Hi Mike, nice to meet you and thank you for your thoughts. May I ask you a few questions? These are genuine questions, because I certainly do not have the answers (I only have working theories), but since you seem to be a thoughtful person who has both experienced and reflected on these things, I am interested in hearing YOUR working theory. I have selected a few passages from you latest message and my questions refer specifically to those bits.
Let me start with this "functional and active intelligence" you mention. When you say "we live in" this intelligence it is not clear to me whether you mean that we are separate from it or not. I think that we are separate from it (we would clearly, automatically know what our individual existence is about if we were truly, "functionally included" in such intelligence), and just as separate from it are the 'animistic entities/agencies' you appear to postulate (and I can certainly share this hypothesis: my working theory, too, is that of a shamanistic universe). So the "self-awareness" you mention may or may not exist at the level of the "source" in which this mind-matter continuum that we inhabit is rooted, but to it we must also add the fragmented individual self-awareness of its "expressions", we being included in them ("anima" means soul, so animistic implies the coexistence of many different souls/self-aware units; plurality rather than unity).
Now this issue may seem not so important, especially as it is very fashionable nowadays to say "we are all one" (apparently it even makes many people feel really good, go figure! They like to feel "one" with serial killers or paedophiles or cancerous cells etc, for some reason). This question however is crucial to me because it's about the very nature of who we are as individuals - is there a single all-controlling awareness both outside and inside of us? If so, how come, just to use your example, that we individually feel that we are free to do or not do something, like taking a hint not to board a certain flight, and that we are able to choose to follow our "intuitions" (if we have them) or not? Whence these intuitions that seem to wish to protect us? On the other hand, for examole, whence "the voices" that some people hear, telling them to kill someone or even themselves, in fact?
Is there a single "control centre" behind reality or are there several agencies which can intervene in the mind-matter continuum that we inhabit (regardless of whether there might have been a single source having given rise to these many 'animistic agencies')?
This is crucial in my opinion because if there really was a single intelligence in control then we would individually be controlled too, so all that is would ultimately be some kind of onanistic act on the part of this 'God' (the word God in the monotheistic sense of the term would be appropriate, in that it would be just one entity and all-powerful) - frankly, he would basically be acting like an adolescent playing with himself while trying to imagine to be with a real partner (but no, he's on his own) :). Also, the nature of this world would show it to be a masochistic God, because it is inflicting pain on itself ("nature red in tooth and claw") - yes, masochistic practices are something SOME people apparently use to extract pleasure from them, but certainly not all. Personally, I am not at all attracted to it. And the overwhelming majority of sentient creatures seem to agree with me, because they try to escape from pain, suffering and death, and struggle to survive. So it seems more plausible to me that any original unity has been lost and we are now many (VERY many) rather than "one".
This would in turn mean that there is not a single orchestrating agency behind the many "strange phenomena" (including syncs) that people experience. This seems to me more plausible (but I'm interested in your opinion!) unless one assumes that this "functional and active intelligence" is actively schizophrenic and pursuing different interests in different "expressions" of itself, while being aware of it (but then we would spontaneously, naturally go along with it and not really dislike suffering and death, right?). I mean, even NDEs are about PERSONAL survival after death....I am not at all an expert in NDEs and I must say I'm not particularly interested in them but the experiencers describe their meetings with relatives, during which they are told that "life continues" after death, and I think that all those concerned take it to imply that their own individuality survives....(mediums of course provide "evidence" of the same thing, ie individual survival after death).
I'd be interested in hearing your take on this supposed unity of purpose/single awareness OR lack of (or lost) unity of awareness in "what is", because to me this is a crucial thing, especially if we are to "engage" with syncs in a useful way as you wrote (a lot of people, astonishingly for me, think they convey a specific, literal message, such as that that they should do or not do something, or that the End of Times is nigh or who knows what else). Certainly, especially for those who take these things literally, assuming that all syncs come from the same, single, all-powerful agency is very different from speculating that they may come from different "animistic agencies" who may have profoundly different intentions and wills (good or bad intentions towards us).
(....)
