEING Brahman...having realized it in your life...living it. 
There is a simple test: Do you think you are enlightened right now? Do you think you are speaking from the One Consciousness now? Are you a wise saint right now? Don't be modest. If you are, please tell us.
The old issue....intellectual knowledge tells you that everything is spiritual and already illuminated, so the ego tells you to just sit back and pat yourself on the back, oh enlightened one.😁

 

The rest of your post is based on this false assumption.

 

Boy, that was a fast response, Sunmaster.  Not surprising as evidently you understood none of it.    But of course you can't understand any of it.  Your beliefs won't allow it. 

 

Anyway, let no man say that you or anyone else broke me.  For I lay claim to that.  I, too, woke this morning with fresh inspiration.  It had to do with my age old question of why I post on this or any other forum.  I received the answer this morning and it was clear as a bell.  I was going to post it all but thanks to your last post, Sunmaster, it would be in vain.    Thanks for saving me the time and trouble.    You can, if you'd like, reciprocate by thanking me for now never having to spend the time and effort to compose you Magnum Opus to me.  For it will only be more of the same.  Religious nonsense.

 

So I leave you to be the resident Swami, here, Sunmaster.  Swami Sunmaster.  That has a nice ring to it.  Maybe you can make your own YouTube videos and monetise them.  Not a bad idea, eh?  How many Swami white men are out there?  You could corner that market.  Make yourself famous, too.  And by realising fame (and possibly great fortune) people might listen and believe you, too.  You're not doing so well here. 

 

You're a good man, Sunmaster.  A very good man.  I wish you well on your journey to become Brahman. 

 

Cheers to you all,

 

Tippers

 

P.S.  In the far, far outside chance that anyone needs to contact me you can find me here:

 

 

[Do you believe in God and why]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Some of us are content to wander through life and enjoy as much of it as we are able to without analyzing it.

 

And some of us aren't.  Moral of the story?  To each their own.  As it should be. 

[Do you believe in God and why]

2 hours ago, save the frogs said:

what a sad sight to behold.

 

2 "cult leaders" going at it incessantly.

 

jesus h.

 

You're in a cult and the leader of it, too, Frogs.  Your own, of which you are the only member and so forced to be it's leader, too. 

 

Please do share your beliefs about who you are, the world, the universe, reality, God, and whatever else.  You don't.  That keeps you safe.  For no one could then criticise you for what you believe.  And since no one knows what your beliefs are then you can always give the appearance of having 'normal' beliefs which "everyone" else subscribes to and agrees upon.  That also gives you free reign to criticise, poke fun at, and ridicule everyone else's beliefs and ideas.  Easy to do when you have none of your own.

 

Chicken, is what I call it.    You have no idea how transparent you are, Frogs.    Every village has a . . .

[Do you believe in God and why]

7 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Time and again you've told me that my book learning amounts to nothing compared with direct experience.  It's barren, are the words you once used, I believe  That invalidates book learning as having any true value.  And since book learning is experience, a part of our experience, then by extension it devalues the rest of experience. 
This is not what I said.

 

After all of my harsh criticisms and you come back rather nonplussed.  Kudos to you, Sunmaster.  You've shown that you are truly secure within yourself. 

 

It's what's implied, Sunmaster.  It's what's implied.  You can't see that.  Yet.  It's you're very beliefs which blind you to it.

 

7 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

I will try to make it as clear as possible and settle this once and for all. Intellectual knowledge gained through books and rational processing of data is important! It's important and valuable for those things that pertain to the realm of the mind (that includes the material world too). If you want to build a good bridge, you have to learn how to build it properly. If you want to know how the market works, you have to study economy. If you want to be a surgeon, you have to study medicine. This kind of knowledge is not the same as "spiritual" knowledge (= the knowledge of your true nature), though. The first is of the mind (doing), the second is beyond the mind (being).

 

You see, Sunmaster, what you don't get is that it's all spiritual.  All of it.  Remember this from Swami Sarvapriyananda's video?

 

 

You have Brahman on the far left, that which you are.  Everything on the right side is not the r-e-a-l you.  The goal is to get to Brahman.  Brahman is the spirit.  The rest is not.  That's the great distortion in eastern religion.  It purports that only Brahman is spiritual and the rest is not.  Your goal, Sunmaster, is to connect with that spiritual part of yourself and become it.  You've been hoodwinked into believing that the Sunmaster portion of yourself, including all of it's doings, is NOT spiritual.

