Explain About Getting 'slain In The Spirit' Please

[Antlerman]

So, was there a real external cause of the 'anti-placebo' or is the human mind a lot more powerful in its interactions with the human body than given credit for? THe drug companies thought the latter, and it's hard to debunk what was pretty good science...

Then the question becomes... is the experience that pippa_wonders described a "bad" thing? I mean peyote cultures uses drugs to gain an altered perception on reality, which in turns enhances their experience of life through signs and symbols, etc. So if some "agent" of suggestion creates this phenomenon from the brain, does the source make the experience less "real" or significant? In other words, if the drug company finds that it's the mind that creates it, does that diminish the significance of the result? Should they quit administering drugs because it's not "the truth"? Aren't those things then simply vehicles for experience? And why should the skeptic or the believer both debate it in terms of cause?

[Grandpa Harley]

I don't understand the question.

 

If it's the mind doing it, the it ain't 'God' doing it, since what appears to be the gentle push is to try to get someone to say that maybe the bible god is true... tbh, making people faint, shake, or rattle off gibberish seems a pretty piss poor trick considering they claim it made

 

 

it's illogical on a matter of scale...

[The-Captain]

So, was there a real external cause of the 'anti-placebo' or is the human mind a lot more powerful in its interactions with the human body than given credit for? THe drug companies thought the latter, and it's hard to debunk what was pretty good science...

Then the question becomes... is the experience that pippa_wonders described a "bad" thing? I mean peyote cultures uses drugs to gain an altered perception on reality, which in turns enhances their experience of life through signs and symbols, etc. So if some "agent" of suggestion creates this phenomenon from the brain, does the source make the experience less "real" or significant? In other words, if the drug company finds that it's the mind that creates it, does that diminish the significance of the result? Should they quit administering drugs because it's not "the truth"? Aren't those things then simply vehicles for experience? And why should the skeptic or the believer both debate it in terms of cause?

 

As long as people recognize that it is in fact their mind at work rather than spiritual or divine influence I dont see the problem.

[Grandpa Harley]

They don't.

[Antlerman]

I don't understand the question.

Am I being obtuse? I'm not sure how else to word it. Let me think about phrasing it a different way. It has to do with your citing the drug company results. I agree it comes from the brain, but does that mean it's not a significant experience? I'm not suggesting you're being dismissive. I just want to run this by you for your thoughts. I hear so much emphasis about the "factuality" of these things, that it seems it misses the significance of them, like someone being healed by a placebo, or their mind, rather than the actual chemicals of the drugs. So what if it's not some spirit "moving" on someone, if the symbol evokes the experience. It's the experience that contains "truth" or matters of significance to the person, much like one who is healed by a sugar pill.

 

I guess I'm not sure what my actual question is. Maybe it's just your feedback on these thoughts I'm asking for.

[The-Captain]

They don't.

 

And its annoying as hell, why people have to place so much importance on their collected hallucinations, delusions, and placebo experiences is beyond me.

 

We certainly are unique among natures animals in that we feel the need to place cosmic significance on all our biological peculiarities. Were do people get this overinflated view of our own significance? Personally I see little that makes us so great, not better than other animals just different.

[Antlerman]

So, was there a real external cause of the 'anti-placebo' or is the human mind a lot more powerful in its interactions with the human body than given credit for? THe drug companies thought the latter, and it's hard to debunk what was pretty good science...

Then the question becomes... is the experience that pippa_wonders described a "bad" thing? I mean peyote cultures uses drugs to gain an altered perception on reality, which in turns enhances their experience of life through signs and symbols, etc. So if some "agent" of suggestion creates this phenomenon from the brain, does the source make the experience less "real" or significant? In other words, if the drug company finds that it's the mind that creates it, does that diminish the significance of the result? Should they quit administering drugs because it's not "the truth"? Aren't those things then simply vehicles for experience? And why should the skeptic or the believer both debate it in terms of cause?

 

As long as people recognize that it is in fact their mind at work rather than spiritual or divine influence I dont see the problem.

