Exploring Buddhism

[Ellinas]

 

 

 

 

Idk. I've been struggling with meditation as of late. I sometimes wonder if I have turned to this to 'replace' what I miss about prayer from Christianity.

:/

There's nothing wrong with using it as an alternative to prayer, recognizing that it has a different purpose. The difference is that we never get anything out of prayer, while meditation will give you benefits. Just keep doing it, work through it. Sometimes our subconscious tries to stop us before a breakthrough.

 

That's true, I guess. But, I just have been wondering lately, why my atheist friends (who have been atheists all of their lives, never were raised in religion, etc) seem so content, not meditating, not searching for anything. Why isn't atheism enough for me. That's something for me to ponder, I guess.

 

Atheism isn't enough for me, either. I need the spiritual. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with us.

 

But, how can one not believe in a deity, yet be 'spiritual?' You know?

 

 

Very easily.

 

Your spiritual life need be nothing more than an alternative terminology for your "inner", "thought" or "psychological" life.  I have no doubt that atheists can be very interested (and rightly so) in exploring their own psyches.

[Deva]

There is no need for a deity to have a spiritual life.  I just say, look within, and I cannot say what form of meditation can help, but it is there, the core, the inner being, where there is no deity. necessary.

 

I think the more words to describe meditation, the less it is real for me.  And, I have never seen any book or tape on meditation that really works for me. Not to discourage anyone, but find you own way.  It is discoverable.

[Deidre]

 

 

 

 

 

Idk. I've been struggling with meditation as of late. I sometimes wonder if I have turned to this to 'replace' what I miss about prayer from Christianity.

:/

There's nothing wrong with using it as an alternative to prayer, recognizing that it has a different purpose. The difference is that we never get anything out of prayer, while meditation will give you benefits. Just keep doing it, work through it. Sometimes our subconscious tries to stop us before a breakthrough.

 

That's true, I guess. But, I just have been wondering lately, why my atheist friends (who have been atheists all of their lives, never were raised in religion, etc) seem so content, not meditating, not searching for anything. Why isn't atheism enough for me. That's something for me to ponder, I guess.

 

Atheism isn't enough for me, either. I need the spiritual. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with us.

 

But, how can one not believe in a deity, yet be 'spiritual?' You know?

 

You can. Here's a podcast on it: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/sam_harris_seeking_transcendence_without_religion/

 

thank you for this, i'll listen later today.

 

 

 

 

 

Very easily.

 

Your spiritual life need be nothing more than an alternative terminology for your "inner", "thought" or "psychological" life.  I have no doubt that atheists can be very interested (and rightly so) in exploring their own psyches.

I've never viewed spirituality in those terms. Perhaps, my definition is too rigid, and I tend to coincide spirituality, the term itself, with religion. I know they are different or can be different, but sometimes, I blur the two.

 

Here's the thing, if this helps to understand my sentiments a bit. When I was a Christian, I looked forward to my set-aside prayer time. I would pray throughout my day, but there was time that I set aside, to pray...say 30 minutes or so. Sometimes, it felt like meditation. That said, as of late, I don't look forward to meditating now, in fact, there are times it's a drudgery, and I skip it. Idk.

 

Maybe I need to just stick with it, and give it time. Be patient with the process, so to speak.

[Deidre]

There is no need for a deity to have a spiritual life.  I just say, look within, and I cannot say what form of meditation can help, but it is there, the core, the inner being, where there is no deity. necessary.

 

I think the more words to describe meditation, the less it is real for me.  And, I have never seen any book or tape on meditation that really works for me. Not to discourage anyone, but find you own way.  It is discoverable.

I'm grateful for the different thoughts to all of this, as we are all different. At times, I feel like this odd ball, but you saying it's discoverable is comforting.

 

Thank you, Deva.

[Ellinas]

Yes - be patient.  Also innovative - try alternatives or even see if you can make up your own method.

 

Also, don't force it.  This needs to be something you want to do.  If it's a drudgery, that suggests you're forcing yourself into a method that is not resonating with you.

 

Bottom line, what allows you to relax and your mind to see things most clearly?  That's a good starting point.

[Antlerman]

I just had to jump in here and say I'm a self-taught musician, too! I spent my wild youth in a rock band, which you can see here. I'm the female bass player/vocals. Sorry for the brief de-rail :-)

Pretty cool. Pretty 90's! Well, here's what I was doing in the 90's musically. http://www.talkingtimeline.com/music/

 

The description field on the right scrolls down as I talk a bit about the songs. The stuff I'm doing today takes the 'soul' of that, and goes a few million miles further. That's what a friend of mine who knew back on that musical project I did in studio said against what I'm doing today. Today it's far less structured form wise, and takes the heart of it and lets it just emerge into purely expressive form. I just need to get some decent recording equipment of my own, as it's hard to do this in studio.

 

Actually, listening to that album again now since I shared it here, it's not that bad. Most of it is pretty timeless, and quite good for what I was trying to say back then. The Dawn is quite nice. It was my fetal me, reaching to awaken to Life. Man, this brings me back!

[Deidre]

Yes - be patient.  Also innovative - try alternatives or even see if you can make up your own method.

 

Also, don't force it.  This needs to be something you want to do.  If it's a drudgery, that suggests you're forcing yourself into a method that is not resonating with you.

 

Bottom line, what allows you to relax and your mind to see things most clearly?  That's a good starting point.

Thanks for this. I'm letting it go for now.

It's not for me. And it feels a bit theistic. That's the problem I have with most spiritual paths. :/

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the exchange. Good luck with wherever your paths may lead.

[Antlerman]

You're done, just like that? It felt too theistic for you? The point of meditation is to realize yourself, not a deity. The path may or may not include deities on the way, depending on one's way of approach. I would hate to see you pull back so quickly before you work through things, but I understand. It's your path.

[Deidre]

I appreciate your help, Antlerman. I wish you well on your own path.

[Antlerman]

Sometimes our subconscious tries to stop us before a breakthrough.

I think you nailed it right here.

[Deva]

 

Yes - be patient.  Also innovative - try alternatives or even see if you can make up your own method.

 

Also, don't force it.  This needs to be something you want to do.  If it's a drudgery, that suggests you're forcing yourself into a method that is not resonating with you.

 

Bottom line, what allows you to relax and your mind to see things most clearly?  That's a good starting point.