 

Any consciousness automatically tries to express itself in all probable directions, and does so. In so doing it will experience All That Is through its own being, though interpreted, of course, through that familiar reality of its own.

 

Because you believe that the Sunmaster portion of you, and all of it's doings, is not spiritual then the above statement makes no sense to you.  You can't see how you and all of you're doings are in fact spiritual.  They cannot be otherwise as they are 'you'.

 

You are, we all are, in this very moment spirits clothed in flesh, blood and bones.  For that portion is indeed a manifestation of our inner self.  That portion IS our inner self.  As you say, we already are that which we are.  You've got that correct, but only partially.  You fail to see yet that our physical existence IS a manifestation, a representation in symbolic form, in which inner being inserts ITSELF into a reality which it has created for the purpose of expressing itself in a new way.  Through that expression it creates itself in an entirely new fashion and then that expression of itself knows itself in new ways via experience in another reality.  The inner self does this eternally via creating an infinite number of realities, not just the physical, for the same purpose.

 

The abilities of the inner self are infinite.  Here we are meant to use what abilities we have to their fullest and in so doing we express our inner self.  The use of our abilities can find expression in an infinite number of ways.  To use your examples, as an economist and as a surgeon.  Those endeavours are spiritual in nature.  But since you believe that our doings in this world are not then you are blind to that fact.  Again, your very belief blinds you from seeing that.

 

Given that every reality has it's limitations, it's boundaries, then so any given individual within any reality is limited as to the amount of abilities he or she is able to express in any given lifetime.  Hence probable selves and reincarnational selves, et al.  For all of our abilities will be used and if they are not used by 'you' in a given lifetime, or a given reality, then they will be used and find expression by other 'yous'; whether that is a probable 'you' or a reincarnational 'you', or a counterpart 'you', and so on.

 

Rising to challenges is a basis for existence in every aspect of existence. It is the developer of all abilities, and at the risk of being trite, it is the responsibility of even the most minute particle of consciousness to use its own abilities, and all of its abilities, to the utmost. Upon the degree to which this is done rests the power and coherence of everything that is.

 

Here Seth explains the importance of using our abilities.  Again, whether the use those abilities are expressed in terms of being an economist or being a surgeon.  Again, ". . . it is the responsibility of even the most minute particle of consciousness to use its own abilities, and all of its abilities, to the utmost."

 

I've accused you, Sunmaster, of having an identity crisis.  I've told you several times that our concept of identity is extremely limited.  And I will chastise you now for never asking me what I meant by that or for never asking me anything about identity.  You have no curiosity about it.  I understand, though, why you wouldn't and didn't ask me.  For why would you need to hear a different explanation of what identity is when you already know what it is?  Your identity is Brahman.  What of Sunmaster?  Does he not have an identity?  Or is that identity not real, not valid?

 

Seth constantly refers to multi-personhood.  Over and over again he states that we are multidimensional beings.  To say that there is more to us than we realise means that we have many more "I-selves."  There is no single "I," not in terms of the physical nor in terms of the inner self.  I would fully understand if that concept might escape you.  Perhaps you may get a slight 'feel' for it but I doubt a single reading would give you any great clarity.  To understand that we are multidimensional beings is something that you would have to work at.  In the least to give it more than a passing thought, which may only result in you dismissing the concept entirely.  Which is quite possible if you are insistent on following the ideas of Vedanta, for multidimensionality does not at all fit within that framework.  And would indeed wreak havoc on that framework if it were to be included.

 

The bottom line here, Sunmaster, is that as long as you fail to understand that all of it is spiritual, you and all of your doings, as long as you fail to understand that there is nothing that is not spiritual, you will continue to make senseless divisions as to what is spiritual and what is not.  Sooner or later that effort will bring you to the proper understanding for the idea of divisions to the self do not work.

 

8 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

If book-reading alone could give you spiritual knowledge, the world would be filled with saints. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this is the case.

 

I'm no saint, nor do I aspire to become one, but book learning has given me spiritual knowledge.  You can deny all you want that it has, until you turn blue in the face if you wish, but I know better. 