But the real question is, if you take away the vehicle for this experience by dissecting it on a surgical table, are you taking something away that was can only be effective in your average person using a system of belief: symbols, language, ritual, etc.? Can your average person understand rationally the causes of these things, yet suspend "disbelief" and use the symbols as a vehicle of experience? Or do they need to hold them in a general pot of "truth" for them to work? How many people can ride that line between rational and experiential, whether it's the religious believer, or the rational skeptic?

 

That's really my question.

[Rhia]

i was wondering if there was some other explanation for some of the 'manifestations' i've seen, which didnt look to be faked, where people seem to be under an influence out of their control and not from God. i think its too easy to say its from hysteria. i think saying hysteria is like saying 'i dont know' what it was. maybe we dont know what it was. i've seen people do these things not in any atmosphere of hysteria at all, not in a charged up atmosphere. and heard of people who feel like ligntning bolt has hit them. ok if its hysteria, then what is hysteria exactly? some have suggested mass hypnotism.

 

To answer your question, I will further quote from the undergrad Anthropology textbook: Anthropology of Religion (published by McGraw-Hill), summary of Chapter 5 - Religious Beliefs and Symbols.

 

1) Different social conditions create cause different stresses to be typically experienced by members of each society. One reason for the diversity of religious forms is that religions have characteristics that help their followers cope with the stresses that they commonly experience. So religions tend to differ in different societies and among members of different parts of the same society.

 

2) The feelings aroused by sacred things paradoxically involve both attraction and fear or dread. This allows the religious experience to be a source of psychological catharsis for its participants. Catharsis allows people to discharge the tensions associated with the distressful emotions of fear, guilt, grief, shame, and anger and to replace this distress with a positive emotional experience.

 

3) Trance states are a psychological response to stress. They also play a role in religious rituals. There are two types of religious trances -- spirit possession trances and visionary (or spirit travel) trances. Spirit possession trances are more common in socially stratified than in egalitarian societies. They are also more likely to employ female than male practitioners. In addition, they are also more common in societies in which child socialization stresses the importance of compliance. Visionary trances are more common in nonstratified societies, especially those with foraging, hunting, and simple gardening economies. They are more often practiced by men and in societies in which child rearing stresses self-reliance.

 

4) Dreams are commonly used as a source of knowledge in societies in which males leave home when they marry and live near their wife's families. The reliance on dreams may function to replace the network of support from their kin that men must give up when they marry.

 

5) Religious innovators often experience a hallucinatory trance following a period of social and personal stress. During this trance state, the formulate a new world view that accounts for the problems of their society. This hallucinatory experience has similarities with the reactive schizophrenic process, although they differ in that religious innovators formulate new world views that are meaningful to others within their own societies, while the new ideas of reactive schizophrenics are not likely to seem meaningful to others.

 

6) Research indicates that in western cultures religious people as a group are somewhat more likely to be dogmatic and to show prejudice against other groups than are nonreligious people. Otherwise, religiosity correlates positively with a variety of measures of good mental health and positive social functioning.

 

7) Some of the conditions treated in shamanic curing ceremonies would be classified as mental disorders by western psychiatrists, and shamanic curing practices have some similarities with western psychotherapies.

 

8) The psychological functions of religion include helping people to (1) make sense out of parts of their environment that they cannot explain in nonreligious terms, (2) to overcome indecisiveness and emotional distress, and (3) to be motivated to cooperate with others when the nonreligious rewards for doing so are not great enough to have the same effect.

 

Hope this helps make more sense out of why it can seem "so real". I don't agree with all of this personally, but I think it's a good basis of explaining trances and other phenomenon.

[SWIM]

It's definitely delusion, it's kinda like rolling catnip, giving someone a joint of it (while you are red-eye stoned on real pot) and proclaiming :This is the greatest weed in the world!" If the person believes you, trusts you, and is all excited about it they *will* get stoned, red eyes and all, I have done this to someone before as a practical joke.

 

Mass hypnosis, mass hysteria, or just the power of suggestion, it's ALL in their head. No demons or gods smackin em around imo.

[The-Captain]

So, was there a real external cause of the 'anti-placebo' or is the human mind a lot more powerful in its interactions with the human body than given credit for? THe drug companies thought the latter, and it's hard to debunk what was pretty good science...