With reference to this, I am pretty sure that there have been plenty of cases of bad presentiments which turned out to be wrong. I am not at all disputing your experience - just saying that if things were so clear (ie, if premonitions/intuitions always turned out to be right), then even hard-core materialists would believe in them as they would be very easy to prove "scientifically". However, lots of "bad feelings"/premonitions/predictions do not materialise (there are plenty of documented cases). Also, why do some people have these intuitions/hints and some don't? Why, in your opinion, does the veil get slightly lifted at times for some and not for others? Incidentally, most religions see a moral dimension to existence, and despite many logical contradictions they distinguish between good and evil (in particular, ALL religions tell us to "be good"). Is it all just a human interpretation, given the arbitrary way in which the universe seem to be running? (no demonstrable justice or fairness). Why should we "be good" and thus better than the way this material word functions? Why not just be indifferent as it seems to be, say it's all perfect as it is and do what we like? (Materialists would in fact maintain that we are only "good" because it serves us: cooperation is ultimately useful for the individual, thus love/compassion is a selfish act in disguise.)
(...)
Yes, I too sometimes have the impression that we are supposed to talk about these strange phenomena - maybe some "benevolent agency" wishes to help us to "see through" what seems very real (the material world) but is after all only some kind of "simulation", in the sense of a very incomplete perception of a much bigger underlying reality "projecting" it. But of course many of us are wary to do so (me included) because most people are only interested in their daily lives and until they experience something that truly shakes them they will dismiss all this as "woo". I should know because I was like most people until about 5 years ago :)
Thank you in advance for your thoughts! Of course I would have plenty more things I would like to hear your take on but this is more than enough for now!
Hi John
You are an interesting bloke! I love your passion. There’s a lot here – some of which overlaps. I have tried to respond sensibly, but also with comparative brevity to keep the size of the post manageable. Looking back, I have not always addressed your questions directly, but I have tried to also look at underpinning themes. I have put your stuff in italics for ease of distinction.
Hi Mike, nice to meet you and thank you for your thoughts. May I ask you a few questions? These are genuine questions, because I certainly do not have the answers (I only have working theories), but since you seem to be a thoughtful person who has both experienced and reflected on these things, I am interested in hearing YOUR working theory. I have selected a few passages from you latest message and my questions refer specifically to those bits.
Let me start with this "functional and active intelligence" you mention. When you say "we live in" this intelligence it is not clear to me whether you mean that we are separate from it or not. I think that we are separate from it (we would clearly, automatically know what our individual existence is about if we were truly, "functionally included" in such intelligence), and just as separate from it are the 'animistic entities/agencies' you appear to postulate (and I can certainly share this hypothesis: my working theory, too, is that of a shamanistic universe).
For me it is that within which we ‘Live and move and have our being’ [to repeat an old saying]. We, and other agents, are particularised expressions of a whole that creates a sense of individuality [that is multi-layered] that endures while that sense of individuality persists. And while it persists we can have that sense of being separate and distinct. The object of the great mystical systems is to render that sense of individuality as an essential feature of being permeable [so that it also links with an essential sense of unity]– but without eradicating it.
So the "self-awareness" you mention may or may not exist at the level of the "source" in which this mind-matter continuum that we inhabit is rooted, but to it we must also add the fragmented individual self-awareness of its "expressions", we being included in them ("anima" means soul, so animistic implies the coexistence of many different souls/self-aware units; plurality rather than unity).
I used the term ‘self-awareness’ in an attempt to convey only the psychological sense of being aware of oneself as an agent in the physical world- and hence aware of an internal dialogue/monologue. Self-awareness also has a mystical sense – but in this case I mean the fragmented sense your refer to.
Now this issue may seem not so important, especially as it is very fashionable nowadays to say "we are all one" (apparently it even makes many people feel really good, go figure! They like to feel "one" with serial killers or paedophiles or cancerous cells etc, for some reason). This question however is crucial to me because it's about the very nature of who we are as individuals - is there a single all-controlling awareness both outside and inside of us? If so, how come, just to use your example, that we individually feel that we are free to do or not do something, like taking a hint not to board a certain flight, and that we are able to choose to follow our "intuitions" (if we have them) or not? Whence these intuitions that seem to wish to protect us? On the other hand, for example, whence "the voices" that some people hear, telling them to kill someone or even themselves, in fact?
While ‘we are all one’ is true on a deep level, we are not ‘as one’ in any functional sense. The pedantic position might be that the only useful truth of it is when we are able to act ‘as one’. I agree that there is no point in asserting a seeming truth if it has no useful meaning. Being ‘one’ with serial killer is only useful if that act expresses higher order spiritual values like compassion and love as genuine acts rather than ideas or noble sentiments that do little more than signify the idea or sentiment. In a way we can aspire to be ‘all one’, but our acts [informed by where we are emotionally, intellectually or spiritually] do not reflect an actualisation of that aspiration.