Thanks for this. I'm letting it go for now.

It's not for me. And it feels a bit theistic. That's the problem I have with most spiritual paths. :/

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the exchange. Good luck with wherever your paths may lead.

 

 

Sorry to see you go, but I can certainly understand it.  Formal sit down meditation is not for everyone.  I believe in some cases it can be harmful.

 

As far as stress at work goes, sometimes the only thing you can do is find another job.  I made the mistake of staying in a horrible place for two years instead of just leaving - because I was scared and also because of my pride.  I was fired anyway. 

[Antlerman]

I know that's not what you are saying, but I think it bears making the distinction I just did. There is always a physiological correlate to all phenomenal experience. But that doesn't mean it's not based in reality! We experience the transcendent in all sorts of ways. And to me the fact that it shows up in the brain should tell us it's not fictional at all. But it doesn't mean the symbolism one uses to identify this in such experiences are scientifical, objectively real. This gets really deep from here, and of course I love going down into that rabbit hole!

 

That rabbit hole is exactly where my interests lie. Curiouser and curiouser, lol.

 

"And to me the fact that it shows up in the brain should tell us it's not fictional at all."

 

I think an exploration of this would make a fascinating thread. I am fascinated by neurology and consciousness, and altered states.

Here's a good link on a brain researcher who worked with the scientist who developed the "God helmet" that can induce the experience of God in people. He explores what goes on in the brain and I think you will find its the same thing that meditation does, reducing the language centers and allowing the non-verbal to rise, etc. This goes into why meditation is allowing the subconscious mind to come into awareness the way it does, and so forth. It has nothing to do with making pronouncements about God, but goes instead into what practitioners experience and why. He does say this, that whatever that is, it changes people profoundly, and that is something most people would benefit from. It's a bit long, but worth the viewing:

 

As far as comparisons of prayer and meditation goes, since I didn't get to weigh in on that, of course it's similar. It is focused intention. The difference between your traditional Christian prayer and meditation is that traditional prayer is largely petitionary, asking an outside deity for a favor. But contemplative prayer is one of entering into interior silence. Even petitionary prayer can have some value depending on the level of intention on puts forth from themselves, as that now crosses over from the separate ego over here seeking the divine over there, to moving the ego and the divine closer together, where self-identification begins to shift - where you enter into states of communion or oneness. So in meditation as one moves into that state of connection with Ground Consciousness within themselves, I can certainly see why it feels like the same sort of thing from ones traditional past. It 'feels" theistic - because we associated That within us symbolically with "God" "out there". That's it in a nutshell.

 

The way I look at this however is the other way around. It's not that I'm reconnecting with that God of theology, but realizing it was me all along! You were there with your intention then as well. That's huge, and liberating. Pulling back in the face of this is in fact that fear of the Abyss within ourselves, that existential dread. To me, whenever that pulling back, those days where I begin to avoid meditation is a good sign. It means I'm about to peel back another layer of that onion to some deeper connection and realization in myself. I'm putting up my own obstacles because I fear that of myself I'm not yet intimately aware of. I put the face of fear on it. It happens all the time. And every time I face it and step through that door, it's safe, and liberating to the conscious mind. The subconscious in us has already figured all this out. It's just simply a matter of trust, or 'faith', and opening to that in us.

 

Oh yes, this sounds a lot like what religions say. And why shouldn't it since it's human beings like all of us who have discovered these truths in themselves? Just because they use mythological symbols to express it does not invalidate it. It's the literalization, the externalization of these symbols as magical beings out there who do things for us that removes the realization of what they do symbolically for us. If they are archetypical, they work. If they are not, it only reinforces our separation with ourselves, and we end up in neurotic dissociation, seeing substitutes for Self realization, turning prayer in magic formula that does the work for us, turning the spiritual into the religious.

 

Then at a certain point, when we go deeply enough within, if we started with deity forms as part of our tradition (not all traditions have these), we end up moving beyond them and as I put it "heaven dissolves". The higher form, whatever form that takes, the light of the universe, God, Buddha, whatever, dissolves into us and there is no more God. We move beyond God, or any separate higher self. At the highest realizations, it is atheistic, in that sense. There is no God out there or up there, as it is all within you. Does God have a God? If you are God, then where is God? That is that Abyss we fear. The dissolution of all separateness. There is no self-reliance on the ego, there is no reliance on ones higher power, whatever form that may be. You have passed through that veil of the terror of our self-dissolution into liberation, freedom, enlightenment. There is nothing there. No God, no self. You are alone. But that aloneness engulfs all that is, and you are free within it.

 

So it is of little surprise that someone encounters that sense of God in meditation if that is how they understood it before. But does that mean one is reverting to mythological thought, abandoning reason and rationality into prerational thought? Most definitely not. One just changes ones relationship to that with a better, more evolved sensibility. Not one that dismisses its validity as "just the brain", but one which comfortable integrates higher reasoning into these non-rational domains. Even a mythic believer knows what water tastes like, even though they may imagine its magical fluid. It's still the same Taste.

[Orbit]

 

 

 

 

Here's a good link on a brain researcher who worked with the scientist who developed the "God helmet" that can induce the experience of God in people. He explores what goes on in the brain and I think you will find its the same thing that meditation does, reducing the language centers and allowing the non-verbal to rise, etc. This goes into why meditation is allowing the subconscious mind to come into awareness the way it does, and so forth. It has nothing to do with making pronouncements about God, but goes instead into what practitioners experience and why. He does say this, that whatever that is, it changes people profoundly, and that is something most people would benefit from. It's a bit long, but worth the viewing.

 

I watched this with great interest. Just an aside, but did you know musicians have a larger corpus callosum that non-musicians? I think this implies a freer flow of information between the hemispheres. (Reference here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8524453 )

 

In the discussion of NDEs, which some use as a proof for God, I see something different. Our temporal lobes, when activated, produce religious experience, as shown in the video. Knowing this brings up conflicting notions for me. In the 90s, I ingested 5-meo-DMT, which has been clinically proven to have the same effects as the temporal lobe stimulation described in the video. (Here is a fantastic book on it if you're interested http://www.amazon.com/DMT-Molecule-Revolutionary-Near-Death-Experiences/dp/0892819278/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411417304&sr=1-3&keywords=rick+strassman ) DMT is the active ingredient in ayahusasca, which you may have heard of. Chemically, it masks the masking factors in the brain that keep us from experiencing our own endogenous DMT.

