Larian Studios Forums General Chat Role-Playing and Spirituality

I haven't done much searching into what makes the world work. I've heard things and I've considered them and I've inserted some of them into my belief. What I have done is examined how to work the world. I use my beliefs and understanding to better my quality of life. And it works! My belief, whilst filled with ideas, can be summarised into one quote from Dogma:

"It doesn't matter what you have faith in, so long as you have faith!"
- Serendipity, Dogma

I have faith in myself. I think "I can't do that!" Then I think "Why not?" With faith in yourself you can remove fear. Without fear you have more confidence. With more confidence, the more likely you are to succede.

Hi,




You're getting close to how I am sometimes. Say...Has anyone taken philosophy and psychology courses in college? There is a common idea where "practical" people often dismiss philosophy because they think it's too vague or uncertain but I've found that sometimes it does indeed alter your perception of the world around you. I think it forces some people to look closer at life. Life isn't just getting up, having a job, and then simply deciding to retire when the day ends. There's more to it. Every action and decision often reflects much about ourselves. For example, within the field of ethics, deciding on the benefits and detriments associated with sharing your moral convictions can be done because it is a more practical choice associated with logic. Simply weigh the pros and cons carefully and you'll be able to make a good decision. Establishing those moral convictions however requires some soul-searching though. This step is much more abstract. Only a small number of people will take the time to carefully evaluate their moral stand on these issues. Their values often reflect their home, school, or religion. Coming to grips with these issues ultimately allows an individual to reach a moral position that's right for them. A position they can ultimately understand and defend.

Oh well...Enough philosophy...

Role playing and spirituality is interesting to me personally. Magic is not only in the game but also in the world. Something that is "magical" can be subjective. To some people, the 'twinkle' of an innocent smile in a child's eye is magical. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Thanks.

I was just thinkig, perhaps American McGee's Alice fits into this topic? It's not an RPG, but it's full of psychological aspects. Could your inner demons be considdered part of spirituality?

i agree with mandrake, handefood, kiya, and who ever else is in with that group. i have my own version of what i think goes on, and all i'll say is that it does not include one single omnipotent being guiding everything.

There is one great fallacy in both, the eternal darkness and the eternal life.
They both demand a continued perception after the death of all senses.
The modern man has to face the ultimate truth in which death is the anti-being.
Understanding consciousness is the core of this dilemma.

i on the other hand, do believe in the single omnipresence being my guide.

back on topic, in malaysia spirituality is very much part of every day life. recently people who are in Taoism celebrated the Hungry Ghosts Festival. it started with the 7 1/2 month of the chinese calendar when hell's gates are supposed 2 open & let loose the spirits for their annual 'leave'(don't know how 2 phrase the chinese word). this is the time when the people of Taoism serve their ancestors by feeding, providing needs(hell's money, paper house & servants) & entertaining them. heck nowadays they entertain them big time by playing movies/operas in front of the ghostly audience! & serving them lavish dinners!

of course there are the hindus, muslims, christians, buddhists, pagans, etc... .

alrik, what do u mean when u said that there's no more spirituality stuff in real life? is this common in your place?

DAD, how's spirituality influence in japan now especially in the urban areas?

in malaysia, we still hold on to our beliefs though the younger ones are losing them due 2 (what i guess) western values that seems 2 have no room for spirituality.

Could you please explain what you mean with this ? I'm used to longer texts by you, so I'm not quite satisfied here ...


I accept Death as a Part of Life, they are both nothing buit two sides of the same medal.

I played Age of Wonders 2 , and I'd suggest that yozu play it too, because the way the game - and the story is built up, it could give you some insights.


Life without Death is not possible, and Death without Life is not possible, too. They are in a way connected to one another that no force is able to split them.

I might mourn for the people I love, but this is not the End.

Apart from a - rather cynical - "the show must go on", I believe that Death is not the End - maybe here, on Earth, but not in a spiritual sense.

I can honour the people by doing what these people stood for - I can keep them in my memory, but this is not the End.

If I don't want to be entangled by unfogotten past - so entangled that it drains life out of my self - then I must learn to let go.

If you listen to the Lyrics of Yes, then you'll find that quite often (especially in the Album "The Ladder") : Letting go makes one free.

Learning to let things go is one os the most difficult tasks one has to learn in the entire life.

Like I said : Here in Germany, we tend to have a rather materialistic point of view. Someone who's openly saying he or she is practising some sort of Spirituality, might be considered .... don't know how to express this, so I'll try it with the word "not repectable" (like Hobbits going on Adventures <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> ).

