Dr. Chris White Optimistic About Science Spirituality Crossover |402|

That begs the question then: Is science necessary but not sufficient? :)

If by 'necessary' you mean unavoidable (because they exist) then I agree. Given that science is actually a disciplined inquiry - and really nothing more - we can include 'Esoteric Science' as a science because it meets the requirements. But it is excluded from the club of sciences that self-identify as 'proper' science.

Science, in the proper sense of being a form of disciplined inquiry, could be both necessary and sufficient. When we consider science as a basket of disciplines, rather than a club of privileged fields, we can imagine a holistic sufficiency. There is, for example, no reason why religion should not be 'scientific', or, indeed, a scientific discipline in its own right. I define religion as a shared human response to the awareness of being in an animate reality. But then I do describe myself as an 'aspiring animist'. The shared human response to our perceptions of the nature of reality is important. The fact that some have a materialist POV is fine - but it is not sufficiently shared to give it status. Christianity invented appalling garble called theology because it was hamstrung by 'pillars of faith' - propagandistic irrationality that had to be treated as sane and rational. We cannot understand the rise of materialism without comprehending the catastrophic gobbledegook of theology and religious dogma.

By confining valid sciences to the art of finding and then measuring stuff, we allow the materialists to define what is valid and valued knowledge, and what is an esteemed discipline of inquiry. The denigration of the 'inner sciences' as mere sentiment and opinion is no more than materialists deciding to trash what they can't find and measure. There's something fundamentally Trumpian about that passionate invalidation what it cannot accept, accommodate or abide as a valid way of knowing.

We need only look at the Great Pyramid to see an example of the fusion of sciences - physical and metaphysical - into a harmony that still leaves us in awe millennia later. For me that's a better benchmark than anything else I know for showing how the physical serves the metaphysical - and not the other way round - which has the absurd notion of the metaphysical being an epi-phenomenon of the physical. That is not only crude, but contra evidence - and hence not 'scientific' by any criterion.

This 'insufficient' science violates its own precepts constantly. It does not gather data or evidence. It does not then make a reasonable inference, because it cannot. In short, it neither inquires, nor applies discipline. It employs the tools of propaganda only. I like Michael Pollan's idea of 'edible food-like substances' (manufactured stuff that can be eaten, but should not be) . A lot of the insufficient science could be described 'thinkable reason-like notions' (concocted stuff that could be thought, but should not be).

What might be objectionable to a materialistic scientist on entirely rational grounds might be entirely acceptable to a metaphysical scientist on entirely rational grounds. We are all obliged to make a 'metaphysical guess' at the foundation of our thought - and we proceed to construct our thought on the assumption that our metaphysical guess is right. In the case of the materialist, the evidence that they are wrong abounds - and they respond by challenging the evidence, and not their guess. Challenging evidence is fine, but it is no good alone. It must be accompanied by a challenge of the premises and presumptions of the inquirer. The two must always go together.

In my romantic idealisation of skepticism I know I have made a guess, but I constantly tune it against the evidence that I permit myself to experience. I don't expect to be right. I expect to be true to my subjective existential sense of who and what I am. I am certain of the essence, but not of the detail. And while the Devil is in the detail the Divine is in the essence.

At the heart of inquiry must be that paradoxical doubt of one's essential being, but also an assertion of its validity and certainty. But I guess that may take an experience to precipitate that passion. It is what the mystically inclined seek - but what the materialist intentionally avoids. Our core reality is not certainty, but a harmony of certainty and uncertainty. This notion is exemplified in the famous Yin/Yang symbol of Taoism.

Either extreme of religiosity or scientism destroys that harmony. The ability to inhabit that certainty/uncertainty watershed is, I think, where real 'Science' dwells - is where disciplined inquiry is best conducted. People obviously operate to their capacity and exaggerate or inflate the ability. Its a standard human thing. So I want to say that for me proper Science exists only at that certainty/uncertainty boundary. It is territory that was occupied by mystics, yogis and high-level magicians (many of whom possessed considerable material knowledge BTW). I am not about to opine of who, among conventional scientists, might occupy that space these days. I have no idea. But I would be astonished if none did.
 