I don’t think there is a single ‘controlling awareness’ so much as a uniting awareness that has transactional variants – e.g. between me [a sense of individual self] and deity [the One] there is a complex skein of connection. There is a persistent philosophical problem that comes across as a kind of Zen koan – free will and predestination are both real at the same time. So control is both within and beyond me. This ‘problem’ is still not resolved intellectually, despite an ocean of ink being devoted to discussion of it.
I see a distinction between ‘controlling’ and ‘governing’ – at best there is a governing awareness. It is fairly clear to me that who I am is expressed in physical and non-physical ways. So I like the idea of a ‘higher self’ that places the me I know in this world as pretty much the ‘lower self’. The mystical traditions have humans comprising 7 ‘bodies’. Theosophywales.com says as well as the physical body we have and Etheric Body, an Astral Body, a Mental Body (with a lower and higher configuration) a Buddhic Body, an Atmic or Spiritual Body, and a Monadic Spark or ray of the Divine Over-Soul.
This idea goes back to the ancient Egyptians and found also in the Hindu tradition. So where would be place a locus of control? Perhaps along the whole chain of our being rather than in a single location. The problem is that if you imagine that chain of ‘bodies’ there is a link between the physical [time and space] and the ineffable [beyond time and space] – and actualisation happens in both realms.
Our Christian heritage gives us a very controlly mentality – with idea like being obedient to God’s will – as if we were in a position to oppose the will of deity. But that’s about stuff and stuff happening. A mystical take is that the divine will is to be and to know – and that has an uncertainty principle built in. In one sense our lives are probabilistic, but in another they are also inhabited by choice. The paradox is that the divine can both not know and know at the same time – and there cannot be an alternative to that. Reality is finally messy and incomprehensible to us.
As to ‘voices’ – check out William Baldwin’s Spirit Releasement Therapy. This sits well with shamanic insights as well as Joe Fisher’s The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, traditional beliefs in how the dead influence the living and communications with the ‘dead’. As well, from my own experience there are good guiding voices too. Baldwin shows how illness and madness can be the result of spirit attachments (so too Jane Kent’s The Goddess and the Shaman).
Is there a single "control centre" behind reality or are there several agencies which can intervene in the mind-matter continuum that we inhabit (regardless of whether there might have been a single source having given rise to these many 'animistic agencies')?
I think are multiple agencies – gods, angels and the like. In fact I think there is a densely populated ecosystem with a number [unknown] of primary agencies who generate other agencies in a complex descending hierarchy, finally expressing in the physical plane as what we know as animism. At least this what the great systems [like Indian, Qabalistic and Hermetic] indicate – and it is consistent with the shamanic traditions as well.
Quite some time ago I sought from an impeccable teaching source some information about gods, which I was told were human inventions. I was assured they were not, and if they elected in engage with us we’d know it. They have will, and intent and things do happen within their scope of determination.
So yes, a single source [the One] gives rise to many, and some of that many exert influence here – but its mostly hidden and incomprehensible [our science is too crude and lopsided]
This is crucial in my opinion because if there really was a single intelligence in control then we would individually be controlled too, so all that is would ultimately be some kind of onanistic act on the part of this 'God' (the word God in the monotheistic sense of the term would be appropriate, in that it would be just one entity and all-powerful) - frankly, he would basically be acting like an adolescent playing with himself while trying to imagine to be with a real partner (but no, he's on his own) :-). Also, the nature of this world would show it to be a masochistic God, because it is inflicting pain on itself ("nature red in tooth and claw") - yes, masochistic practices are something SOME people apparently use to extract pleasure from them, but certainly not all. Personally, I am not at all attracted to it. And the overwhelming majority of sentient creatures seem to agree with me, because they try to escape from pain, suffering and death, and struggle to survive. So it seems more plausible to me that any original unity has been lost and we are now many (VERY many) rather than "one".
The difference between a single agency and multiple agencies is complex. My favourite analogy is government. A state has an overarching government divided into departments or ministries, each of which has operational subsets, expressing finally as teams and then individuals. As an individual public servant I am a delegate of a minister and a representative of the government – and ergo of the community. So all is one in principle, but many in our experiential actuality.
Simple systems do not generate complexity. There seems to be a point in great complexity where small acts become influential. So in a way God’s defence against his own onanist propensity is vast complexity – so there is a chance of another arising. This to me is the root of the Taoist model – and the idea of the Goddess being the mother of all being. But this is getting into very deep stuff. My point is only to say that are other ways of seeing things.
So with pain and suffering. We assume pain and suffering is the same thing on all dimensions. But it can’t be. Our biological nature abhors what is essential in nature from the perspective of organic being. But that does not mean that this is the only value set to be applied. Nature operates only because there is a constant cycle of death and birth – and that has to be good at some level.