Spirituality is - except christian church - rather not a part of everyday's life.

Exactly. 1 "western values" (what I call a rather materialisttic point of view) , 2 no room.

For younger ones here, party is more important than spirituality, I guess (and fear).

my guess(a stab in the dark) is that DAD's words meant that death means death of self. err... meaning u lose the sense of who u are, your self(not identity), what's created is uncreated. u go back 2 the viod where u come from. no more alrik. doesn't exist anymore. that is if i read DAD's sentence right.

maybe there is alrik but there is no such being. what's left of anti-being process is what DAD may/will tell us.

& about the last sentence which is connected to the second last sentence may mean (another stab in the dark) consciousness makes us who we are. death means death of consciousness which means loss of everything that makes u U.

hinduism, buddhism, christianity, islam, etc... all have addressed this issue on the sense of self. who are u? what makes u U? why are u here? where are u going/heading? what are your relations to every thing/one that surrounds u?

it all starts from/with 'I AM'.

There is great confusion between the concept of life and the concept of birth.
There is great confusion between the concept of death and the concept of transformation.

Seeds do not literally die but rather transform and in that sense the disappearance of a life form is not real death but an integral phase of life cycles.

It is false to assume life after death but it is valid to assume a variety of life phases.
The Christian religion in which I am quite versed teaches that what we perceive as death is only a change of phase in which a spirit takes off the material body and wears an immaterial body.
This implies that spirits can do things and sense but no where is there any proof of this speculation and no where is an account of senses based on immaterial worlds.

Information is carried through time-space as energy variations demanding a solid material to contain a liquid that contains a gas that contains energy to be modified accordingly and become formations of cognition.

The world of spirituality fails to explain how this could be without contradiction.

Life is one and it is materialistic and in which we may cognitively perceive light and darkness, awareness and dreams.

Death is one and it is immaterial and in which we are no more.

Hi Dad,




I'm just wondering...In regards to spirituality, isn't an out-of-body experience an event where "the essence of who you really are" leaves the body for a short time? Does that prove we don't need a body or are such experiences questionable at best? According to physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. In addition, IIRC, if you decide to split an atom in half and keep doing it, you would find that there is no end to the process. You could keep doing it forever. There is no point in which an atom simply disappears as you keep cutting it in half. It is simply reshaped or maybe becomes smaller and smaller. Thus, the concept of something being no more is kind of questionable if you look at it from this perspective. Perhaps there is a part of us that doesn't die on a deeper level?


Thanks.

DAD, I think I understand what you are saying in your last post. You believe that a being travels through a series of life cycles. You start as an egg or seed, you are conceived, you grow until you are ready to be released onto the world, you mature and age and acquire experiences, then you break down and die. I would agree with that.

But what about the beginning and the end? What gives the egg/seed the sentience? Are we just chemical instinctual beings or do we think in an entirely different fashion? And at the end, why can this sentience not pass into another state, perhaps energy, or perhaps something science is yet to uncover? I believe there exists more dimensions than we can perceive. Could our souls be playing in these extra-sensory dimensions?


I don't quite get that. Why must energy travel in such a specific medium

And also on that, how does energy traverse the vacuum of space? Energy travels in waves, but a wave is essentially a variation, and how can you vary nothing? Some theories include a medium known as "ether". Ether has negligible, if any, mass and volume, hence we do not notice it. But it provides a means for energy waves to travel through otherwise vacant spaces. It would be needed for energy to travel between the atoms of physical substances as well! If souls were energy, could they reside there?

I think you might have the atom confused with something else. An atom is made up of a number of particles: protons, neutrons, and is orbited by electrons. If you need a mental image, think of a bunch of grapes being an atom. You could split an atom into two smaller atoms (break a branch off the grape stalk). Once you have an atom with only one particle left, there's nothing left to split (just one lone grape). If you could split a particle, on the other hand, you might be onto something (wine!). I've heard nothing on splitting particles, though.

