Comment by PhantomBKB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PhantomBKB | Hacker News Reader

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Here's one:

https://www.unexplainable.net/info-theories/mahavatar-babaji...

But really, you might think living a 1000 years is extraordinary, however, the soul (or the life we have in each of us, including you and me) is immortal. When we die, it's simply the body that is discarded. But life itself never perishes. The soul takes multiple births in new bodies and this process of life and death goes on and on until the soul merges with the supreme conciousness. So what's the proof for all this? Well, there's nothing to prove it as false either.

Modern science disregards things that it cannot experience and "see the proof of" for itself. But that's like a person who lacks sensual perceptions saying stimuli that interacts with their senses does not exist. For example, if a blind person says light does not exist or a deaf person says sound does not exist. They might even deny its existence despite you telling them otherwise, that's because they cannot experience it for themselves. So who's to blame them?

Similarly, we are kept from higher understanding due to our inability to experience. That does not mean it does not exist. It simply means we are incapable.

There are many fantastic things in this universe that science knows it cannot understand and even more things that science does not even know exist.

I forgot to address this:

> Here's one:

> https://www.unexplainable.net/info-theories/mahavatar-babaji...

Sorry but that blogpost doesn't qualify as "evidence" to me. There's no verifiable facts. All that it offers is "someone said they have seen them" and at the end it mentions "some people have seen a weird man on the Himalayas". No pictures, not even a real name.

That puts this immortal yogi on the same evidence level of as the Yeti (also believed to live somewhere in the Himalayas), the Bigfoot, or the Rip van Winkle (a guy who allegedly slept for 20 years, although his original story is definitively a made-up story).

Science keeps advancing. We used to think that the Sun went around Earth, and it was a God (Ra, Helios). Then Science came and put the Sun in its current place. We used to think that illness was produced by demons. And then we discovered the microscope, germs and vaccines.

Science keeps taking over more and more of what used to be “attributed to the gods”. Religion keeps losing ground. It’s only natural that religious people feel the need to attack (with logic platitudes- science has never claimed to be able to explain everything)

There will always be people who say that the gods talk to them. It’s a trick as old as the world. A way to gain power, notoriety, or a sense of importance.

The way I see it, when someone makes a discovery in a laboratory (a real discovery, the kind that takes years to produce) then that’s a real manifestation of the Universe understanding itself.

You are right about religion, but what I am talking about is spirituality. Here's the definition for better clarity: the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Modern science stays away from this space for whatever reason, but isn't this just another kind of science like the study of cosmos or microbes? It is a very important facet of life, which dwells into questions such as the meaning of life, what happens after death, when does life enter into a mother's womb, etc. All these questions are of scientific nature.

However, to address these questions we cannot simply break open or dissect things to understand how they work. Naturally, because these questions do not deal with the material world. To understand such phenomenon, one should first understand the subtlety of the soul.

The breathing techniques or pranayama that this thread was originally about deals with yoga. Pranayama is a part of yogic teachings. Yoga is a sanskrit word which means the union of mind and body. The union that the word yoga is referring to is that of uniting individual consciousness (our individual experience of reality) with Divine consciousness (the essence of truth as perceived when we quiet our five senses and reconnect with the Supreme Self within)[1].

So it's not just breathing, or stretching your muscles as it is usually portrayed as. There's a far deeper subtlety in it which is better kept undisturbed from experimentation without having knowledge of the subtler entities.

> ...when someone makes a discovery in a laboratory (a real discovery, the kind that takes years to produce) then that’s a real manifestation of the Universe understanding itself.

That's true as well, but there are yet discoveries to be made by understanding the nature of the "self". Something that involves looking within rather than outside in the material world.

[1]: https://www.yogapedia.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-yoga/2...

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