 

8 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Again, there is a time and place for everything. Here too I said it many times that the ego (and the mind it stems from) is a tool that fulfills a function. This has nothing to do with self-flaggelation, becoming a renunciate or denying this part of me. What I said is that in order to access the deepest parts of our being, the mind has to become your ally. As it is with the vast majority of people, the mind runs amok and produces an army of naughty little thought-monkies that constantly take us on thought-rollercoasters. Have you ever tried closing your eyes and focusing only on your breath? How long can you sustain that focus before a thought monkey takes your attention away. "Oh, I still have to reply to Sunmaster"..."The internet is slow today. I wonder why."..."Btw...what should I eat for dinner?"...."I really should eat less meat."...."I'm getting a bit fat."....and on and on it goes, the whole day, every day, the whole life. This chatter, this mental noise is what the problem is. The mind is a knife that has to be sharpened so that it becomes most effective. The mind has to be tamed like a wild horse. Only this way can the true identity (which is not the ego) reveal itself, otherwise you'll spend your time being catapulted from one thought to the other.
The mind, along with the ego it produces, are a part of you, like you rightly wrote. They are not you. They are a part of you. So, if they prevent me from revealing this bigger me, I will sure as hell tame that wild horse and kick the thought-monkies where the sun doesn't shine. 
To summarize....the mind is not the enemy. The restless mind is the enemy. The ego is not the enemy. The tyrannic ego is the enemy.

 

I've also accused you, Sunmaster, of not understanding the Seth material for you have admitted that it is convoluted.  You took great exception and spat out with great indignation that just because you said it was convoluted doesn't give me the right to say that you didn't understand it.  Well, friend, again the proof is in the pudding.  BTW, convoluted has this definition:  (esp. of expression in speech or writing) having a complicated structure and therefore difficult to understand.  Also, these synonyms:  baffling, perplexing, confused, puzzling, tangled.  To say something is convoluted and then claim it's understood would not be honest.

 

I've written, too, that it was most puzzling to me why you objected to my posting Seth's actual material and why you wanted me to explain it to you in my own words.  For it made no sense.  Would I be able to explain Seth's material better than Seth himself?  That's nonsensical.  It does make sense, though, in light of the fact that you have trouble understanding Seth's material due to it's 'convoluted' nature.

 

But again I say the proof is in the pudding.  And the pudding is what you wrote above.  The cornerstone of the Seth material is this:  You create your reality using ideas.  Thoughts being ideas.  Beliefs being ideas one accepts as "true."  The above clearly shows that you have no idea of what ideas are, where they come from, where they go, what their purpose is, and what effects they produce.  They are the very thing which creates your physical experience and yet this seems to go completely over your head.  You think you can tame them?  My response:    Again, this is a cornerstone of the Seth material and how can any of the rest of the material make any sense if that key concept is failed to be understood?  It can't.

 

This characteristic of materializing thoughts and emotions into physical realities is an attribute of the soul. Now in your reality, these thoughts are made physical. In other realities, they may be "constructed" in an entirely different fashion. So your soul, that which you are, constructs your physical daily reality for you from the nature of your thoughts and expectations.

...

You can readily see, therefore, how important your subjective feelings really are. This knowledge - that your universe is idea construction - can immediately give you clues that enable you to change your environment and circumstances beneficially.

 

If you want to reject that concept then there's naught I can do about it.  Keep attempting the impossible and carry on with 'taming' your thoughts for as long as you have the endurance to do so.  Vedanta has no idea of what thoughts, ideas and beliefs are because it doesn't at all attempt to explain them other that to say the are 'objects' in the realm of Maya.

 

The fact that you don't understand that it is ideas which create our experience then that also explains why you've never answered the question I've put to you asking where suffering comes from.  Unless you understand that you create your personal, private and en masse experience you cannot begin to answer the question.  Without the understanding that we create or own reality then any answer to that question will be entirely fabricated from whole cloth.

 

The fact is that each of you create your own physical reality; and en masse, you create both the glories and the terrors that exist within your earthly experience. Until you realize that you are the creators, you will refuse to accept this responsibility.

 

As well, it is not the mind or the ego which prevents the revealing of the 'bigger' you.  It is your beliefs.  I've said again and again that your concept of what the ego is is largely distorted.  Some of your ideas are correct but others woefully miss the mark.