 

Subjectively, the DMT experience reminded me of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in a sideways way. My consciousness was hurled out into the universe at the speed of light, and through a series of gates that opened a split second before impact would have happened. There were 9. After that, my consciousness became aware if itself. I *felt* and deeply understood my own processes of cognition. I experienced the electric biochemistry of thought. It was quite profound and hard to put into words. It was deep understanding.

 

Given this background, I recognize the value of that experience, but am wary of giving to too much meaning. I find myself saying "it's only an altered state of brain chemistry". But this brings your comment to mind "But isn't that also real?". I have a bit of a battle going on internally between the materialist atheist that I am and the fact that these kinds of experiences do mean something, and my mystic tendencies. I have less spectacular experiences in meditation but have the same conflict about them.

 

 I can certainly see why it feels like the same sort of thing from ones traditional past. It 'feels" theistic - because we associated That within us symbolically with "God" "out there". That's it in a nutshell.

The way I look at this however is the other way around. It's not that I'm reconnecting with that God of theology, but realizing it was me all along!

 

I had the same experience of "realizing it was me". I'm struggling with my own mystic tendencies vs. the denigration of "woo" in atheism. From hanging out on atheist boards in the last 6 months, anything spiritual tends to get labeled woo. I just ordered a book by Sam Harris on non-theistic spirituality and maybe that will help. Perhaps I just need to reject the definition of the spiritual as woo. Like Diedre, I struggle with thoughts about "why do I need spirituality when other atheists do just fine without it?" It appears, however, that I do need it. I've only been deconverted for 6 months, so I'm still trying to make sense of it all.

 

Oh yes, this sounds a lot like what religions say. And why shouldn't it since it's human beings like all of us who have discovered these truths in themselves? Just because they use mythological symbols to express it does not invalidate it. It's the literalization, the externalization of these symbols as magical beings out there who do things for us that removes the realization of what they do symbolically for us. If they are archetypical, they work. If they are not, it only reinforces our separation with ourselves, and we end up in neurotic dissociation, seeing substitutes for Self realization, turning prayer in magic formula that does the work for us, turning the spiritual into the religious.

 

This makes a lot of sense. I have an appreciation for deep truths in Christianity and other religions. I think what I am trying to negotiate is a way to use the truths and not have it associated in my mind with organized religion.

 

 The dissolution of all separateness. There is no self-reliance on the ego, there is no reliance on ones higher power, whatever form that may be. You have passed through that veil of the terror of our self-dissolution into liberation, freedom, enlightenment. There is nothing there. No God, no self. You are alone. But that aloneness engulfs all that is, and you are free within it.

 

This is beautifully stated. This speaks to the mystic in me.

 

So it is of little surprise that someone encounters that sense of God in meditation if that is how they understood it before. But does that mean one is reverting to mythological thought, abandoning reason and rationality into prerational thought? Most definitely not. One just changes ones relationship to that with a better, more evolved sensibility. Not one that dismisses its validity as "just the brain", but one which comfortable integrates higher reasoning into these non-rational domains. Even a mythic believer knows what water tastes like, even though they may imagine its magical fluid. It's still the same Taste.

 

Again, beautifully put. I think I'm ready to start thinking like this, to recognize that seeing the wisdom in the mythical doesn't mean that I park my rationality at the door. I wonder if I'm resisting the compartmentalization of the rational and the mythical--but I think I'm seeing that they are necessarily different.

[Ellinas]

 

Yes - be patient.  Also innovative - try alternatives or even see if you can make up your own method.

 

Also, don't force it.  This needs to be something you want to do.  If it's a drudgery, that suggests you're forcing yourself into a method that is not resonating with you.

 

Bottom line, what allows you to relax and your mind to see things most clearly?  That's a good starting point.

Thanks for this. I'm letting it go for now.

It's not for me. And it feels a bit theistic. That's the problem I have with most spiritual paths. :/

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the exchange. Good luck with wherever your paths may lead.

 

 

Whatever's right for you.  The response took me a little by surprise, but only you can judge how to proceed.

 

More generally, I've never had a problem over the idea that meditational or mystic experiences may be seen as irrational (whether characterized as "prerational" or any other such term).  I just tend to shrug my shoulders with a mental "so what?" and have no need to justify experiences or practices to anyone. (I'm not saying that's right or anything necessarily of which to boast - it may just mark me out as arrogant.  Nevertheless, it is a matter of fact.)

 

Therefore, whilst I accept it is an issue for Dierdre and Orbit, and presumably for many others, I am not entirely certain as to why...

 

I don't think it would be enough to say "Well, E, you happen to be a theist anyway".  Again, so what?  I really don't think I'd see this differently from an atheist standpoint.

 

So - why the issue, precisely?

 

Apologies if that is too much of a tangent for this thread - I'll leave it to others to decide whether to run with that and, if so, whether to do it here.

[Orbit]

 

Whatever's right for you.  The response took me a little by surprise, but only you can judge how to proceed.

 

More generally, I've never had a problem over the idea that meditational or mystic experiences may be seen as irrational (whether characterized as "prerational" or any other such term).  I just tend to shrug my shoulders with a mental "so what?" and have no need to justify experiences or practices to anyone. (I'm not saying that's right or anything necessarily of which to boast - it may just mark me out as arrogant.  Nevertheless, it is a matter of fact.)

 

Therefore, whilst I accept it is an issue for Dierdre and Orbit, and presumably for many others, I am not entirely certain as to why...

 

I don't think it would be enough to say "Well, E, you happen to be a theist anyway".  Again, so what?  I really don't think I'd see this differently from an atheist standpoint.

 

So - why the issue, precisely?

 

Apologies if that is too much of a tangent for this thread - I'll leave it to others to decide whether to run with that and, if so, whether to do it here.

 

Hi, E

I think the issue for me is that I gave up the supernatural when I became an atheist, and allowing anything like it back into my life feels like backsliding. That's it in a nutshell.

[Antlerman]

I watched this with great interest. Just an aside, but did you know musicians have a larger corpus callosum that non-musicians? I think this implies a freer flow of information between the hemispheres. (Reference here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8524453 )

That wouldn't surprise me. The link doesn't work. I'd like to read that article.

 

DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca, which you may have heard of. Chemically, it masks the masking factors in the brain that keep us from experiencing our own endogenous DMT.