If by 'necessary' you mean unavoidable (because they exist) then I agree. Given that science is actually a disciplined inquiry - and really nothing more - we can include 'Esoteric Science' as a science because it meets the requirements. But it is excluded from the club of sciences that self-identify as 'proper' science.

Yes necessary, not simply because 'they' exist (bad philosophers - social skeptics - who hold science hostage), but moreover because 'incremental hypothesis in risk inquiry resolved by inference driven from observation and critical path of prior art' is necessary because it exists as the reality of our realm (causal prison?). However, as restrictive as that statement appears, I would include softer sciences inside that domain, as you have here. The differentiator being 'probative' versus 'reliable' bases of observation.

As an intelligence agent, if I am compensated by mission success - I prefer probative information, which I can increase in reliability. If I am being paid by the clock, I prefer reliable information, which I hope to spin so that it becomes probative. In science today, we have a bunch of clock-sitters in control. They are simply following the money.

Science, in the proper sense of being a form of disciplined inquiry, could be both necessary and sufficient. When we consider science as a basket of disciplines, rather than a club of privileged fields, we can imagine a holistic sufficiency. There is, for example, no reason why religion should not be 'scientific', or, indeed, a scientific discipline in its own right. I define religion as a shared human response to the awareness of being in an animate reality. But then I do describe myself as an 'aspiring animist'. The shared human response to our perceptions of the nature of reality is important. The fact that some have a materialist POV is fine - but it is not sufficiently shared to give it status. Christianity invented appalling garble called theology because it was hamstrung by 'pillars of faith' - propagandistic irrationality that had to be treated as sane and rational. We cannot understand the rise of materialism without comprehending the catastrophic gobbledegook of theology and religious dogma.

Yes, which is why I say that science is necessary but not sufficient. If an alien lands on the White House lawn and a Zeblork steps out of a plasma-craft gift to mankind; as a welcome of mankind into the local Federation - this is not a discovery of science. This is revelatory (a meteor with microbe fossils on it would do the same thing). That is why I say that science (a method) is necessary but not sufficient. The irony exists in that much of what we regard as 'the body of science' is revelatory in origin, and much of what we regard as 'pseudoscience' stems from 'incremental hypothesis in risk inquiry resolved by inference driven from observation and critical path of prior art'. The distinguishing factor is in its utilization of probative, over simply reliable, data.

By confining valid sciences to the art of finding and then measuring stuff, we allow the materialists to define what is valid and valued knowledge, and what is an esteemed discipline of inquiry. The denigration of the 'inner sciences' as mere sentiment and opinion is no more than materialists deciding to trash what they can't find and measure. There's something fundamentally Trumpian about that passionate invalidation what it cannot accept, accommodate or abide as a valid way of knowing.

Science is today, hostage of those who might be called 'Club Reliable'. Those who deny the history of our knowledge development and act as vigilantes of knowledge. However, they are not scientists who enforce this - they are instead bad philosophers. The problem is better titled 'philosophism' than 'scientism'. But rather than impugn philosophy, I further then choose to call them social skeptics (pretend scientists).

We are all obliged to make a 'metaphysical guess' at the foundation of our thought - and we proceed to construct our thought on the assumption that our metaphysical guess is right. In the case of the materialist, the evidence that they are wrong abounds - and they respond by challenging the evidence, and not their guess. Challenging evidence is fine, but it is no good alone. It must be accompanied by a challenge of the premises and presumptions of the inquirer. The two must always go together.

I am not about to opine of who, among conventional scientists, might occupy that space these days. I have no idea. But I would be astonished if none did.