This would in turn mean that there is not a single orchestrating agency behind the many "strange phenomena" (including syncs) that people experience. This seems to me more plausible (but I'm interested in your opinion!) unless one assumes that this "functional and active intelligence" is actively schizophrenic and pursuing different interests in different "expressions" of itself, while being aware of it (but then we would spontaneously, naturally go along with it and not really dislike suffering and death, right?). I mean, even NDEs are about PERSONAL survival after death....I am not at all an expert in NDEs and I must say I'm not particularly interested in them but the experiencers describe their meetings with relatives, during which they are told that "life continues" after death, and I think that all those concerned take it to imply that their own individuality survives....(mediums of course provide "evidence" of the same thing, ie individual survival after death).
I suppose that when I say “functional and active intelligence” I mean it more as a matrix than an entity. I am of the school that sees the divine as essence that is beyond description (called The One) and from which distil agencies (of The One, but not as The One). So any reference to God as an agent cannot be The One – but an aspect. It can seem like mind bending metaphysics but its just a description of what polytheistic systems have [monotheism has all kinds of problems that are resolved only when it behaves like a faux polytheism]. For example, if you have any familiarity with Qabala you see how Kether divides into Chokmah (2) and Binah (3) and there are further emanations. That’s a neat system. The Hindu system is more complex, but the principle is more or less the same – so long as we do not forget that map is not the territory and thinking tools are just that – and not reality.
Life expresses in the manifest world, but it not dependent on it. Were it not so we could not have spirits or gods. Otherwise you would have a mysterious force coming from nowhere we can imagine, activating matter, and dissipating when it is done, or matter is done. So-called ‘science’ objects to NDEs when it cannot even cobble together any sensible alternative theory to explain life. It may object to the spirit explanation – but it is universal and makes sense when there is no actual alternative scientific theory that has any merit. It is one thing for materialists to object to a vast sophisticated body of thought on the grounds that it offends against their personal feelings and another to oppose that vast body of knowledge with some actual theories based on some actual evidence.
I'd be interested in hearing your take on this supposed unity of purpose/single awareness OR lack of (or lost) unity of awareness in "what is", because to me this is a crucial thing, especially if we are to "engage" with syncs in a useful way as you wrote (a lot of people, astonishingly for me, think they convey a specific, literal message, such as that that they should do or not do something, or that the End of Times is nigh or who knows what else). Certainly, especially for those who take these things literally, assuming that all syncs come from the same, single, all-powerful agency is very different from speculating that they may come from different "animistic agencies" who may have profoundly different intentions and wills (good or bad intentions towards us).
This is the problem with being conditioned by monotheism – you can’t have a subtle understanding without falling into heresy. Christianity is tougher still because it has pillars of faith that are really like fence posts that demark the limits of allowable intellectual and emotional territory – go beyond and your soul is in jeopardy, not to mention your flesh in days gone by.
Synchs may be a manifestation of a ‘technology’ that can be accessed by any nonphysical agent with the means to do so – but this not simple ‘technology’, rather sophisticated. My experience is, and I can’t say this is universal, that the ‘bad’ agents mostly lack the wherewithal to be very sophisticated (there are exceptions, but they are mercifully rare). However a lot of harm can be done by these ‘lower level’ agents. I am being cautious here because this also complex and brevity may misrepresent actuality.
(....)
With reference to this, I am pretty sure that there have been plenty of cases of bad presentiments which turned out to be wrong. I am not at all disputing your experience - just saying that if things were so clear (ie, if premonitions/intuitions always turned out to be right), then even hard-core materialists would believe in them as they would be very easy to prove "scientifically". However, lots of "bad feelings"/premonitions/predictions do not materialise (there are plenty of documented cases). Also, why do some people have these intuitions/hints and some don't? Why, in your opinion, does the veil get slightly lifted at times for some and not for others? Incidentally, most religions see a moral dimension to existence, and despite many logical contradictions they distinguish between good and evil (in particular, ALL religions tell us to "be good"). Is it all just a human interpretation, given the arbitrary way in which the universe seem to be running? (no demonstrable justice or fairness). Why should we "be good" and thus better than the way this material word functions? Why not just be indifferent as it seems to be, say it's all perfect as it is and do what we like? (Materialists would in fact maintain that we are only "good" because it serves us: cooperation is ultimately useful for the individual, thus love/compassion is a selfish act in disguise.)