Watch these:

 

 

 

 

Given this background, I recognize the value of that experience, but am wary of giving to too much meaning. I find myself saying "it's only an altered state of brain chemistry". But this brings your comment to mind "But isn't that also real?". I have a bit of a battle going on internally between the materialist atheist that I am and the fact that these kinds of experiences do mean something, and my mystic tendencies. I have less spectacular experiences in meditation but have the same conflict about them.

What you should understand about altered states of consciousness is that it breaks you away from "normal" conventional perceptions. What may be seen or experienced should not be mistaken as encountering some magical place or entities that exist "out there" in the ether somewhere. They are deeply symbolic in nature, the mind putting a face of the experience on something wholly transcendent to its normal models of reality it registers the world as to you. The experience is very real, in fact more real than "real". It's just that we don't have a way for our minds to recognize what it is, and so it puts the face of a thousand-armed avalokitesvara on it, if you're a Buddhist, Jesus or Mary or an angel if you're a Christian, Krishna if you're Hindu, and so forth. Or any other form that arises out of ones cultural archetypes. I experience things like this all the time in meditation. They are subtle-level experiences, as talked about in that link I provided about the stages of meditation earlier.

 

You are opening to door to something in yourself beyond your cultural and linguistic programming, which limits what you can, or are capable of seeing and experiencing because of them. "Normal" consciousness, is really best described as "consensus trance". Everyone agrees together what is "real" and what is not. But this gets way deep into conversation we can pick up on as we go. What happens in altered states is it dismantles this. But the key is this. In a meditation experience, you are fully awake. You are fully aware. You are not in some stupor. You are experiencing super-consciousness. And if you see imagery, it is the conscious mind trying to provide symbolic representations to the subscious awareness. They are "real" in the sense they are there representing something in you that they are! That something in you is what's real, not the forms they take.

 

Then you move into the causal realm of consciousness, and these images disappear. You are now just aware as what those represented to you. You become Christ, Buddha, Krishna, and so forth in this sense.

 

I had the same experience of "realizing it was me". I'm struggling with my own mystic tendencies vs. the denigration of "woo" in atheism.

Oh, please don't look for validation from those whom this is outside their experience. Calling this woo is complete ignorance. I identified as atheist for many years myself, and called myself a "spiritual atheist". There are plenty of us out there. I just dropped the atheist title for myself as I found it didn't really fit how I approach things. It was too distracting. I prefer no labels now. In one sense I am an atheist, and in another I'm not. There's so many ways to look at these things to categorize oneself becomes difficult. I'm and atheistic integral panenthiestic nondualist mystic. How's that? Don't get me wrong, it can be useful to call yourself something. I did for many years. I just don't now.

 

From hanging out on atheist boards in the last 6 months, anything spiritual tends to get labeled woo.

Yes, that is unfortunate for them. Let me share a thought I had. You are definitely like me. Think about this. When you were part of Christianity, how many would you say were truly on a spiritual path? How may who did the whole Christian thing were ready to give up their own religion to find God, or that spiritual connection with life and themselves? People mistake those in religion as being on a spiritual path. Most in fact are not. They have all sorts of reasons for being in the religion, but by and large most people in our societies are just "comfortable" being where they are at, in religion or not in religion, as Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist. So my bet is that the percentages in atheism are probably about the same as in Christianity who think being spiritual is kind of "woo". "He's really into this," some Christian may wag their tongue and someone who prays all the time, who seeks out God. The funny thing is that the Christians use all the right words, but don't really do what they say. At least the atheists aren't hypocrites when they don't care. They don't pretend they do, and I consider that better.

 

Here's the other thing. I feel a great many of those as yourself and myself became atheists because the religion failed to offer anything truly spiritual. In this sense, these atheists are in fact more spiritual. We were willing to break ties with our religion, our friends and families, in order to find truth, in order to find meaning and fulfilment in our lives. Not in our egos, but in our being. And that is a step forward.

 

There's this great quote I love that I read in the great philosopher and Hindu mystic Sri Aurobindo that speaks to this, regarding the advances of atheism to the spiritual, in that it breaks away from a bondage to religious ignorance.

 

It is necessary, therefore, that advancing Knowledge should base herself on a clear, pure and disciplined intellect. It is necessary, too, that she should correct her errors sometimes by a return to the restraint of sensible fact, the concrete realities of the physical world. The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullness – to its heights we can always search– when we keep our feet firmly on the physical. “Earth is His footing,” says the Upanishad whenever it imagines the Self that manifests in the universe. And it is certainly the fact the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya.

 

In emerging, therefore, out of the materialistic period of human Knowledge we must be careful that we do not rashly condemn what we are leaving or throw away even one tittle of its gains, before we can summon perceptions and powers that are well grasped and secure, to occupy their place. Rather we shall observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism had done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge. In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.

 

~Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 12,13

I love this quote. Atheism lends it critical mind to advance the Divine, albeit Truth approaching near its goal in disguise. Wonderful.

 

Perhaps I just need to reject the definition of the spiritual as woo.

You absolutely need to reject it as that. Woo is anti-rational. Spirituality complements the rational, while it itself is beyond the rational. Say, let's do another quote. I think you like this, from someone who I think any atheist you know would embrace as not a "woo" kind of guy.....

 

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

 

- Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

There's really no getting around this. He had no issue with the spiritual in the face of the Mystery. Yeah, old Albert "woo woo" Einstein. Gotta love him.

 

Like Diedre, I struggle with thoughts about "why do I need spirituality when other atheists do just fine without it?" It appears, however, that I do need it. I've only been deconverted for 6 months, so I'm still trying to make sense of it all.

I hope those Wilber books will help you. I should warn you, he is rather academic and some say hard to penetrate. I think you can handle it though, which is why I recommended them to you. Feel free to ask for any clarification. I know his work well and am good at translating it.

 

This makes a lot of sense. I have an appreciation for deep truths in Christianity and other religions. I think what I am trying to negotiate is a way to use the truths and not have it associated in my mind with organized religion.

It'll come.

 

Again, beautifully put. I think I'm ready to start thinking like this, to recognize that seeing the wisdom in the mythical doesn't mean that I park my rationality at the door. I wonder if I'm resisting the compartmentalization of the rational and the mythical--but I think I'm seeing that they are necessarily different.