Agreed. I did a tally of the The 150 Things the World’s Smartest People Are Afraid Of - an article in the online magazine Edge, a few years back. The article outlined the results of a survey of both real scientists, and those who pretend to be scientists - skeptics, science communicators, or science celebrities and enthusiasts. The results of the survey fell thusly:

What Concerns Real Scientists (Top 5 Ranking)
  1. Screening of Information/Control of What is Regarded as Acceptable Science
  2. Loss of the Individual/Rights
  3. Loss of Funding/Research
  4. Virus/Pathogen/Genetic Engineering Threats
  5. Unknown Unknowns
What Concerns Pretend Scientists (Top 5 Ranking)
  1. Pseudoscience/Religion Promotion
  2. Conspiracy Theory/Anti-Big Institution Activism
  3. Disillusionment/Social Waning
  4. Stagnation (Social or Technical)
  5. Social Collapse/Political Ineptness
Number of Real Scientists who agreed with the Pretend Scientists (Top 5)
  1. Pseudoscience/Religion Promotion = 0
  2. Conspiracy Theory/Anti-Big Institution Activism = 0
  3. Disillusionment/Social Waning = 0
  4. Stagnation (Social or Technical) = 1
  5. Social Collapse/Political Ineptness = 2
Real scientists worry exactly about what we are discussing here - they just cannot say it, because they fear the presence and tyranny of the pretend scientists...
 
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It is also an error to say Disproved Nihilism ≅ Proved Abrahamism (not that you are insisting on that here garry):)

We have to remember that Abrahamism is also a discredited religion, bearing an imperious, cruel and consistently misleading model of Intelligence which underpins the Universe. This definition of God has failed over and over again as a reliable faith, much less as a hypothesis. And the people of the Western part of our globe chronically suffer as this horrid model of God is bound up and placed upon their shoulders as a burden. They live quiet terrified lives, squeezed until every last drop of money is extracted from them. All with a false smile of blessed assurance on their theatrical faces.

As bad as Materialistic Nihilism is, Abrahamism is even darker and more sadistic. And given the choice of Atheism or going back into Hellianity, I choose Atheism any day.
I agree, I'm an atheistic occultist, I was taken back when my teacher said he likes occultists with an atheistic "mindset"
 
I guess I’d have one question to tee up from this interview and that is, what do you make of the premise of Chris’ book? Is there a subtler, deeper interplay between science and spirituality and is it being revealed, to a certain extent, in technology advancement?

It sounds like an interesting premise to me. Echoes of UFO people talking about the changing nature of UFO phenomenon over time.

Reminds me of the old, kind of folk-psychology saying about how you can never truly know your spouse. According to this saying, you can be married for fifty years and know just about all there is to know about another person, but you can never truly KNOW them. You can never really know them because you're always seeing them through the lense of your own personality and experiences. So of course as you yourself age and understand more (or less) about yourself, your understanding of your spouse will change as well.

I think that frame can be used to compare our day-to-day experience with experiences that feel like the OTHER side. I tend to think that we can never truly know the OTHER side because we're always in THIS side. In the strongest sense of this frame, the OTHER is well and truly unknowable, and any weird stuff that happens on THIS side may or may not be related to the OTHER, and if it is related, the relationship would be unknowable.

In the weaker version of this frame, weird stuff that happens on THIS side is really some taste of the OTHER, but it's "translated" in some indefinable way, so that it's still hopelessly situated in terms of THIS side.

Either way, as culture changes, it would be expected that our "weird stuff" would change along with it.

The guest's take on enchantment is interesting, as well. If I'm following his perspective correctly, he may be saying that we're not really "disenchanted" in this day and age. I think it's easy for people to bemoan perceived "disenchantment" in the modern world, but it may just be the case that those folks are using "disenchantment" as a synonym for human pain and suffering, and they may be thinking of enchantment as some hypothetical resolution for the usual anxieties and discomforts that people of all eras have experienced. If that's the case, we're probaly no more or less enchanted than people at any time in history. I've been reading Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, who has a lot to say about discomforts of human consciousness. Definately a fascinating read and even quite poetic at times, though I think he's coming from a secular perspective, so be warned.
 
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It sounds like an interesting premise to me. Echoes of UFO people talking about the changing nature of UFO phenomenon over time.

Reminds me of the old, kind of folk-psychology saying about how you can never truly know your spouse. According to this saying, you can be married for fifty years and know just about all there is to know about another person, but you can never truly KNOW them. You can never really know them because you're always seeing them through the lense of your own personality and experiences. So of course as you yourself age and understand more (or less) about yourself, your understanding of your spouse will change as well.