Bad feelings that aren’t substantiated can be down to anxieties that are unfounded, and sundry ways we have of fooling ourselves, as well as induced feelings by agents intent on preventing us from doing things that are good for us. So-called ‘panic attacks’ may be induced by agents – and there is nothing real to fear. Another thing is that a premonition might result in sufficient changes in behaviour to avoid the adverse event. For example I delayed a long drive because of a bad feeling for 30 mins. The drive was uneventful and I have no way of knowing whether that delay made the difference or the feeling was BS. Depending on a person’s emotional state a mild stimulation can lead to over reaction. So many possible ways a stimulation can be caused and interpreted.
Hard-core materialists tend to be unresponsive because they will almost always rationalise a stimulation away as a reflex. If the possibility of the intuition being real is not there then anything that looks like it is dismissed as something else. But on the other hand intuition plays a huge role in science – as any honest history of science will show. And so much good work has been done in psi research by very competent sciences to demonstrate that intuition is very real. Not so much with spirit communication these days.
This is all complex and subtle because, I believe, we are dealing with an ecology that may provide contact with a variety of agents. The habit conditioned by our culture is to think in fixed terms with a simple array of agents. In the bush awareness has to be fluid and subtle because the array of agents is more complex – the less seemingly structured the ecology the more we must have a freer alertness that is more adaptive to sudden stimulus. If our cultural environment is more bushlike we are more open. In comparison a cultural ecology dominated by dogmas has no need for subtle awareness. Hence it seems that the educated class tends to be less open to things than the lower class – as a general rule. It has nothing to do with levels of education so much as the degree of certainty that education brings.
(...)
Yes, I too sometimes have the impression that we are supposed to talk about these strange phenomena - maybe some "benevolent agency" wishes to help us to "see through" what seems very real (the material world) but is after all only some kind of "simulation", in the sense of a very incomplete perception of a much bigger underlying reality "projecting" it. But of course many of us are wary to do so (me included) because most people are only interested in their daily lives and until they experience something that truly shakes them they will dismiss all this as "woo". I should know because I was like most people until about 5 years ago :-)
Yeah, so many folk want to hide from what is, and it is true that you can detune your senses to operate only in the physical world, so long as it is simple and predictable. To some folk getting by means walling out disruptive sensations so they can enjoy what little they have pulled together. I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies here in the sense that unless you are living in wild and dangerous place shutting down is preferable – to preserve what little one has. Instability is a virtue because it admits of the possibility of profound change. There is a risk but also a great liberty. Certainty is death. You can’t engage with people full of certainty.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts! Of course I would have plenty more things I would like to hear your take on but this is more than enough for now!
This has become very long and may not be what the forum is about. Alex will undoubtedly opine sagely on the length – and I await his thought. I am happy to chat at length off line if that becomes the best thing to do. My new blog, aspiringanimist.com, has a feedback email address you could use to contact me direct. But if Alex is cool about this being a public conversation I am happy to continue via the forum.
Hi John
You are an interesting bloke! I love your passion. There’s a lot here – some of which overlaps. I will try to respond sensibly, but also with comparative brevity to keep the size of the post manageable.
Hi Mike, nice to meet you and thank you for your thoughts. May I ask you a few questions? These are genuine questions, because I certainly do not have the answers (I only have working theories), but since you seem to be a thoughtful person who has both experienced and reflected on these things, I am interested in hearing YOUR working theory. I have selected a few passages from you latest message and my questions refer specifically to those bits.
Let me start with this "functional and active intelligence" you mention. When you say "we live in" this intelligence it is not clear to me whether you mean that we are separate from it or not. I think that we are separate from it (we would clearly, automatically know what our individual existence is about if we were truly, "functionally included" in such intelligence), and just as separate from it are the 'animistic entities/agencies' you appear to postulate (and I can certainly share this hypothesis: my working theory, too, is that of a shamanistic universe).
For me it is that within which we ‘Live and move and have our being’ [to repeat an old saying]. We, and other agents, are particularised expressions of a whole that creates a sense of individuality [that is multi-layered] that endures while that sense of individuality persists. And while it persists we can have that sense of being separate and distinct. The object of the great mystical systems is to render that sense of individuality as an essential feature of being permeable [so that it also links with an essential sense of unity]– but without eradicating it.
So the "self-awareness" you mention may or may not exist at the level of the "source" in which this mind-matter continuum that we inhabit is rooted, but to it we must also add the fragmented individual self-awareness of its "expressions", we being included in them ("anima" means soul, so animistic implies the coexistence of many different souls/self-aware units; plurality rather than unity).