I'm not sure if you meant mythical or mystical? Mythical is pretty specific and not the same as mystical. We can delve into myth with the likes of Joseph Campbell, which will be hugely informative and enlightening, but for the mystical we look elsewhere.

[Orbit]

 

 

 The experience is very real, in fact more real than "real". It's just that we don't have a way for our minds to recognize what it is, and so it puts the face of a thousand-armed avalokitesvara on it, if you're a Buddhist, Jesus or Mary or an angel if you're a Christian, Krishna if you're Hindu, and so forth. Or any other form that arises out of ones cultural archetypes. I experience things like this all the time in meditation

 

I hope this isn't too personal, but would you be willing to share one of your experiences? I hardly ever get to hear what others are experiencing in meditation. I tend to see all-encompassing white light; I don't get a lot of religious imagery.

 

 

 "Normal" consciousness, is really best described as "consensus trance". Everyone agrees together what is "real" and what is not.

 

In the social sciences we call this the "social construction of reality". I completely understand what you mean.

 

Here's the other thing. I feel a great many of those as yourself and myself became atheists because the religion failed to offer anything truly spiritual

 

When I think of it that way, I think you're right. If my religion was giving me what I needed, why was my whole life a quest into nonwestern religion, the occult, and religion? What was I looking for? Whatever it was, I didn't find it and became a pantheistic mystic atheist. I'm not sure how that's going yet.

 

 

. I'm an atheistic integral panenthiestic nondualist mystic. How's that?

 

It's actually nicely descriptive :-)

 

 Atheism lends it critical mind to advance the Divine, albeit Truth approaching near its goal in disguise.

 

This is a great quote! 

 

I appreciate your perspective on the "woo" issue and think I'm starting to sort it out now. I'm still processing a bit, I think.

 

Thinking back to that brain video, are these experiences simply individualistic experiences or do we really connect with anything? If so, what are we actually connecting with? Or is it a useful illusion produced by brain activity? Where does the true meaning lie? Is the answer nihilism (the only meaning it has is the meaning I give it)? Or, as you said, it is all a connecting with oneself, wearing the masks supplied by culture?  I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

More thoughts: If our own consciousness is all we have, and all meaning is the meaning we make, is there a reality at all? And in the absence of reality we are compelled to invent one. What to invent, then?

 

I'm not sure if you meant mythical or mystical? Mythical is pretty specific and not the same as mystical. We can delve into myth with the likes of Joseph Campbell, which will be hugely informative and enlightening, but for the mystical we look elsewhere.

 

I was thinking of the mythical in terms of the religion tapestry, the underlying warp. Is the mythical rational or irrational? Claude Levi-Strauss, the anthropologist upon who Campbell based  many of his ideas, said that myth was a projection that reflected the underlying structures of our minds. The myth stories encode "binary opposition" a property of mind that encourages us to think in opposites; good/bad; hot/cold and so on. Myths embody these ideas in their own language of opposition (mother/father; alive/dead; and so on) and have their own ways of reconciling opposites. Opposites also occur in eastern thought; yin and yang, opposition resolved in the middle way, for example.

 

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this but thought I would throw it out there.

[Antlerman]

I hope this isn't too personal, but would you be willing to share one of your experiences? I hardly ever get to hear what others are experiencing in meditation. I tend to see all-encompassing white light; I don't get a lot of religious imagery.

I would say what I "see" is not visual hallucinations in the sense that I see something outside of myself, in the room as an object or something like that. Rather they are mental impressions, a sense of being or presence with that light you describe, which is common. In other words, I will have a very strong sense or impression upon me of profound, limitless love, or compassion, or peace, that takes a form in my mind, say of a bodhisattva of compassion pouring love out to me. Other times it is no "human-like" form, but rather flame, or water, and of course light. The point is it always connected to the experience you feel and connect to with the aware mind. It fill the conscious awareness with its knowledge of itself through the form.

 

I could quote from my own journal, but I came across this description from a 9th century Sufi mystic and instantly related to in my own experience. This is not mere poetry, but a very apt description of actual experience I can personally relate to:

 

There are lights which ascend and lights which descend. The ascending lights are the lights of the heart; the descending lights are those of the Throne. The false self is the veil between the Throne and the heart. When this veil is torn, and a door opens in the heart, like springs towards like. Light ascends toward light and light descends upon light, and it is ‘light upon light’.

 

When each time the heart sighs for the throne the throne sighs for the heart, so they come to meet. Each time a light ascends from you, a light descends toward you. If their energies are equal, then they meet halfway. But when the substance of light has grown in you, then this makes up a whole in relation to what is in the same nature in Heaven. Then, it is the substance of light in Heaven that longs for you, and is drawn to your light, and it descends toward you. This is the secret of the mystical journey.

 

~9th Century Sufi mystic, Najim al-Din Hubra

 

In the social sciences we call this the "social construction of reality". I completely understand what you mean.

Excellent. This will make unfolding discussion enormously easier with that point of reference. People applaud themselves for being in touch with reality using the rational mind. But really that is itself ultimately an illusion one should hold lightly, rather than with a closed fist saying "I know the truth!"

 

I appreciate your perspective on the "woo" issue and think I'm starting to sort it out now. I'm still processing a bit, I think.

Woo to the rational mind is magical thinking. As you delve into Wilber you'll quickly find he draws from Jean Gebser's stages of cultural development; archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral. As was mentioned before a current stage of development can always see and recognize the stage before it, but is incapable of recognizing the stage above it as it has no frame of reference in experience thinking like that. So it misreads that as an earlier stage. Calling something woo is really based on their own experience, a self-criticism of their own past now that they're moving beyond it. It's their own processing, projected onto others and has nothing to do with any sort of a truly rational understanding of what these things are. I always hear a knee-jerk fear reaction to their own dreaded past, fearful of falling back into their own magical thinking. This is of course not magical thinking.

 

Thinking back to that brain video, are these experiences simply individualistic experiences or do we really connect with anything? If so, what are we actually connecting with? Or is it a useful illusion produced by brain activity? Where does the true meaning lie? Is the answer nihilism (the only meaning it has is the meaning I give it)? Or, as you said, it is all a connecting with oneself, wearing the masks supplied by culture?  I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

More thoughts: If our own consciousness is all we have, and all meaning is the meaning we make, is there a reality at all? And in the absence of reality we are compelled to invent one. What to invent, then?