In responce to HandEFood:
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But what about the beginning and the end? What gives the egg/seed the sentience?
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The function of the form of course.
A motor becomes a fully functioning motor through form and energy supply.
Sentience is just another function of form and energy.
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Are we just chemical instinctual beings or do we think in an entirely different fashion? And at the end, why can this sentience not pass into another state, perhaps energy, or perhaps something science is yet to uncover? I believe there exists more dimensions than we can perceive. Could our souls be playing in these extra-sensory dimensions?
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I am sorry I do not mix science with fiction, or perhaps I am not really sorry for that. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
If a picture was not solid, then how can it retain what it memorises in space for a long period of time?
When you say that you remember something, if you were gas now what are you after five seconds and where are you and how do you contain rather than being contained?
To build up information relative to a time frame, there must be a solid identity that remains constant during that time frame to contain such information and evolve it.
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<snip>
I don't quite get that. Why must energy travel in such a specific medium.
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Travelling is one thing and standing is another.
If you agree with me that when you listen to a tune composed by Mozart and continue to remember it, then it must have interacted with what stands inside your mind. The form that was information In-Formation had to enter your mind in the form of travelling waves through ears and nerves but to stay must imply standing inside the water vapour of the water of the microtubules of the nervous cells of your brain.
That is what was meant by energy being trapped by gas trapped by liquid trapped by solid (plastic/ elastic) referenced by a bone skeleton/ skull.
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And also on that, how does energy traverse the vacuum of space? Energy travels in waves, but a wave is essentially a variation, and how can you vary nothing? Some theories include a medium known as "ether". Ether has negligible, if any, mass and volume, hence we do not notice it. But it provides a means for energy waves to travel through otherwise vacant spaces. It would be needed for energy to travel between the atoms of physical substances as well! If souls were energy, could they reside there?

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Energy traverses the nano-space between atomic subcomponents as variations in a primedium of primordium.
Primordium is a continuum not a granular medium but primedium may be granular due to the primordial vortexes. The subject is really immense and beyond chat forums so I have to draw a line here.

However, a soul is an abstract concept rather than a material entity. It is like the word table or car because its function depends on form rather than the material forming it. Not all wood is a table and not all tables are wood.
Only through form does a table become. Take its material apart and you should realise that it is not a table any more; burn its would and realise that reconstructing it is practically impossible.
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Cool ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> Can I use this in my Signature ? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/stupid.gif" alt="" />

I find that most people search for Spirituality to find the answer why we are here. So here is my answer


Theire are 11 dimensions. Than a theire is a collision with dimensions and BIG BANG. Universe created. couple of trilion years later some amino acids come in contact with outher goo and bam life.

read more here and here

It's a bit fuzzy but thats how they explainded on a documentary on tv a year ago. manny details gone <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

In response to Lockmar:

I'm just wondering...In regards to spirituality, isn't an out-of-body experience an event where "the essence of who you really are" leaves the body for a short time?

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Ask yourself “who” is experiencing the out of body experience; is it not the mind of that body that feels being outside that body? “Feeling” being outside your body and “being” outside your body is not the same thing.
I can dream to be able to fly and fight dragons in the air, does that make it true?
Please recall the relation between alcoholic spirits and the spirit, which is being a product of mental disorder caused by alcoholic effects on the mind.
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Does that prove we don't need a body or are such experiences questionable at best?
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Indeed you do need a body to be “out of” and without that body being your reference then out of what is that experience being experienced? If it was not the experience of what resides inside the body then why take it as a reference at all? To what rules are we attributing the alleged consistency of a soul being outside a body? What is it that keeps such an imaginary soul together? It is the body out of which we believe to be.
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According to physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. In addition, IIRC, if you decide to split an atom in half and keep doing it, you would find that there is no end to the process. You could keep doing it forever. There is no point in which an atom simply disappears as you keep cutting it in half. It is simply reshaped or maybe becomes smaller and smaller. Thus, the concept of something being no more is kind of questionable if you look at it from this perspective. Perhaps there is a part of us that doesn't die on a deeper level?


Thanks.

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Ah, I see, however if we track the atoms of he who dies we shall realise that they may begin to belong to bacteria, ants, plants and a completely new set of life forms that could in turn die. Which soul at which time can we attribute to those atoms? Only the soul of the living form that functions through being materialised by those atoms may be interrelated. Indeed, neither energy nor matter can be created from nothingness but what is nothingness? In fact, primedium is dynamic by default. One human contains X number of atoms dies and through thousands of years that set is redistributed such that a hundred people and a thousand insect and a million tree may share those atoms. The energy that existed in the original human just dissipates exactly in the same fashion of putting one’s hand on a cold wall. No soul travels from your hand to a wall and turns it alive.
Our consciousness is a function of form referenced by a solid in a frame of time. The disintegration of the form infers the disintegration of the function.
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Goldfish have a memory of a few seconds. They swim around their tank going "Oh look a rock". Its always the same rock, and its always interesting because they dont remember seeing it before. Well, we are the dream they have in between looking at that rock. We dont exist at all, we are just a fragile goldfish dream.

*Eats the goldfish and destoys the universe. Goes off to sleep in the sun* Dont ask, its a cat thing.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/kitty.gif" alt="" />