Then the question becomes... is the experience that pippa_wonders described a "bad" thing? I mean peyote cultures uses drugs to gain an altered perception on reality, which in turns enhances their experience of life through signs and symbols, etc. So if some "agent" of suggestion creates this phenomenon from the brain, does the source make the experience less "real" or significant? In other words, if the drug company finds that it's the mind that creates it, does that diminish the significance of the result? Should they quit administering drugs because it's not "the truth"? Aren't those things then simply vehicles for experience? And why should the skeptic or the believer both debate it in terms of cause?

 

As long as people recognize that it is in fact their mind at work rather than spiritual or divine influence I dont see the problem.

But the real question is, if you take away the vehicle for this experience by dissecting it on a surgical table, are you taking something away that was can only be effective in your average person using a system of belief: symbols, language, ritual, etc.? Can your average person understand rationally the causes of these things, yet suspend "disbelief" and use the symbols as a vehicle of experience? Or do they need to hold them in a general pot of "truth" for them to work? How many people can ride that line between rational and experiential, whether it's the religious believer, or the rational skeptic?

 

That's really my question.

 

Im not sure, but I would say that as long as the experience is real why wrap it in self-deceptive ritual and language? Yes something may be lost, but in my opinion if something cant exist w/o the haze of mysticism and its own protective nomenclature then perhaps it need not exist. Again, Im not really sure I would like to hear your opinion.

[Antlerman]

But the real question is, if you take away the vehicle for this experience by dissecting it on a surgical table, are you taking something away that was can only be effective in your average person using a system of belief: symbols, language, ritual, etc.? Can your average person understand rationally the causes of these things, yet suspend "disbelief" and use the symbols as a vehicle of experience? Or do they need to hold them in a general pot of "truth" for them to work? How many people can ride that line between rational and experiential, whether it's the religious believer, or the rational skeptic?

 

That's really my question.

 

I’m not sure, but I would say that as long as the experience is real why wrap it in self-deceptive ritual and language? Yes something may be lost, but in my opinion if something can’t exist w/o the haze of mysticism and its own protective nomenclature then perhaps it need not exist. Again, I’m not really sure I would like to hear your opinion.

What if this system of symbolism and ritual (not what I would per se call self-deceptive), is the most effective way to achieve this state for your average person? In other words, people need vehicles to get them to that place and without them, they never see more than the mundane things of life? In other words, without some vehicle of communication, in this case using myth signs, would what they point to ever register with them in any sort of significant way? Think of even secular philosophies. How much have you ever studied the works of Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche? Yet, I guarantee you, you know their philosophies. How? It's communicated to you through our culture which has been shaped by many of these concepts. They come to you through movies, the characters, the story lines, the values, the language; it's in the music, it's in the advertising, etc, etc, etc. It's all myth systems. People become so saturated with them, to them it is "common sense". It's "truth". It seems self-evident.

 

Also, don't kid yourself. We are ritualistic in our society all the time with systems of belief, secular or otherwise. It's a means of personalizing the message of the system into ones' behavior patterns. It helps to program us. It's not a religious thing. It's a human thing.

 

So I guess I should ask, can someone attain this experience through another system? Perhaps, but would it carry the same significance? It's all the symbolisms that add weight to it. Symbols are vessels of information. They are neither true nor false as actual things. They are not the things that they communicate. If I show you an American Flag, what do you see? A piece of colored cloth? Doubtful. You see messages. You see significance. You feel emotional content. It could be one of pride, of loyalty, of unity, etc. Or it could be one of anger, disdain, sadness, etc, depending on your point of perspective. In other words, it is just a piece of cloth. That's the fact about it. But is it? No way! It's a symbol. And with that it becomes a means to communicate. Same thing with Jesus, the cross, various spirit beings, Kali, Krishna, etc, etc, etc.

 

How quickly can you communicate all these things in words, versus as symbol? I'll bet on the symbol beating you to the punch.

 

Ok, I'll leave there for now. Hope this makes some degree of sense.