Ooh, a metaphysical question. I would say first of all its not an illusion. We are not deluded into thinking we are experiencing reality, in the way cultural deludes us. Again, how it manifests itself phenomenologically will of course vary. We are not observing a "thing" out there. This is not an objective, scientific inquiry. It is purely moving back into unmediated awareness, which is ones being, not thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas and words all make the world an object of awareness. This rather being the Subject of awareness. As I heard one Christian mystic speak of God to her she said, "God is not an object of our faith, but the Subject of our love". (She uses "God" in the sense of Eastern awareness, not an ontological other of traditional theism).

 

Is there "something" we are all connecting with that is common, that is universal? I believe yes. Sure. We are all made of atoms. We are all made of the same stuff. But it is not the material we are realizing in mystical awareness, but Consciousness. The Ground of Being, as Tillich put it well. We are not just matter, not just exteriors, but interiors. In stillness we access the interior. And we see that we all have common Source, in the same way we all are born of stars. This is just not physical in nature, even though it has a physical component in manifest reality. Consciousness is the core of everything, and is not simply isolated in human thinking. That's why when you shut off thinking, what you find 'blows the mind', so to speak. It is described as 'dreamless sleep', except you are fully awake. No images, not thoughts, no ideas, just pure Awareness. We all are That.

 

I was thinking of the mythical in terms of the religion tapestry, the underlying warp. Is the mythical rational or irrational? Claude Levi-Strauss, the anthropologist upon who Campbell based  many of his ideas, said that myth was a projection that reflected the underlying structures of our minds. The myth stories encode "binary opposition" a property of mind that encourages us to think in opposites; good/bad; hot/cold and so on. Myths embody these ideas in their own language of opposition (mother/father; alive/dead; and so on) and have their own ways of reconciling opposites. Opposites also occur in eastern thought; yin and yang, opposition resolved in the middle way, for example.

 

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this but thought I would throw it out there.

Yes, actually myth is rational in its construction. But when I speak of rational I'm referring to the cultural stage, the overall average-mode consciousness of a culture that creates what is "normal". The mythic stage thinks in terms of externalized forces controlling the world. The rational stage thinks in terms of scientific-analytic terms. In other words, these are general worldviews, the overarching lens through which culture filters its view of reality, which then shapes and influences everything within it. The rational approach can 'out-contextualize' the mythic approach, even though both themselves use rationality.

[Orbit]

 

Is there "something" we are all connecting with that is common, that is universal? I believe yes. Sure. We are all made of atoms. We are all made of the same stuff. But it is not the material we are realizing in mystical awareness, but Consciousness. The Ground of Being, as Tillich put it well. We are not just matter, not just exteriors, but interiors. In stillness we access the interior. And we see that we all have common Source, in the same way we all are born of stars. This is just not physical in nature, even though it has a physical component in manifest reality. Consciousness is the core of everything, and is not simply isolated in human thinking. That's why when you shut off thinking, what you find 'blows the mind', so to speak. It is described as 'dreamless sleep', except you are fully awake. No images, not thoughts, no ideas, just pure Awareness. We all are That.

 

 

 

I wanted to zero in on this (in bold above) because it really got me to thinking. What exactly happens in meditation?

 

Let me back up a few steps and tell you where I'm coming from: if meditation is an experience of the self, what exactly do we know about the self?

 

I saw a video that I unfortunately can't locate on youtube, but you've probably heard these ideas from Dawkins, Pinker, and others. I'm thinking about the "theory of mind" being used to explain religion. The basic idea is that it was an evolutionary advantage to impute intentionality to both humans and non-human phenomena. For example, on the veldt, if there was a rustling in the grass, humans turn to see what is happening because they imagine a tiger might have caused the rustling. To do so was to lessen your chances of being eaten, so natural selection favored this kind of mental habit. Humans however, tend to impute agency/intentionality where there is none, hence ideas about "luck" or beliefs in invisible beings. I suppose it's a fancy way of saying we're "projecting" all the time. Tribal societies that are animistic do this, seeing spirits in inanimate objects, and modern societies do this with their ideas about gods and spirits. So our minds have been evolutionarily pre-disposed to find agency, will, favor, and disfavor where there is none. I am reminded of Buddhist demons/gate guardians who look fierce but dissolve when we realize them as parts of ourselves. I'm currently reading this book on the subject and finding it interesting: http://www.amazon.com/SuperSense-Why-We-Believe-Unbelievable/dp/0061452645/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411528098&sr=1-1&keywords=supersense

 

 

 

The second thing that came to mind is the sociological proposition that the self is social. The concept of "The Looking Glass Self" says that our sense of self doesn't come from any innate internal quality in us; it is constructed in interaction with others. We present ourselves in anticipation of others' reactions to us; they interpret what we put out there based on the meaning that the presentation has to them; and they then react to us accordingly. We in turn interpret this "reflection" of ourselves through their eyes as saying something about who we are. The production of the self, then, is not a solitary activity, but is social. (More here if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_glass_self )

 

Given these two properties of mind,( attributing agency and constructing our selves through interaction with others), what happens in meditation where there is no "other" to reflect? What does it mean to grapple with the socially constructed self alone, by ourselves? Does our agency-attributing faculty go into overdrive in the absence of the "other"? Is this why meditation feels theistic to some? What is the mind actually doing? 

 

I read years ago in Scientific American where researchers hooked up Zen monks to EEGs while the master questioned them with koans. The answers were accepted as correct by the master only when the monks were in a delta brainwave state.

 

To what extent are the workings of the brain implicit in things we work through in meditation? Can understanding the brain improve meditation, or is that overanalyzing something that is at once natural/unnatural? Natural because brains can meditate, unnatural because interacting in the absence of an other is evolutionarily-speaking, difficult for humans. Or is meditation like the Tao, which can't be told?

 

Which brings me to the crux of the matter: consciousness. What the hell is it? 

 

 

Antlerman:

I would say what I "see" is not visual hallucinations in the sense that I see something outside of myself, in the room as an object or something like that. Rather they are mental impressions, a sense of being or presence with that light you describe, which is common. In other words, I will have a very strong sense or impression upon me of profound, limitless love, or compassion, or peace, that takes a form in my mind, say of a bodhisattva of compassion pouring love out to me. Other times it is no "human-like" form, but rather flame, or water, and of course light. The point is it always connected to the experience you feel and connect to with the aware mind. It fill the conscious awareness with its knowledge of itself through the form.