I used the term ‘self-awareness’ in an attempt to convey only the psychological sense of being aware of oneself as an agent in the physical world- and hence aware of an internal dialogue/monologue. Self-awareness also has a mystical sense – but in this case I mean the fragmented sense your refer to.
Now this issue may seem not so important, especially as it is very fashionable nowadays to say "we are all one" (apparently it even makes many people feel really good, go figure! They like to feel "one" with serial killers or paedophiles or cancerous cells etc, for some reason). This question however is crucial to me because it's about the very nature of who we are as individuals - is there a single all-controlling awareness both outside and inside of us? If so, how come, just to use your example, that we individually feel that we are free to do or not do something, like taking a hint not to board a certain flight, and that we are able to choose to follow our "intuitions" (if we have them) or not? Whence these intuitions that seem to wish to protect us? On the other hand, for example, whence "the voices" that some people hear, telling them to kill someone or even themselves, in fact?
While ‘we are all one’ is true on a deep level, we are not ‘as one’ in any functional sense. The pedantic position might be that the only useful truth of it is when we are able to act ‘as one’. I agree that there is no point in asserting a seeming truth if it has no useful meaning. Being ‘one’ with serial killer is only useful if that act expresses higher order spiritual values like compassion and love as genuine acts rather than ideas or noble sentiments that do little more than signify the idea or sentiment. In a way we can aspire to be ‘all one’, but our acts [informed by where we are emotionally, intellectually or spiritually] do not reflect an actualisation of that aspiration.
I don’t think there is a single ‘controlling awareness’ so much as a uniting awareness that has transactional variants – e.g. between me [a sense of individual self] and deity [the One] there is a complex skein of connection. There is a persistent philosophical problem that comes across as a kind of Zen koan – free will and predestination are both real at the same time. So control is both within and beyond me. This ‘problem’ is still not resolved intellectually, despite an ocean of ink being devoted to discussion of it.
I see a distinction between ‘controlling’ and ‘governing’ – at best there is a governing awareness. It is fairly clear to me that who I am is expressed in physical and non-physical ways. So I like the idea of a ‘higher self’ that places the me I know in this world as pretty much the ‘lower self’. The mystical traditions have humans comprising 7 ‘bodies’. Theosophywales.com says as well as the physical body we have and Etheric Body, an Astral Body, a Mental Body (with a lower and higher configuration) a Buddhic Body, an Atmic or Spiritual Body, and a Monadic Spark or ray of the Divine Over-Soul.
This idea goes back to the ancient Egyptians and found also in the Hindu tradition. So where would be place a locus of control? Perhaps along the whole chain of our being rather than in a single location. The problem is that if you imagine that chain of ‘bodies’ there is a link between the physical [time and space] and the ineffable [beyond time and space] – and actualisation happens in both realms.
Our Christian heritage gives us a very controlly mentality – with idea like being obedient to God’s will – as if we were in a position to oppose the will of deity. But that’s about stuff and stuff happening. A mystical take is that the divine will is to be and to know – and that has an uncertainty principle built in. In one sense our lives are probabilistic, but in another they are also inhabited by choice. The paradox is that the divine can both not know and know at the same time – and there cannot be an alternative to that. Reality is finally messy and incomprehensible to us.
As to ‘voices’ – check out William Baldwin’s Spirit Releasement Therapy. This sits well with shamanic insights as well as Joe Fisher’s The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, traditional beliefs in how the dead influence the living and communications with the ‘dead’. As well, from my own experience there are good guiding voices too. Baldwin shows how illness and madness can be the result of spirit attachments (so too Jane Kent’s The Goddess and the Shaman).
Is there a single "control centre" behind reality or are there several agencies which can intervene in the mind-matter continuum that we inhabit (regardless of whether there might have been a single source having given rise to these many 'animistic agencies')?
I think are multiple agencies – gods, angels and the like. In fact I think there is a densely populated ecosystem with a number [unknown] of primary agencies who generate other agencies in a complex descending hierarchy, finally expressing in the physical plane as what we know as animism. At least this what the great systems [like Indian, Qabalistic and Hermetic] indicate – and it is consistent with the shamanic traditions as well.
Quite some time ago I sought from an impeccable teaching source some information about gods, which I was told were human inventions. I was assured they were not, and if they elected in engage with us we’d know it. They have will, and intent and things do happen within their scope of determination.