[The-Captain]

What if this system of symbolism and ritual (not what I would per se call self-deceptive), is the most effective way to achieve this state for your average person? In other words, people need vehicles to get them to that place and without them, they never see more than the mundane things of life? In other words, without some vehicle of communication, in this case using myth signs, would what they point to ever register with them in any sort of significant way? Think of even secular philosophies. How much have you ever studied the works of Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche? Yet, I guarantee you, you know their philosophies. How? It's communicated to you through our culture which has been shaped by many of these concepts. They come to you through movies, the characters, the story lines, the values, the language; it's in the music, it's in the advertising, etc, etc, etc. It's all myth systems. People become so saturated with them, to them it is "common sense". It's "truth". It seems self-evident.

 

Also, don't kid yourself. We are ritualistic in our society all the time with systems of belief, secular or otherwise. It's a means of personalizing the message of the system into ones' behavior patterns. It helps to program us. It's not a religious thing. It's a human thing.

 

So I guess I should ask, can someone attain this experience through another system? Perhaps, but would it carry the same significance? It's all the symbolisms that add weight to it. Symbols are vessels of information. They are neither true nor false as actual things. They are not the things that they communicate. If I show you an American Flag, what do you see? A piece of colored cloth? Doubtful. You see messages. You see significance. You feel emotional content. It could be one of pride, of loyalty, of unity, etc. Or it could be one of anger, disdain, sadness, etc, depending on your point of perspective. In other words, it is just a piece of cloth. That's the fact about it. But is it? No way! It's a symbol. And with that it becomes a means to communicate. Same thing with Jesus, the cross, various spirit beings, Kali, Krishna, etc, etc, etc.

 

How quickly can you communicate all these things in words, versus as symbol? I'll bet on the symbol beating you to the punch.

 

Ok, I'll leave there for now. Hope this makes some degree of sense.

 

But if we can understand what the symbol communicates do we need the symbol anymore? Im thinking simplisticly but I would think that if the meaning behind ritual and symbols can be seen the ritual is no longer needed. Symbolic communication seems like an invitation for misunderstanding as a symbol can communicate/be interpreted as things not necessarily intended.

 

I dont know, Ive always fancied myself an iconoclast, maybe I just use different symbols. I think I take issue with the things people try to communicate with myth systems, not the method itself necessarily

[ogilvy]

I don't understand the question.

 

If it's the mind doing it, the it ain't 'God' doing it, since what appears to be the gentle push is to try to get someone to say that maybe the bible god is true... tbh, making people faint, shake, or rattle off gibberish seems a pretty piss poor trick considering they claim it made

 

 

it's illogical on a matter of scale...

just for the record, i myself no way think the fainting, shaking or gibberish is from the bible God. i always thought if it wasnt faked, it was from the devil. now i dont know what its from. maybe theres another god doing it, or another force. now i dont believe in the bible God, i guess that means i dont believe in the devil either. dunno what i believe right now, really.

[Grandpa Harley]

I don't understand the question.

Am I being obtuse? I'm not sure how else to word it. Let me think about phrasing it a different way. It has to do with your citing the drug company results. I agree it comes from the brain, but does that mean it's not a significant experience? I'm not suggesting you're being dismissive. I just want to run this by you for your thoughts. I hear so much emphasis about the "factuality" of these things, that it seems it misses the significance of them, like someone being healed by a placebo, or their mind, rather than the actual chemicals of the drugs. So what if it's not some spirit "moving" on someone, if the symbol evokes the experience. It's the experience that contains "truth" or matters of significance to the person, much like one who is healed by a sugar pill.

 

I guess I'm not sure what my actual question is. Maybe it's just your feedback on these thoughts I'm asking for.

 

Ah right, I see...

 

The tone was more of a pre-emptive against the OTHER end of the spectrum here, who will tear you a new arse hole for daring to suggest the placebo effect is real, long lasting effect. Thus the emphases on 'Drug Company' (although based on my personal researches, most Drug Companies are bastions of twisting scientific method until it shows what they wanted it to show... bit like the JREF lot who pile on protocols until you can't even get the 'control' to react to a poison...cf the Nova Homoeopathy Debunking Experiment) Look upon it as a defence against the zealots from the 'Skeptic' camp...

 

Now I've said Homoeopathy the vultures will gather... and generally squawk the sayings of Carl Sagan, just with out the wit or rigour the late Doctor had... I always feel that sort pollute his memory...