I think that frame can be used to compare our day-to-day experience with experiences that feel like the OTHER side. I tend to think that we can never truly know the OTHER side because we're always in THIS side. In the strongest sense of this frame, the OTHER is well and truly unknowable, and any weird stuff that happens on THIS side may or may not be related to the OTHER, and if it is related, the relationship would be unknowable.

In the weaker version of this frame, weird stuff that happens on THIS side is really some taste of the OTHER, but it's "translated" in some indefinable way, so that it's still hopelessly situated in terms of THIS side.

Either way, as culture changes, it would be expected that our "weird stuff" would change along with it.

The guest's take on enchantment is interesting, as well. If I'm following his perspective correctly, he may be saying that we're not really "disenchanted" in this day and age. I think it's easy for people to bemoan perceived "disenchantment" in the modern world, but it may just be the case that those folks are using "disenchantment" as a synonym for human pain and suffering, and they may be thinking of enchantment as some hypothetical resolution for the usual anxieties and discomforts that people of all eras have experienced. If that's the case, we're probaly no more or less enchanted than people at any time in history. I've been reading Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, who has a lot to say about discomforts of human consciousness. Definately a fascinating read and even quite poetic at times, though I think he's coming from a secular perspective, so be warned.

I really dont think its them and us or this realm or dimension or that, just different thought patterns interplaying.
Things become clearer the further you stand back and stop putting things or experiences in boxes,perhaps that is why
you see things so clearly in altered states... the boxes are gone.We need some de-education.
 
I think it's easy for people to bemoan perceived "disenchantment" in the modern world, but it may just be the case that those folks are using "disenchantment" as a synonym for human pain and suffering, and they may be thinking of enchantment as some hypothetical resolution for the usual anxieties and discomforts that people of all eras have experienced. If that's the case, we're probaly no more or less enchanted than people at any time in history.

I don't buy this assessment. Traditional cultures provided a certitude about the world and one's place in it. Disenchantment is the by-product of a culture adrift in a life without meaning or purpose and severed from direct communion with the divine.

We have been deluded into accepting the notion in the west that a life of comfort leads to happiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Disenchantment is the direct result of a culture in experiencial atrophy and divorced from its spiritual traditions - and I don't mean organized religion.

Life for many in the modern world is disenchanted because it is devoid of meaning, increasingly meanial, crushingly boring, and perpertually terrifying.

When ancient man sat and looked at the stars it invoked reverence and awe. Modern man feels the same experience needs to be captured on a phone and placed on Instagram to be real. The abstract value of likes in a digital space being more valuable than a direct and personal experience with nature.
 
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I don't buy this assessment. Traditional cultures provided a certitude about the world and one's place in it. Disenchantment is the by-product of a culture adrift in a life without meaning or purpose and severed from direct communion with the divine.

We have been deluded into accepting the notion in the west that a life of comfort leads to happiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Disenchantment is the direct result of a culture in experiencial atrophy and divorced from its spiritual traditions - and I don't mean organized religion.

Life for many in the modern world is dischanted because it is devoid of meaning, increasingly meanial, crushingly boring, and perpertually terrifying.

When ancient man sat and looked at the stars it invoked reverence and awe. Modern man feels the same experience needs to be captured on a phone and placed on Instagram to be real. The abstract value of likes in a digital space being more valuable than a direct and personal experience with nature.
I half agree, but that leaves my other half!

When people say things like that, I always have the suspicion that they are thinking about other people - not themselves! To even be on this forum you have to have access to a computer - a quintessentially disenchanted modern device - and we are using computers to share ideas on a scale that would not have been possible a generation back. Imagine for a second looking out at the stars until you got bored, and then going to sleep ready for the next day of hard toil!

Also, "certitude about the world" can rapidly become boring, or crystallise into religious tyranny.

David
 
I really dont think its them and us or this realm or dimension or that, just different thought patterns interplaying.
Things become clearer the further you stand back and stop putting things or experiences in boxes,perhaps that is why
you see things so clearly in altered states... the boxes are gone.We need some de-education.

Blaise,
I generally agree with the first part of your comment (i.e. there is no "other realm" as many often conceive of it - only realities created by the interactions of thoughts, energies and focus of attention).