So yes, a single source [the One] gives rise to many, and some of that many exert influence here – but its mostly hidden and incomprehensible [our science is too crude and lopsided]
This is crucial in my opinion because if there really was a single intelligence in control then we would individually be controlled too, so all that is would ultimately be some kind of onanistic act on the part of this 'God' (the word God in the monotheistic sense of the term would be appropriate, in that it would be just one entity and all-powerful) - frankly, he would basically be acting like an adolescent playing with himself while trying to imagine to be with a real partner (but no, he's on his own) :-). Also, the nature of this world would show it to be a masochistic God, because it is inflicting pain on itself ("nature red in tooth and claw") - yes, masochistic practices are something SOME people apparently use to extract pleasure from them, but certainly not all. Personally, I am not at all attracted to it. And the overwhelming majority of sentient creatures seem to agree with me, because they try to escape from pain, suffering and death, and struggle to survive. So it seems more plausible to me that any original unity has been lost and we are now many (VERY many) rather than "one".
The difference between a single agency and multiple agencies is complex. My favourite analogy is government. A state has an overarching government divided into departments or ministries, each of which has operational subsets, expressing finally as teams and then individuals. As an individual public servant I am a delegate of a minister and a representative of the government – and ergo of the community. So all is one in principle, but many in our experiential actuality.
Simple systems do not generate complexity. There seems to be a point in great complexity where small acts become influential. So in a way God’s defence against his own onanist propensity is vast complexity – so there is a chance of another arising. This to me is the root of the Taoist model – and the idea of the Goddess being the mother of all being. But this is getting into very deep stuff. My point is only to say that are other ways of seeing things.
So with pain and suffering. We assume pain and suffering is the same thing on all dimensions. But it can’t be. Our biological nature abhors what is essential in nature from the perspective of organic being. But that does not mean that this is the only value set to be applied. Nature operates only because there is a constant cycle of death and birth – and that has to be good at some level.
This would in turn mean that there is not a single orchestrating agency behind the many "strange phenomena" (including syncs) that people experience. This seems to me more plausible (but I'm interested in your opinion!) unless one assumes that this "functional and active intelligence" is actively schizophrenic and pursuing different interests in different "expressions" of itself, while being aware of it (but then we would spontaneously, naturally go along with it and not really dislike suffering and death, right?). I mean, even NDEs are about PERSONAL survival after death....I am not at all an expert in NDEs and I must say I'm not particularly interested in them but the experiencers describe their meetings with relatives, during which they are told that "life continues" after death, and I think that all those concerned take it to imply that their own individuality survives....(mediums of course provide "evidence" of the same thing, ie individual survival after death).
I suppose that when I say “functional and active intelligence” I mean it more as a matrix than an entity. I am of the school that sees the divine as essence that is beyond description (called The One) and from which distil agencies (of The One, but not as The One). So any reference to God as an agent cannot be The One – but an aspect. It can seem like mind bending metaphysics but its just a description of what polytheistic systems have [monotheism has all kinds of problems that are resolved only when it behaves like a faux polytheism]. For example, if you have any familiarity with Qabala you see how Kether divides into Chokmah (2) and Binah (3) and there are further emanations. That’s a neat system. The Hindu system is more complex, but the principle is more or less the same – so long as we do not forget that map is not the territory and thinking tools are just that – and not reality.
Life expresses in the manifest world, but it not dependent on it. Were it not so we could not have spirits or gods. Otherwise you would have a mysterious force coming from nowhere we can imagine, activating matter, and dissipating when it is done, or matter is done. So-called ‘science’ objects to NDEs when it cannot even cobble together any sensible alternative theory to explain life. It may object to the spirit explanation – but it is universal and makes sense when there is no actual alternative scientific theory that has any merit. It is one thing for materialists to object to a vast sophisticated body of thought on the grounds that it offends against their personal feelings and another to oppose that vast body of knowledge with some actual theories based on some actual evidence.
I'd be interested in hearing your take on this supposed unity of purpose/single awareness OR lack of (or lost) unity of awareness in "what is", because to me this is a crucial thing, especially if we are to "engage" with syncs in a useful way as you wrote (a lot of people, astonishingly for me, think they convey a specific, literal message, such as that that they should do or not do something, or that the End of Times is nigh or who knows what else). Certainly, especially for those who take these things literally, assuming that all syncs come from the same, single, all-powerful agency is very different from speculating that they may come from different "animistic agencies" who may have profoundly different intentions and wills (good or bad intentions towards us).
This is the problem with being conditioned by monotheism – you can’t have a subtle understanding without falling into heresy. Christianity is tougher still because it has pillars of faith that are really like fence posts that demark the limits of allowable intellectual and emotional territory – go beyond and your soul is in jeopardy, not to mention your flesh in days gone by.
