Richard's comments

Richard's comments from the Faith and Spirituality group.

Note: Richard is no longer a member of this group.

Confusion arises because for me subjective knowing is not belief but is the same as a fact only known to me. If I understand well for you subjective knowing is the same as belief. I think we actually agree but use different words.

There is a huge difference between knowing that one loves another person and "knowing" some ultimate truth...
The only difference between a feeling and some ultimate truth is that the last one is much more subtle, deeper in. But both are subjective knowing, not objective knowledge.

...and what happens when we die, etc.
I agree that is believing. The difference between a feeling and what happens after death is that a feeling is in the present moment, possible to know, and after death is in the future, not existent for us.

...but when one cannot see an apple on the table it is belief? That does not logically follow.
Belief in the sense of assumption. A person can either admit it is unknown or make an assumption. Indeed the word belief is more applicable to matters that cannot be observed.

The name of this group is Faith and Spirituality. To me, these are different things. Faith is close to belief and spirituality is close to deep knowing, to religiousness.

If there is an apple on a table in front of us all and we can see it, I would call that knowledge.

If we can't see the apple, I would call that belief, to believe the apple is on the table or to believe there is no apple.

If, on the other hand, a person loves his girlfriend, he knows the love is there. I would call that knowing. It is truth for him, undoubtable, certainly not a belief. But also not knowledge because it is subjective, inner, not objective, not outer, impossible to prove to others.

I'm glad this group has become active.

... and I felt a great peacefulness and quiet joy each time I picked up the book and read a passage.

That would be one criterion for buying a book. I guess another criterion, besides the book itself, could be the perceived quality of the author.

On his website the author says I see myself as a student on the spiritual path, trying to make sense of life and to find a set of beliefs that will work for me. The way this author sees himself would for me personally be a criterion not to buy the book. He's a student. Is Life a university? Trying to make sense of life. Isn't Life mysterious? To find set of beliefs. Hasn't spirituality to do with a certain inner "knowing", instead of the opposite, believing?

I'm not sure exactly what to think of the process, whether it is true or not. He says "Words unlike those I typically use...". He seems to suggest that something higher wrote the book through him. In my opinion that is not so likely looking at the result.

I have checked the website. The grammar looks O.K. But the contents of what he says does not sound correct to me, compared to what I personally consider as true. Just a small example of what I mean. The title contains the word "lessons". In my view you cannot teach spirituality like you can teach mathematics or history, because it has much more to do with feeling and intuition than with logic and facts. The word "guidebook" seems very strange to me, in my experience there is an inner guide, subjective, impossible to note down into a book applicable for all.

My Way The Way of the White Clouds. It's not that only this specific book shaped my world view, but when I found it in the library I became interested in Osho.
And the total of his many books changed my perspective. For example Beware of socialism Five discourses given at Cross Maidan, Bombay, India, April 13 to 17, 1970 and On Basic Human Rights.