 

Thank you for sharing that. I don't have hallucinations, but I do have images in the "inner eye" so to speak; images rather than visions. The light, for me is like a stream that I jump into, a flow that I join. Light and water are recurring themes for me, too. I'm always curious about what other people experience because I never hear anyone talk about it.

[Antlerman]

 

 

 

Is there "something" we are all connecting with that is common, that is universal? I believe yes. Sure. We are all made of atoms. We are all made of the same stuff. But it is not the material we are realizing in mystical awareness, but Consciousness. The Ground of Being, as Tillich put it well. We are not just matter, not just exteriors, but interiors. In stillness we access the interior. And we see that we all have common Source, in the same way we all are born of stars. This is just not physical in nature, even though it has a physical component in manifest reality. Consciousness is the core of everything, and is not simply isolated in human thinking. That's why when you shut off thinking, what you find 'blows the mind', so to speak. It is described as 'dreamless sleep', except you are fully awake. No images, not thoughts, no ideas, just pure Awareness. We all are That.

 

 

I wanted to zero in on this (in bold above) because it really got me to thinking. What exactly happens in meditation?

 

Let me back up a few steps and tell you where I'm coming from: if meditation is an experience of the self, what exactly do we know about the self?

 

Meditation is to lead you to a knowledge of Self (or no-self) not experience of the self. There is a difference.

 

I saw a video that I unfortunately can't locate on youtube, but you've probably heard these ideas from Dawkins, Pinker, and others. I'm thinking about the "theory of mind" being used to explain religion. The basic idea is that it was an evolutionary advantage to impute intentionality to both humans and non-human phenomena. For example, on the veldt, if there was a rustling in the grass, humans turn to see what is happening because they imagine a tiger might have caused the rustling. To do so was to lessen your chances of being eaten, so natural selection favored this kind of mental habit. Humans however, tend to impute agency/intentionality where there is none, hence ideas about "luck" or beliefs in invisible beings. I suppose it's a fancy way of saying we're "projecting" all the time. Tribal societies that are animistic do this, seeing spirits in inanimate objects, and modern societies do this with their ideas about gods and spirits. So our minds have been evolutionarily pre-disposed to find agency, will, favor, and disfavor where there is none. I am reminded of Buddhist demons/gate guardians who look fierce but dissolve when we realize them as parts of ourselves. I'm currently reading this book on the subject and finding it interesting: http://www.amazon.com/SuperSense-Why-We-Believe-Unbelievable/dp/0061452645/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411528098&sr=1-1&keywords=supersense

Yes, I agree with most of this in principle. It is what mystics have recognized since the beginning practically, that the self is an illusion. They realized that through stepping outside of it and seeing it. And now postmodernist thinkers are understanding, theoretically, that this is the case. There's a difference between knowing this in principle, and knowing it as the seat of your own awareness. Knowing it's the case theoretically doesn't mean you know what it is to see the world with a different set of eyes existentially.

 

The second thing that came to mind is the sociological proposition that the self is social. The concept of "The Looking Glass Self" says that our sense of self doesn't come from any innate internal quality in us; it is constructed in interaction with others. We present ourselves in anticipation of others' reactions to us; they interpret what we put out there based on the meaning that the presentation has to them; and they then react to us accordingly. We in turn interpret this "reflection" of ourselves through their eyes as saying something about who we are. The production of the self, then, is not a solitary activity, but is social. (More here if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_glass_self )

The first thing the Upanishads says is "Fear is the other". Again all this is true as well. It is the small self that functions this way, and which follows stages of ego development. It is the sense of dualistic reality, seeing ourselves as subject and others as objects that creates separation, anxiety, and fear. We feel alone, isolated inside this world in our heads (as it develops in our stages of growth).

 

Given these two properties of mind,( attributing agency and constructing our selves through interaction with others), what happens in meditation where there is no "other" to reflect? What does it mean to grapple with the socially constructed self alone, by ourselves? Does our agency-attributing faculty go into overdrive in the absence of the "other"? Is this why meditation feels theistic to some? What is the mind actually doing?

It is moving beyond these constructed realities that we self-identify with. We begin to experience what we have always known, that we are not these things, not the objects we identify with the "me" that is not "you". Depending on what stage of development we are at what those objects are shifts outward into ever-widening, more inclusive spheres from the earlier tighter more exclusive spheres. In meditation we take a major leap outside our current level of self-sphere and see it from above, so to speak. We realize it is not who we are, because we are no longer looking out at the world through it, but standing outside of it looking at it. We realize that is not us because who is it then looking at it?

 

I read years ago in Scientific American where researchers hooked up Zen monks to EEGs while the master questioned them with koans. The answers were accepted as correct by the master only when the monks were in a delta brainwave state.

Makes sense to me. Our normal state awareness does not allow us to see certain ways because of its constructions of reality. We block out what doesn't fit within that system of understanding.

 

Ages and ages ago it seems, long before I started a meditation practice, I was looking at things like semiotics and evolutionary bio-cultural feed back loops and came up with this thread on this site dabbling in thoughts like this that began to break down what we normal presume as reality because of things like language and cultural programming and so forth. It's an interesting thread to look back and has some validity I was stumbling about trying to get at. What being said here in this thread really takes that and lets it fly: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/15020-language-truth-god-and-humanity/#.VCK11fldWSo

 

I believe today they are called in systems theory "self-amplifying loops" where consciousness gives birth to symbols which then magnifies consciousness. In other words, consciousness participates consciously in giving birth to self. We shall have some fun going down this rabbit hole I hope.

 

BTW, some parts of my post from 2007 I don't agree with anymore exactly in how I worded it, such as I don't believe we can experience reality directly, which is true from the perspective of the discursive mind but not from the state of pure Awareness. In other words as that is all true from the discursive mind, it is answered in the eye of contemplation or mystical states of awareness. So don't take that part of it as necessarily how I think about all of that today.

 

To what extent are the workings of the brain implicit in things we work through in meditation? Can understanding the brain improve meditation, or is that overanalyzing something that is at once natural/unnatural? Natural because brains can meditate, unnatural because interacting in the absence of an other is evolutionarily-speaking, difficult for humans. Or is meditation like the Tao, which can't be told?