Synchs may be a manifestation of a ‘technology’ that can be accessed by any nonphysical agent with the means to do so – but this not simple ‘technology’, rather sophisticated. My experience is, and I can’t say this is universal, that the ‘bad’ agents mostly lack the wherewithal to be very sophisticated (there are exceptions, but they are mercifully rare). However a lot of harm can be done by these ‘lower level’ agents. I am being cautious here because this also complex and brevity may misrepresent actuality.
(....)
With reference to this, I am pretty sure that there have been plenty of cases of bad presentiments which turned out to be wrong. I am not at all disputing your experience - just saying that if things were so clear (ie, if premonitions/intuitions always turned out to be right), then even hard-core materialists would believe in them as they would be very easy to prove "scientifically". However, lots of "bad feelings"/premonitions/predictions do not materialise (there are plenty of documented cases). Also, why do some people have these intuitions/hints and some don't? Why, in your opinion, does the veil get slightly lifted at times for some and not for others? Incidentally, most religions see a moral dimension to existence, and despite many logical contradictions they distinguish between good and evil (in particular, ALL religions tell us to "be good"). Is it all just a human interpretation, given the arbitrary way in which the universe seem to be running? (no demonstrable justice or fairness). Why should we "be good" and thus better than the way this material word functions? Why not just be indifferent as it seems to be, say it's all perfect as it is and do what we like? (Materialists would in fact maintain that we are only "good" because it serves us: cooperation is ultimately useful for the individual, thus love/compassion is a selfish act in disguise.)
Bad feelings that aren’t substantiated can be down to anxieties that are unfounded, and sundry ways we have of fooling ourselves, as well as induced feelings by agents intent on preventing us from doing things that are good for us. So-called ‘panic attacks’ may be induced by agents – and there is nothing real to fear. Another thing is that a premonition might result in sufficient changes in behaviour to avoid the adverse event. For example I delayed a long drive because of a bad feeling for 30 mins. The drive was uneventful and I have no way of knowing whether that delay made the difference or the feeling was BS. Depending on a person’s emotional state a mild stimulation can lead to over reaction. So many possible ways a stimulation can be caused and interpreted.
Hard-core materialists tend to be unresponsive because they will almost always rationalise a stimulation away as a reflex. If the possibility of the intuition being real is not there then anything that looks like it is dismissed as something else. But on the other hand intuition plays a huge role in science – as any honest history of science will show. And so much good work has been done in psi research by very competent sciences to demonstrate that intuition is very real. Not so much with spirit communication these days.
This is all complex and subtle because, I believe, we are dealing with an ecology that may provide contact with a variety of agents. The habit conditioned by our culture is to think in fixed terms with a simple array of agents. In the bush awareness has to be fluid and subtle because the array of agents is more complex – the less seemingly structured the ecology the more we must have a freer alertness that is more adaptive to sudden stimulus. If our cultural environment is more bushlike we are more open. In comparison a cultural ecology dominated by dogmas has no need for subtle awareness. Hence it seems that the educated class tends to be less open to things than the lower class – as a general rule. It has nothing to do with levels of education so much as the degree of certainty that education brings.
(...)
Yes, I too sometimes have the impression that we are supposed to talk about these strange phenomena - maybe some "benevolent agency" wishes to help us to "see through" what seems very real (the material world) but is after all only some kind of "simulation", in the sense of a very incomplete perception of a much bigger underlying reality "projecting" it. But of course many of us are wary to do so (me included) because most people are only interested in their daily lives and until they experience something that truly shakes them they will dismiss all this as "woo". I should know because I was like most people until about 5 years ago :-)
Yeah, so many folk want to hide from what is, and it is true that you can detune your senses to operate only in the physical world, so long as it is simple and predictable. To some folk getting by means walling out disruptive sensations so they can enjoy what little they have pulled together. I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies here in the sense that unless you are living in wild and dangerous place shutting down is preferable – to preserve what little one has. Instability is a virtue because it admits of the possibility of profound change. There is a risk but also a great liberty. Certainty is death. You can’t engage with people full of certainty.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts! Of course I would have plenty more things I would like to hear your take on but this is more than enough for now!
This has become very long and may not be what the forum is about. Alex will undoubtedly opine sagely on the length – and I await his thought. I am happy to chat at length off line if that becomes the best thing to do. My new blog, aspiringanimist.com, has a feedback email address you could use to contact me direct. But if Alex is cool about this being a public conversation I am happy to continue via the forum.