I understand what you are getting at in the second part about altered states and no boxes, but I disagree in an important, albeit, perhaps, nuanced way.. IMO, altered states are still realities created interactions of thoughts, energies and focus of attention. They are just a different set of realities than the ones you're used to because the boxes you're habitually confined to have either opened enough that you can see out of them or, in more extreme instances, have been removed.

I used to also believe that altered states were somehow more "real" due to the opening or removal of the boxes. Now I understand that any reality you're in is just as real as any other reality you may experience. It's all you, man. I think it's healthy to experience other realities; which means, at bottom, to experience a wider range of the totality of oneself and to understand better the freedom of mind that is one's natural God given state of being, but, again, none of the places you visit are The Final True Reality. Concluding that one of them is, is to miss the point entirely, IMO.

If you always listened to classic music on the radio because that's the station the dial was set to when you bought the radio and you didn't know the dial could be moved and then, one day, you accidently bumped the dial or were screwing with it to see what it does, and you switched the band to rock & roll, it might be a quite an experience. But you don't say. "Rock & Roll is the true reality. That's true music as opposed to classical because I found it on an altered radio station band!". It's just another station. You don't want to get stuck there either as you were once stuck at classical. Now that you know the dial can move - the true value of altered states is showing us that it can - you can now explore further; pick up some country & western, some jazz, a baseball game, news, folk music, etc,, etc.
 
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I really dont think its them and us or this realm or dimension or that, just different thought patterns interplaying.
Things become clearer the further you stand back and stop putting things or experiences in boxes,perhaps that is why
you see things so clearly in altered states... the boxes are gone.We need some de-education.

Thanks for the feedback, blaise, this a good conversation. For me, when we start talking about some of these altered states, fringe experiences, and esoteric ideas, we're really pushing language deep into the land of metaphor. So I can appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, and I don't think we're too off from each other.

It could be that we would disagree on just how much we can "expand" our thought patterns .... I tend to favor a model where there would always be some "thing" that's well beyond the limits of even our most "expanded" thought patterns and our most extreme and profound altered states. That some "thing" would be SO beyond that our current language is not up to the task of talking about it. For example, maybe there's some "aspect of reality" that's well BEYOND us, and it's defining feature is that it can't be experienced by humans. By definition, we would never be able to know about it. The border becomes a place of interest. In this model, even the most profound mystical experience is still on THIS side of that metaphorical border. Wittgenstein and other philosophers messed around with this idea: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent". And some translations of the first lines of the tao de ching: "The Dao that can be understood cannot be the primal, or cosmic, Dao, just as an idea that can be expressed in words cannot be the infinite idea."

I don't buy this assessment. Traditional cultures provided a certitude about the world and one's place in it. Disenchantment is the by-product of a culture adrift in a life without meaning or purpose and severed from direct communion with the divine.

We have been deluded into accepting the notion in the west that a life of comfort leads to happiness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Disenchantment is the direct result of a culture in experiencial atrophy and divorced from its spiritual traditions - and I don't mean organized religion.

Life for many in the modern world is dischanted because it is devoid of meaning, increasingly meanial, crushingly boring, and perpertually terrifying.

When ancient man sat and looked at the stars it invoked reverence and awe. Modern man feels the same experience needs to be captured on a phone and placed on Instagram to be real. The abstract value of likes in a digital space being more valuable than a direct and personal experience with nature.

You may be right, Shapethrower. You make a compelling argument here.

I think I took from the interview that the guest was of the opinion that enchantment hasn't really gone away, but that it has changed along with the changes in the culture. In support of that notion, I would say that I see a lot of "belief" and "faith" in an "enchanted" world view on this board, for example, and in the culture at large. I think there's quite a lot of surveys and polling that suggest a majority of people believe in things like an afterlife, spirits, angels, etc. A lot of people in the skeptiko forums believe in extended consciousness.

In support of YOUR comment here, I would look to our secular democracy and our secular judicial system as key drivers of non-spiritual perspectives, followed by intellectual perspectives driven first by the shift to agriculturalism and politicized spirituality, the shift to politicized monotheism, the enlightenment, industrial revolution, technological innovation that made the world wars so devastating, philosophies of existentialism/absurdism, and the current era of technological overdrive. The social, philosophical, and technological interplay is complex, of course, but I think your comment above is well supported.