 

It cannot relate to a reality that you will not allow it to perceive. It can poorly help you to survive when you do not allow it to use its abilities to discover those true conditions in which it must manipulate. You put blinders upon it, and then say that it cannot see.

 

Your beliefs are the blinders which you put on your ego.

 

Even so, it is much more resilient and eager to learn than is generally supposed. It is not natively as rigid as it seems. Its curiosity can be of great value.

If you have a limited conception of the nature of reality, then your ego will do its best to keep you in the small enclosed area of your accepted reality. If, on the other hand, your intuitions and creative instincts are allowed freedom, then they communicate some knowledge of greater dimensions to this most physically oriented portion of your personality.

 

Again, it is your beliefs which limit the ego and turn it into that 'object' which you have been led to believe inhibits your ability to perceive your greater reality.  To develop your ego via changing your beliefs in order to assist the ego in assisting you then you would call that preening the ego, I suppose.  But the ego is you.  The Sunmaster 'you'.

 

Part of my purpose is to acquaint your egotistical self with knowledge that is already known to a larger portion of your own consciousness, that you have long ignored.

 

Again, when you become aware that there is more to yourself then you will change the role that the ego plays.

 

You must also realize that while I use terms like "soul" or "entity," "inner self," and "present personality [ego]," I do so only for the sake of convenience, for one is a part of the other; there is no point where one begins and another ends.

 

Keeping in mind always that the divisions made are for "the sake of convenience" would prevent you from ever viewing the ego as an 'object' in Maya.

 

You seem to perceive exclusively through your physical senses, and yet you have only to extend your egotistical idea of reality, and you will find even your egotistical self accepting quite readily the existence of nonphysical information.
As it does, so its own ideas of its own nature will automatically change and expand, for you will have removed limitations to its growth.

 

Your idea of reality is whatever your beliefs about it are.  As you expand and therefore change your beliefs about reality then your ego becomes an ally and no longer the hindrance you have forced it to be due to your limited beliefs about reality.

 

Now often the ego acts as a dam, to hold back other perceptions - not because it was meant to, or because it is in the nature of an ego to behave in such a fashion, or even because it is a main function of an ego, but simply because you have been taught that the purpose of an ego is restrictive rather than expanding.

 

Currently you are completely, utterly convinced that the ego is restrictive; inhibiting.  It is what prevents you from realising an awareness of your inner self, and stands in the way of experiencing that inner reality.  Only, only if you insist that the ego works against you.

 

The ego does want to understand and interpret physical reality, and to relate to it. It wants to help you survive within physical existence, but by putting blinders upon it, you hamper its perception and native flexibility. Then because it is inflexible you say that this is the natural function and characteristic of the ego.

 

Again, you saddle the ego with poor beliefs and then blame it for it's poor functioning.  But you don't understand what beliefs are, what their function is, and certainly not what their effects are.  Well, one of those effects is that your beliefs convince you that the ego is the problem when you wish to connect with your inner reality.  For a second reading:

 

It cannot relate to a reality that you will not allow it to perceive. It can poorly help you to survive when you do not allow it to use its abilities to discover those true conditions in which it must manipulate. You put blinders upon it, and then say that it cannot see.

 

As long as you insist on your interpretation of what the ego is you won't begin to be able to understand what the ego truly is.  You need to set aside your ideas of what the ego is first before you can understand what Seth is explaining.

 

Now you seem to think that I do not understand your viewpoints, Sunmaster.  You fail to understand that I understand your viewpoints perfectly in all of their nitty gritty detail.  I understand perfectly well, for instance, your concept of the ego.  But it is you who do not understand my viewpoint.  And that's because you're too goddamned busy coming from yours.  You speak well, but you don't listen well.  Oh, I can hear your cries of indignation all the way to where I am sitting.  And yet again the proof is in the pudding.

 

Both you and @Red Phoenix have expressed to me your beliefs and where they come from.  Granted, Vedanta is only a single source for your world view, Sunmaster.  And granted as well that Gurdjieff is only a single source for RP's world view.  Now I have spent hours upon hours investigating your sources and have schooled myself as to how they view the world and why.  I've dedicated the time necessary to have an informed opinion regarding those sources.  Yet it's been painfully obvious to me that the two of you have not done the same with the Seth material.  For I have provided it to each of you and all I need to do to know that the two of you haven't done your homework is to see if there were any downloads.  Yes, eventually there were.  But the fact that there were downloads doesn't mean that any of those PDFs were ever opened and read by either of you.  The fact that neither of you have ever commented on that material, oftentimes even when asked, or have failed to ask me anything about the material points to the conclusion that neither of you have done your homework to understand where my world view comes from.  You guys haven't the interest.  And so you guys don't listen very well.  That's not an indictment, it is simply what it is.