[Grandpa Harley]

But the real question is, if you take away the vehicle for this experience by dissecting it on a surgical table, are you taking something away that was can only be effective in your average person using a system of belief: symbols, language, ritual, etc.? Can your average person understand rationally the causes of these things, yet suspend "disbelief" and use the symbols as a vehicle of experience? Or do they need to hold them in a general pot of "truth" for them to work? How many people can ride that line between rational and experiential, whether it's the religious believer, or the rational skeptic?

 

That's really my question.

 

I’m not sure, but I would say that as long as the experience is real why wrap it in self-deceptive ritual and language? Yes something may be lost, but in my opinion if something can’t exist w/o the haze of mysticism and its own protective nomenclature then perhaps it need not exist. Again, I’m not really sure I would like to hear your opinion.

What if this system of symbolism and ritual (not what I would per se call self-deceptive), is the most effective way to achieve this state for your average person? In other words, people need vehicles to get them to that place and without them, they never see more than the mundane things of life? In other words, without some vehicle of communication, in this case using myth signs, would what they point to ever register with them in any sort of significant way? Think of even secular philosophies. How much have you ever studied the works of Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche? Yet, I guarantee you, you know their philosophies. How? It's communicated to you through our culture which has been shaped by many of these concepts. They come to you through movies, the characters, the story lines, the values, the language; it's in the music, it's in the advertising, etc, etc, etc. It's all myth systems. People become so saturated with them, to them it is "common sense". It's "truth". It seems self-evident.

 

Also, don't kid yourself. We are ritualistic in our society all the time with systems of belief, secular or otherwise. It's a means of personalizing the message of the system into ones' behavior patterns. It helps to program us. It's not a religious thing. It's a human thing.

 

So I guess I should ask, can someone attain this experience through another system? Perhaps, but would it carry the same significance? It's all the symbolisms that add weight to it. Symbols are vessels of information. They are neither true nor false as actual things. They are not the things that they communicate. If I show you an American Flag, what do you see? A piece of colored cloth? Doubtful. You see messages. You see significance. You feel emotional content. It could be one of pride, of loyalty, of unity, etc. Or it could be one of anger, disdain, sadness, etc, depending on your point of perspective. In other words, it is just a piece of cloth. That's the fact about it. But is it? No way! It's a symbol. And with that it becomes a means to communicate. Same thing with Jesus, the cross, various spirit beings, Kali, Krishna, etc, etc, etc.

 

How quickly can you communicate all these things in words, versus as symbol? I'll bet on the symbol beating you to the punch.

 

Ok, I'll leave there for now. Hope this makes some degree of sense.

 

I was trying to point this up earlier in the thread with my Shaman comments... there has to be a gate way to what I call Jung-space, be it peyote, a sweat lodge, or a Nuremberg rally by torch light...

[Grandpa Harley]

 

it's illogical on a matter of scale...

just for the record, i myself no way think the fainting, shaking or gibberish is from the bible God. i always thought if it wasnt faked, it was from the devil. now i dont know what its from. maybe theres another god doing it, or another force. now i dont believe in the bible God, i guess that means i dont believe in the devil either. dunno what i believe right now, really.

 

I see, thanks for the clarifications. I've left the picture for a reason... basically, if the devil was an adversary who could hold his own against the being that created an artefact of the scale in the picture then it's unlikely that he's going to take a lot of interest in the bald apes who live Here

 

[Antlerman]

But if we can understand what the symbol communicates do we need the symbol anymore?

No. But that's hugely conditional. That point of moving beyond the use of signs to that state of full awareness is often called attaining enlightenment. Personally, I believe it is a misnomer that rationality is considered enlightenment. Even the concepts of science are in forms and symbols. Grandpa posted a Hubble Deep Field image above. What did that communicate? What did he say it meant?

 

"I've left the picture for a reason... basically, if the devil was an adversary who could hold his own against the being that created an artefact of the scale in the picture then it's unlikely that he's going to take a lot of interest in the bald apes who live Here."