On the "third hand", I read Ernest Becker, and he zeroes in persuasively on the terror you mention. For all people, according to Becker, the transcendent mental experience of the human that is coupled with a frail, death-prone physical body are in themselves the primary facts of ALL human life that drives the spiritual impulse, even in hunter-gatherer groups. I'm not an expert on the hunter-gatherer groups, it's something I would like to learn a lot more about (research suggestions are welcome). I tend to think a lot of contemporary understanding of such groups has been distorted by descriptions and written material that is inherently mired in Western thought and values. Even if that's the case, the bits and pieces of research I've come across suggest that a lot of the ritual life of hunter-gatherers is done with a strong degree of playfulness -- for example the elaborate mask performances or there was one I was reading about where the men and women reverse rolls for a period of time. At least some of these rituals weren't all about creating certitude about the world, instead, some of them seem to be about playing with reality, honoring and living the human sense of "make believe" and the plastic quality of the human sense of reality, which is quite different than the sense of certitude.

This is also, to some degree, what I think Raymond Moody was getting at with his last appearance on Skeptiko (#174). He posits that "nonsense" is a third category of logic; nonsense experience is beyond the true/false binary of classical logic. For me, that seems to be the most promising avenue for pursuing enchantment in our current era. A lot of folks I think experience this in reading fiction novels and watching tv and movies. Even in fiction, you get "emotional truth" that can be at least temporarily satisfying. I don't necessarily think that people need some certain faith in some divinities or extended realms. There's space even in a materialist paradigm to open up the third category that Moody talks about -- these spaces are giant, gaping spaces not at all understood by enlightenment science, we may just need to articulate and stake out a more hands-on version. The space may shrink as enlightenment science continues to evolve ... or if we evolve this space, then enlightenment science may eventually reckon with it, and that could at last be what reverses the direction of causality that Alex and the guest mention in the interview. In other words, instead of "spirituality" taking it's cues from science as the guest was talking about, maybe this would push science to really start taking the cue from spirit.

People who are interested in this idea may call themselves spiritual but not "spiritual". An evolution from spiritual but not religious. They may have a practice like the guest describes where he starts a prayer practice as a teen even though he doesn't particularly believe in any god or spirits to pray to.

I predict that trying to establish the "spiritual" as simply on the "true" side of the true/false binary will continue to be a dead end, because that effort will never produce the widespread verisimilitude with observation that science/tech are able to achieve. You CAN get to widespread verisimilitude in the spiritual sense if you posit an "imaginal" or "pre-conceptual" spiritual experience that doesn't insist on the "existence" of something BEYOND. (See my comments above about Wittgenstein, etc, for why we can't ever establish the "existence" of some "thing" who's very definition may be that it doesn't "exist" as we typically understand "existence".)

I half agree, but that leaves my other half!

Also, "certitude about the world" can rapidly become boring, or crystallise into religious tyranny.

David

I agree. Also, I'm not so sure that "certitude" about the world is the same thing as enchantment. It may be that for some hunters-gatherers, the enchantment may be more to do with playing around with the plastic nature of our own awareness and sense of meaning.

(Edited to fix minor typos.)
 
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Blaise,
I generally agree with the first part of your comment (i.e. there is no "other realm" as many often conceive of it - only realities created by the interactions of thoughts, energies and focus of attention).

I understand what you are getting at in the second part about altered states and no boxes, but I disagree in an important, albeit, perhaps, nuanced way.. IMO, altered states are still realities created interactions of thoughts, energies and focus of attention. They are just a different set of realities than the ones you're used to because the boxes you're habitually confined to have either opened enough that you can see out of them or, in more extreme instances, have been removed.

I used to also believe that altered states were somehow more "real" due to the opening or removal of the boxes. Now I understand that any reality you're in is just as real as any other reality you may experience. It's all you, man. I think it's healthy to experience other realities; which means, at bottom, to experience a wider range of the totality of oneself and to understand better the freedom of mind that is one's natural God given state of being, but, again, none of the places you visit are The Final True Reality. Concluding that one of them is, is to miss the point entirely, IMO.

