Can we believe eyewitnesses… did this 17th century monk levitate? |312|

I think this leads to other questions - why do we need to grow up? Why weren't we created to be at the mature state, whatever that is?

And it seems at least some of our negative behavior comes from our evolutionary heritage? So if we're supposed to mature why did we first evolve from an environment that is "red in tooth & claw"?

Perhaps most disconcerting is that why aren't we being guided as to how to grow up or why this is important? Why do we instead live in an environment that seems designed to orient us to a materialist or at least limited panpsychic worldview? (Of course there are hints, like that in the weirdness of QM, that suggest there's more.)

My go-to example is what if inside our skulls there was a little ball of light rather than extensive brain matter. Wouldn't that at least be a strong reminder that we are Yoda's "luminous beings" rather than "crude matter"? On the other hand, perhaps this would've ensured the old religions of the world stayed dominant, that as a species we couldn't take on some potentially necessary skepticism....which then leads to the question of why this skepticism might even be necessary....

What, exactly, is out there in the spiritual worlds (if they exist) that we need to wary of?
After 19 years of pondering these things, I have a strong inclination to believe that the answers have been there for a very, very, long time. Psychic phenomena, astral bodies, mental bodies, the "soul", laws of rebirth, miracles, mortality, the eternal, consciousness, etc., are all covered here:

http://www.summum.us/philosophy/patanjali/johnston/

Cheers,
Bill
 
Taken directly from the above source, this directly applies to the thread on Carroll, and scientific and philosophical views on reality and materialism:

7. The elements of sound intellection are: direct observation, inductive reason, and trustworthy testimony.
Each of these is a spiritual power, thinly veiled. Direct observation is the outermost form of the Soul's pure vision. Inductive reason rests on the great principles of continuity and correspondence; and these, on the supreme truth that all life is of the One. Trustworthy testimony, the sharing of one soul in the wisdom of another, rests on the ultimate oneness of all souls.

8. Unsound intellection is false understanding, not resting on a perception of the true nature of things.
The great example of unsound intellection is materialism, whereby to the reality and eternity of the soul is attributed the evanescence and perishableness that really belong to material things. This false reasoning, therefore, rests on a reversal of the true nature of things.

Cheers,
Bill
 
It's amazing what he says about Bach. I'm a musician and musicologist, and, since I was 10, I had the same reaction to his music. I would become completely mesmerized, not able to speak or move, feeling that I was in the presence of beauty and love so intense, I was about to be fulminated by its sheer perfection. Some pieces, particularly St. Matthew's Passion or Mass in B minor would (and still do) make my cry uncontrollably, such is the sense of intense, unbearable nostalgia It provokes in me. It's like being in a horrible prison, seeing from afar the images of the world of indescribable beauty and love. God's world. When I was 15, I almost jumped out of the window, listening to Kyrie Eleison from the Mass in B minor. Mi friend caught my by the shirt. I truly believe that Bach's music comes from the world we all will return to, the world infinitely better than this one.
Joseph Brodsky, a genius poet, wrote this about Bach, and I think one can't express it better:

Доброе утро, говорит Бах,
Доброе утро, говорит Бог

("Good morning", said Bach,
Good morning, replied God")

I always said that Bach's music is the only irrefutable, incontrovertible proof of the existence of God.
Hi Enrique... thx for this awesome story. Equally interesting is that fact that some people (like me for example) are almost spiritually tone deaf to music... I mean, it can move me on occasion, but nothing like what you (and other people I know) describe. It's an interesting difference.
 
How I Freed My Mind From The Cult of Materialism

It is a curious fact that we have successfully used our minds to penetrate profound secrets of the physical universe; but when it comes to grasping the nature of our minds, we are baffled.https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6889910938799271565#_edn1 This is the famous mind-body problem, the “hard” problem being to account for our consciousness, which is utterly unlike anything physical. The mind, it seems, has a hard time trying to understand itself.

In this essay, I describe how I evolved my view of the subject, which is deeply at odds with mainstream physicalism. Without putting a label on my view, there were two kinds of crucial step I had to take, theoretical and empirical.
 
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