 

Now Sunmaster has said that he's currently reading one of Seth's early, unpublished works so I give you credit there.  But I'll warn, as long as you bring your current beliefs with you and by doing so attempt to sift the material through those beliefs you will gain very little, if anything.

[Do you believe in God and why]

1 hour ago, scorecard said:

 

You mention 'direct experience'.

Well I'm 80 years old in a few months, I'm not a believer and never will be, here's my 'direct experience with christianity:

 

1. I went to a government school in Australia for primary education. At that time it was compulsory for children at attend Christian education for 2 hrs a week on Wed. mornings:

- Every child selected what 'group / religion' class they wanted to attend.-- Most kids played for the 2 hrs.

- Many kids jumped from class to class, and/or attended whatever class most of their friends attended. from 

- There was no consistency / progression if a child attended the same christianity class every week.

- Most 'ministers' or whatever handed out candy to encourage kids to attend their class.

-There was no 'class' for roman catholic kids, it was assumed all roman catholic kids went to convent or marist brothers schools.

 

My mother had completed a degree in education and in he day it was compulsory for teachers to complete courses to teach christianity but they didn't teach christianity because of the 2 hrs a week mentioned just above.

 

There was some drive from trained teachers and those doing their degree for the christianity courses to be dropped. Why? The thinking was that gov't schools should focus on the 3R's, physics, chemistry etc, and there should not be any religious teaching. Ultimately it was dropped from the teaching degree course and at the same time the 2 hrs every week at schools was totally cancelled.

 

2. At 20 yo I was conscripted and went into national service and to the war in Vietnam.

 

The first 3 months was rookie training in Australia. Near the end of the second month we were told that we would be attending a 1 hr lecture by the camp chaplain. We had to ask 'what is a chaplain?'. In this case the chaplain was a Church of England minister about 40 years old.

 

We marched in and the polite smiling chaplain told us:

- 'I am your friend' and he repeated again and again 'I am your friend'. And 'today you are very welcome to ask any questions, any questions at all and I will answer your questions'. 

- He continued about 'don't worry about going to war 'god and jesus will take care of you and won't get injured, god's love will ensure that doesn't happen. And I give you my personal guarantee you won't get hurt or injured.

 

Near the end of the 1 hr he asked for questions and pushed, and eventually 2 or 3 boys asked simple questions and their questions were answered by repetition of 'god's love will ensure you don't get hurt / don't get killed etc.

 

I stood up and then the chaplain asked me 'what's your question?' I replied 'please chaplain sir I have never understood where the bible came from'. The chaplain went into a rage came close to me and yelled 'how dare you ask such an insulting question, then told the 2 training NCOs and the platoon commander* sitting in the room to march me to the camp commanders office tell him that I had spoken in an insulting way to the chaplain.

 

The camp commanded instantly said 'you will do extra mess duties every morning for the rest of your time in this camp. Report to the mess at 3.30 am, help get things ready for the cooks, scrub the pot and plans etc and get back to your own barracks in time to shower and be on parade at 7.00 am. I wasn't given any chance by the camp commander to speak.

 

                                 * The platoon commander was a                                   Lieutenant who had recently                                         recently completed his tour of

                                 duty in VN.

 

About 2 days after the 1 hr one time session with the chaplain our platoon commander spoke to us and said 'there is danger, death and injury in Vn and nothing can protect you, and the chalain should have been more honest'. Later the same day our platoon commander spoke privately to me and mentioned that I had done nothing wrong.

 

We never again heard anything from the chaplain or what was available if needed etc., etc.  

 

There's more to this incident but for this post it highlights why I have never been a believer.  

 

Nice post, scorecard, and thanks for the personal story.  It was most enjoyable.  Your experience was a real eye opener for you.  A man of the cloth who does not truly believe what he preaches and so lies so that others maintain faith in his God.  Question his God and his wrath, not God's, will come down on you.  You might find some of that going on here.

 

BTW, here's an early 80th birthday greeting for you.