 

We communicate with symbols all the time. What you and probably most people wrestle with is that one particular symbol has become outgrown. That's the problem with a lot of religious symbols. What's happening today in a modern world of scientific discovery, we're speaking of the world in a different language, and symbols of gods on thrones don't fit our new perspectives on the world. Yet, science and rationality is being communicated using a new system of signs and symbols. E=MC2 is in fact a myth sign, in how it functions in communicating a whole plethora of ideas, in this case modern ones. It's not just a math formula. Where it once was Jesus with a halo and stars around his head, it's now signs like the face of Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking, or moving out of science images of family life communicate social ideals, etc.

 

Yet it seems the struggle is in competing sets of symbols. Clearly, science has the corner on cosmology, yet it fails as a system of signs for people to lay their personal sense of the "ineffable" on it very well. Granted some can, and I would consider myself one - in part, but it's not a readily accessible system of icons that people can relate to. Where's its symbols of, say "hope"? Where's its symbols of 'faith'? Where are its symbols of love, family, promise, peace, community, happiness, fulfillment, joy, etc? Our current culture has been programmed through these symbols connected with religion that have come down to us through countless generations, so much so that I feel it to have actually affected our biological evolution through what's known as a 'bio-cultural feedback loop'.

 

What is religion really, but a system of beliefs. By that I mean it's a system on which belief can operate. Beliefs are taught, shared, and experienced through the agents of symbols. In this sense, yes science too is a belief system. But can our culture so rapidly find a cohesive system of belief for all aspects of human life? Can science replace religion? I seriously doubt that, and would say no.

 

But to your basic question, can we get rid of the symbol once we know what it means? I would answer, only once what it means is not just recognized, but integrated fully into the persons essence. Otherwise, we are still left trying to find a means to access it, and that comes through agents of communication, so to speak. I just had this thought using Biblical language, "There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." If someone has in fact become "reconciled to God" so to speak, then there is no longer a need for the mediator, or the symbol. This is what I would call enlightenment where symbols are no longer necessary.

 

Long winded, but I'm just working out some thoughts here.

 

Symbolic communication seems like an invitation for misunderstanding as a symbol can communicate/be interpreted as things not necessarily intended.

That's a very powerful fact. Again, everything we communicate with others and even ourselves is through symbolic communication. But where the true evil lies is in using the signs as literal devices. Literalism, Institutionalization kills the dynamic of the language in it's ability to communicate. Myths are living things and the moment they are made into doctrine and dogma, they fail to be a source of living signs of language, and become devices of control and death. Think in terms of linguistic purists. Language is always evolving and adapting it to serve the culture. Religious symbols are in fact a language system. They became what they are because they evolved as any language does. But the moment any language is protected by the word police, so to speak, it soon finds itself no longer working for people and it becomes abandoned for a new language system. Next thing you know it becomes a dead language.

 

This is identical to what I'm talking about in the comments before this. Can a religious symbol serve people? Sure, but only so long as it is their symbol and not the church's. People create language for a purpose, to serve them in life. People create God for the very same reason.

 

I dont know, Ive always fancied myself an iconoclast, maybe I just use different symbols.

Iconoclasts are themselves using symbols, chiefly the symbol of a defaced icon.

 

I think I take issue with the things people try to communicate with myth systems, not the method itself necessarily

Agreed.

[Grandpa Harley]

Yep... if we that away symbols, then writing becomes a collection of meaningless dark scratches on paper...

[The-Captain]

Makes sense

[Ouroboros]

Language is in itself a complex system of symbols. The words represent the world. If we make away with symbols, we'd have no science (Quantum Chromodynamics - does it really have anything to do with colors?), and no art, literature, math, music, philosophy... nothing. I was going to say animals live a symbol free life, but that is not true. Dogs have body signs and different barks to tell things. So they use the tools to represent something. Symbols carry a message, and the only symbol free part is your understanding of it (or misunderstanding).

[Antlerman]

Language is in itself a complex system of symbols. The words represent the world. If we make away with symbols, we'd have no science (Quantum Chromodynamics - does it really have anything to do with colors?), and no art, literature, math, music, philosophy... nothing. I was going to say animals live a symbol free life, but that is not true. Dogs have body signs and different barks to tell things. So they use the tools to represent something. Symbols carry a message, and the only symbol free part is your understanding of it (or misunderstanding).

