[davem]

I'm not denying the 'transcendent' experience. I've personally experienced things, met beings, inhabitants of other 'realities' - which I've mentioned before. I've had moments where, for want of a better term, I've glimpsed 'eternity'.

But that's not the argument here. My problem is with the idea of taking a book & simply believing it, of constructing complex theories & fantasies about what happens after we die. From the perspective of eternity there is only 'now' & there will only ever be 'now'. This idea that something wholly 'other' will happen to us after our bodies die, that we have to take account of what we will be or not be after that happens, that we have to do certain things now in order to attain something 'good' then, or that we have to live now in fear of some terrible fate that may await us then, is simply running away from 'now'. In other words this desire/obsession with what happens after we die is what stops us really being alive now.

Belief is 'negative' because it effectively gets between us & reality. We look at the world through 'belief-coloured lenses' & don't see it, experience it, as it really is. It attempts to

classify & quantify the universe, & ends up trying to break it up & force it into pigeon-holes. Hence, with a belief system as dualistic as Christianity (or Islam), which effectively has only two pigeon-holes: 'Good' & 'Evil' you end up trying to force everything into one or the other, & if something will not fit easily into the 'Good' pigeon-hole then it is forced into the 'Evil' one - hence LMP's attempt to account for mythological creatures by assigning their origin to 'fallen Angels' of 'demons'.

As to the 'Choice of Elros' - I think I'd choose mortality too - even if I knew that there was nothing after death.

Anyway...