Just a thought.

So I’m new here. Ran across the Skeptiko podcast via another cast and haven’t stopped listening. Great work Alex!
Well informed and based in an intellectual setting which is fresh in itself.

My own personal opinion of the subject of extended Consciousness is that the brain is a transceiver. We live in an unseen sea of consciousness. This is outside of human constructs such as time and space.

We are separated from the source of our own volition, this is entirely for a purpose of learning. Consciousness is hierarchical in nature and is both primordial and fundamental. My hypothesis is that we are a fraction of that state, learning in order to educate the whole. All life is within the hierarchical order and therefore sentient to degrees within their hierarchical station if you like.

Progressive science such as Quantum mechanics and physics can fit into the hierarchy, and indeed can help to explain some of the extended consciousness experience. Does non locality help to explain the ability to exist in more than one plain of existence such as OBE or NDE etc...
I think so.

Cosmologically life on this planet is infant, there are a great many things unanswered, I feel we are shifting our awareness to more clearly begin to understand the nature of life in the material and immaterial plains of existence and what that existence means.

These are exciting times indeed.
 
Thank you for engaging. When I agreed, I was thinking about it this way: consciousness is hierarchical in nature and is both immanent/inherent/primordial in that sense, and fundamental in the sense of the transcendent/underlying/overall metaversal matrix of consciousness. ThetaK may have been referring to something else, but that's what I meant. If you have time, here's Chapter 2 of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, which speaks to this: https://asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-about-simple-conscious-universe.html

From the aforementioned article:
"One spiritual implication of this fractal model is that the Universal Unit of Consciousness may be visualized as both immanent and transcendent, as many spiritual traditions claim. Immanent within every one of my body's Units of Consciousness, at the tiniest fractal crossover point at the center of each toroidal Unit of Consciousness. Transcendent at the outer edge of the Very Large, where our Universal UC nests against the infinite, undifferentiated Metaversal UC ("God the Father," "Sat," "Pure Consciousness," the "Undifferentiated Unity"). We humans are suspended thusly, a particular fractal emanation of, and located within, creation, yet patterned directly from pure consciousness. "
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consciousness is hierarchical in nature and is both immanent/inherent/primordial in that sense, and fundamental in the sense of the transcendent/unde

I get what you mean, but I think the term hierarchial comes with religious and even judicial baggage. Hierarchy implies the universe is a judicial system of sorts with a "boss" at the top. This is western cultural baggage from our Byzantine friends.

Rather than a hierarchy, which implies dominion over lower levels, I prefer to see things as relational, which is more parsimonious with the cycles we see in nature and by extension, reality. Is the whale more important than the plankton? Or the Plankton more important than the electrons in its structure?
 
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I'm not prejudiced against any position in the hierarchy. The foot is as important as the head, as anyone with foot pain will tell you. Every position in the hierarchy is crucial and indispensable. Imagine your body as comprised of countless billions of units of consciousness occupying all of the positions necessary to instantiate you. I can't say the molecules are less important than the proteins, or the liver less important than the brain. I can't say I don't appreciate the atoms, or the cells, or the enzymes inside of me, because every thing is equally essential to my survival.

I refer to hierarchies only as positional descriptors, not as better and worse to be. "The higher the fewer" simply describes the pyramidal shape that happens to occur as more numerous bodies link up to form the next level up. The next level up is always fewer, therefore its level holds fewer samples. So I happen to agree with all you have just said.

Except, truthfully, I do happen to believe in the One, so I guess you would call me Byzantine.

But get this--the One loves all of creation equally, for creation is the body of the One. The One doesn't Lord it over us. The One is us. It is not the top of the pile that is oppressing us. Our oppressors are fellow humans, and they are at our level of differentiation. The human king, president, or judge that sits atop our particular hierarchical cultural system in which we find ourselves is simply replicating a universal pattern of top-down administration. It's too bad that all humans are fallen and the administrators atop our cultural piles are selfishly flawed. I can only hope for leaders who are themselves inspired from Above to give righteous judgment. It rarely happens, I agree. Our leaders are perhaps more likely to be deluded by the Imitation than inspired by the One. Representative government attempts to spread the judgment out amongst our peers, so that the limitations of any single person's poor judgment is limited. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." But this is not a flaw in the hierarchical pattern; it's a flaw in egoic human behavior.

Eh?
 
Fair enough. As a side tangent, it's interesting to note that many people who have a concept of the one or a god figure in the judaeo-christian sense seem to accept at face value representative government as the best or only form of government worth considering on the mortal plain, yet believe in a heavenly celestial order, which is more akin to a monarchy (not saying this is your conception, or at least, you haven't say so explicitly).

As above, not below -- as it were. The American bible belt seems to be the perfect embodiment of this contradiction.
 
It seems to me that a good reason for limiting the absolute authority of mortal rulers is the fallen nature of humankind. The ruler is a fallen mortal with a strong, selfish ego. The ruler's job title is a different thing with an agenda of its own. At least with what we call a representative government, the ruler's whims are held in check by rule of law. It is actually the rule of law that is the kingly authority over, say, Americans, and not the president. That is why the Constitution is so important. In the U.S., the Constitution is actually the monarch. The President is its administrator/prime minister. And the Supreme Court is the interpreter of the will of the Constitution. Other countries may not restrict the authority of the leader in this manner, and so the leader's ego and selfish drives are unbridled and not necessarily best for the nation.

The One is the fount of Truth, Goodness, Justice, and Love. Not the king or the president or the senator. The Constitution explicitly gives true authority to the One (One nation, Under God), and constrains the earthly powers to do God's will, so to speak. A benign ruler is the best that we can hope for here on earth.

Does that all sound too theistic for you?
 
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