Meditation is our natural state. I once said to a group of people I was playing my singing bowls and other meditative instruments for, "I can't teach you how to meditate. You already know how". All meditation is is doing is take the discursive self-reflexive mind and moving it out of the way to see what you already see and already know at all times. That's it in a nutshell right there! Everyone who has this ah-hah moment will say things like, "it was there the whole time". Of course, because in a sense if you wish to speak of 'unnatural', it's the artificial, illusory world of constructed reality in our brains - a world of mental objects that we spend nearly every waking moment interfacing with, rather than the real world. Boy, that's a tough reality to face when it's the only set of eyes we ever look through!

 

It's actually not-difficult at all, once you learn how to work with your habitual mind. It's entirely natural to be aware like this. Is it difficult/impossible to describe in language? Pretty much, because language is a system of words that creates reality as subject/object dualities. Inherent in it is that mental world that is itself simply a way of looking at reality, but not reality itself as it Is. The meditative mind is the non-discursive non-self-reflexive Self that sees the world. As you identify with That, that's when reality unfolds as Is.

 

Which brings me to the crux of the matter: consciousness. What the hell is it?

That's your problem right there. You're trying to see "it" as an object. Notice I use quotes around "it"? That's because language doesn't allow you to speak except in terms of subject/object dualities. You make it an "it" by speaking about it. It is "You". It is Pure Awareness, not thoughts and ideas, but Seeing itself. Not a truth, but Truth itself. Not knowledge but Knowing. It is the Condition of all conditions. It is not ever anything you can look at, as it is what you are. The Self behind the self which can never be seen but Sees.

 

Like in the Matrix, no one can tell you what the Matrix is, you have to see for yourself. BTW, the Wachowski brothers who wrote the Matrix are friend with Ken Wilber.  

 

 

Thank you for sharing that. I don't have hallucinations, but I do have images in the "inner eye" so to speak; images rather than visions. The light, for me is like a stream that I jump into, a flow that I join. Light and water are recurring themes for me, too. I'm always curious about what other people experience because I never hear anyone talk about it.

Yes, I call those images visions. I think that's what visions actually are, not hallucinations. Have you ever gone beyond those in meditation to the casual states?

[Antlerman]

BTW, I had this thought after my post this morning that what we view as "natural" to us is really just what is habitual. If we habitually perceive the world with the discursive mind, that is "natural". Anything that breaks with the convention is experienced as "unnatural". But is it according to nature? Or are we at the moment out of step with nature and this explains why we are so neurotic? We are afterall neurotic monkeys with over-sized brains. I think in order to survive we have to evolve the mind beyond this mode of a bunch of isolated little brain-islands.

[Ellinas]

 

 

Whatever's right for you.  The response took me a little by surprise, but only you can judge how to proceed.

 

More generally, I've never had a problem over the idea that meditational or mystic experiences may be seen as irrational (whether characterized as "prerational" or any other such term).  I just tend to shrug my shoulders with a mental "so what?" and have no need to justify experiences or practices to anyone. (I'm not saying that's right or anything necessarily of which to boast - it may just mark me out as arrogant.  Nevertheless, it is a matter of fact.)

 

Therefore, whilst I accept it is an issue for Dierdre and Orbit, and presumably for many others, I am not entirely certain as to why...

 

I don't think it would be enough to say "Well, E, you happen to be a theist anyway".  Again, so what?  I really don't think I'd see this differently from an atheist standpoint.

 

So - why the issue, precisely?

 

Apologies if that is too much of a tangent for this thread - I'll leave it to others to decide whether to run with that and, if so, whether to do it here.

 

Hi, E

I think the issue for me is that I gave up the supernatural when I became an atheist, and allowing anything like it back into my life feels like backsliding. That's it in a nutshell.

 

 

Pushed for time at the moment, so can't answer in any detail.  Just to say, whilst I understand what you are saying, I wonder if this betrays an attachment (whether intellectual,emotional or a combination of the two) to the concept of some sort of orthodoxy.

 

As I see it, our minds are a combination of the rational and the instinctive, the logical and the emotional, the measurable step by step thought processes that deal with objective reality (whatever that is) and the dark recesses of symbolism.  The instinctive, emotive, symbolic is no less real, no less valid, no less worthy of exploration (albeit it can be a daunting place to go).  Meditation accesses this, maybe can even help unite it with the logical side in a composite whole.  To my mind, that makes it worthwhile seeking to escape any constriction of "orthodox" thought processes.

[Orbit]

Hi all-

 

Give me a couple of days to post a response. Something has been triggered and I need to figure out what it is.

I also received A Sociable God today and am reading that.

I shall return...

[Deva]

BTW, I had this thought after my post this morning that what we view as "natural" to us is really just what is habitual. If we habitually perceive the world with the discursive mind, that is "natural". Anything that breaks with the convention is experienced as "unnatural". But is it according to nature? Or are we at the moment out of step with nature and this explains why we are so neurotic? We are afterall neurotic monkeys with over-sized brains. I think in order to survive we have to evolve the mind beyond this mode of a bunch of isolated little brain-islands.

 

Nature, in the process of natural selection, wildly goes beyond what anyone could consider rational. Humans are a design that works, for the moment.  Eventually this form will either change beyond recognition or go extinct, like the Irish Elk with its 12 foot long antlers.  Although there is a design,  there is no "designer" with a "plan". I think of the elaborate plumage of the birds of paradise with no use beyond attracting a mate.

 

I wonder at the change in human consciousness about 100,000 years ago when the cave paintings were made, and then again at the beginnings of civilization.   Our brains seem right on the edge of survivability now - do many other animals also commit intentional suicide? And now we have climate change and the possibility of nuclear war.   I am inclined to think that nature took a very strange turn with our consciousness (assuming it is a product of nature)- into the supernatural. After all, as far as we know, what other animal thinks of the uncanny or supernatural, or wants to fly through space to other planets?

[Antlerman]

Hi all-

 

Give me a couple of days to post a response. Something has been triggered and I need to figure out what it is.

Hmmm... sounds interesting. Things like that can take me sometimes a long time to figure out, and usually comes when you're not looking at it. In fact most junk usually can't be figured out by looking at it. I'll be curious to know what that was. Something I said?

 

I also received A Sociable God today and am reading that.

I shall return...

Cool. Don't skip his introduction, which is about half the book now. I look forward to your thoughts. I may need to read through that one again myself now.