Now take what you've said and apply it to archetypes. We (or animals in general) do not think in details. We do not look at a person and see every pore on the face, every hair on their head, every stone at the feet, etc. Our brains are capable of taking in that much information, but we are incapable of processing it and still function in the world. We would be unable to know how to relate to it and understand how to interact with it. So when we see another person before us, we generalize. We have symbols we use to represent them. We don't see the person, we see an archetype in our mind.

 

So it is hardly a "delusion" that we create religious symbols to relate to the more ethereal aspects of our cognitions. It's simply an extension of how we think, how we've been programmed biologically to function. This is where art and poetry also step in. Beauty is hardly some "testable" thing that we can examine. We respond to what's before us on an aesthetic level, and how do we in turn communicate this to ourselves and others? What sort of representative language works? Archetypes again, in the form of myth figures. For me music is a vehicle of "transcendent" thought. But it's difficult to take that form and talk beyond just raw experience. It doesn't communicate say, a value system with it.

 

It appears we are hardwired to think like this. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to socialize.

[Ouroboros]

Agree.

[sojourner]

Enjoyed reading the posts on symbolism and language, nice

 

I love how Antlerman points to what is most real and powerful, not the symbol but what the symbols affects are within the person. And how once we grasp that and put it in practice we no longer need the symbol.

 

 

 

sojourner

[Ouroboros]

Dogmatism and serious problems with religion arise when symbols become more important than their meanings.

[jchpiper]

Chewy stuff.

 

I admit, I haven't read the beginning few pages of this thread...only the last few regarding communication/language/symbolism, etc.

 

A few of my snippet thoughts (for what they're worth):

 

******************************************

 

Regarding the effects of symbolism and placebos:

 

Sometimes taking away the symbol kills a person's dream/hope. The person must be able to handle what that symbol has accomplished for them, put it in its proper perspective, to be able to release it and yet still hold on to hope. Hope is a good thing, proven so. It helps our outlook, helps intuitive flow for problem solving, helps the immune system. I guess one could call hope a placebo; but even placebos produce chemical responses in the body's systems.

 

I know there are lots of books about the mind/body connection. A couple good books (imo) that anyone can understand regarding placebo and hope (and anyone dealing with chronic illness) :

 

Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient by Norman Cousins

 

Head First : The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit by Norman Cousins

 

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywor...ooks&page=1

 

*******************************************

 

The "average person":

 

I read the term "average person" in some of the posts on this thread. Due to my experiences with and even the social/religious history of self/field expert-appointed superiors, part of me winces and shutters when I read "average person."

 

Yet with the sentence I just typed is an example of what is partly being discussed in these recent posts; ie: communication, understanding intent, recognizing the limitation of the symbolism (words in this case), the limitation of communicating via writing, not to mention...online communication. Therefore I must recognize my ingrained response of the shutter/wince as just that....my response. I must look at the context the "average person" statement is used in along with the heart, the intent and what is trying to be communicated.

 

OTOH, are we not all average at some levels and more experienced at others?

 

I have read (as far as placebo effect), that it is not the unintelligent (or necessarily average person) who respond to the placebo effect; but quite the opposite. Some of that is discussed in Cousins' books linked above...and some in other mind/body connection studies.

 

I also think of the different types of intelligence - emotional, mental, heart, musical, intrapersonal, linguistic, etc.

 

I don't know if was Emerson or Thoreau who stated something like: Every man is my superior in some way; in that I learn of him.

 

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Then I got to thinking about literalism.

 

Young children are literalists. For me to communicate with them I have to listen and think differently. That's as good as I can articulate it at the moment.

 

On the heels of that thought came the thought, what about adults that are literalists; have they not grown up?

Well hell, what an arrogant thought. lol

Who am I to think that just because I do not generally think in a literalist fashion, I am more advanced than they? Does not each have his/her place in the macrocosm?

 

Next I got to thinking about anytime I listen to anyone of any age from any culture, should I not endeavor to listen to them from their perspective, to put myself in the other person's moccasins? Dare I say, even to stoop so low (from my more advanced understanding :wink:) as to use their vocabulary in order to communicate with them? Perhaps then, they might give ear to what I have to share?

 

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Well, those are some ramblings....I don't know if they really contribute to what's being discussed....