If you always listened to classic music on the radio because that's the station the dial was set to when you bought the radio and you didn't know the dial could be moved and then, one day, you accidently bumped the dial or were screwing with it to see what it does, and you switched the band to rock & roll, it might be a quite an experience. But you don't say. "Rock & Roll is the true reality. That's true music as opposed to classical because I found it on an altered radio station band!". It's just another station. You don't want to get stuck there either as you were once stuck at classical. Now that you know the dial can move - the true value of altered states is showing us that it can - you can now explore further; pick up some country & western, some jazz, a baseball game, news, folk music, etc,, etc.

Thanks Dan
I guess Im a little bit too keen on finding a simple,clear explanation on whats going on as deep down I feel things need to be
understood by everybody.I get confused by spiritual,esoteric as well as the matter model as see how easily things get bogged down.
Thoughts as the only reality,similar the the track Bernado Kastrup is formulating seems to fit things that have happened in my reality.
 
Thanks Dan
I guess Im a little bit too keen on finding a simple,clear explanation on whats going on as deep down I feel things need to be
understood by everybody.I get confused by spiritual,esoteric as well as the matter model as see how easily things get bogged down.
Thoughts as the only reality,similar the the track Bernado Kastrup is formulating seems to fit things that have happened in my reality.
Sorry Eric called you Dan by mistake my Bad
 
Thanks Dan
I guess Im a little bit too keen on finding a simple,clear explanation on whats going on as deep down I feel things need to be
understood by everybody.I get confused by spiritual,esoteric as well as the matter model as see how easily things get bogged down.
Thoughts as the only reality,similar the the track Bernado Kastrup is formulating seems to fit things that have happened in my reality.

I almost replied to you, mentioning Bernado Kastrup's idealism. My only problem with his ideas is that seemingly just about anything could happen in his concept of reality. He relies too much on analogies for my taste. I mean if everything is made of thought, there have to be some rules which are very hard/impossible to break that keep all that consciousness under control!

Looking at it from a scientific point of view, I do think that we need some kind of intermediate theory that singles out consciousness as special, without jumping immediately to Idealism - even if that is the ultimate explanation.

David
 
I almost replied to you, mentioning Bernado Kastrup's idealism. My only problem with his ideas is that seemingly just about anything could happen in his concept of reality. He relies too much on analogies for my taste. I mean if everything is made of thought, there have to be some rules which are very hard/impossible to break that keep all that

Looking at it from a scientific point of view, I do think that we need some kind of intermediate theory that singles out consciousness as special, without jumping immediately to Idealism - even if that is the ultimate explanation.

David

I think idealism is a step in the right direction. Largely because it’s a step away from materialism, and minorly because it acknowledges the importance of consciousness. Consciousness is right in front of our faces (nay, it’s inside of our faces) and we’ve grown so used to it that we fail to see it as the marvel which it truly is. The same goes for the material Universe, to a different and smaller degree. At any rate, idealism is a theory which steps away from the “oops! Looked what happened on accident! Things lumped together and started growing limbs and became self aware on accident” materialistic mindset. Which, even when I was so staunchly agnostic, I found untenably absurd. In that sense I like it and feel that it MUST be closer to the truth than the current prevailing theory. But I’m not convinced that everything is simply inside of mind.
 
I think idealism is a step in the right direction. Largely because it’s a step away from materialism, and minorly because it acknowledges the importance of consciousness. Consciousness is right in front of our faces (nay, it’s inside of our faces) and we’ve grown so used to it that we fail to see it as the marvel which it truly is. The same goes for the material Universe, to a different and smaller degree. At any rate, idealism is a theory which steps away from the “oops! Looked what happened on accident! Things lumped together and started growing limbs and became self aware on accident” materialistic mindset. Which, even when I was so staunchly agnostic, I found untenably absurd. In that sense I like it and feel that it MUST be closer to the truth than the current prevailing theory. But I’m not convinced that everything is simply inside of mind.
I am pretty sure Idealism is the ultimate answer, but my point is that currently Idealism fails as a scientific theory because it is un-falsifiable. Science can't really operate with a theory in which anything might happen (yes I know that QM opens up that possibility, but only at vanishingly low probability). Suppose for example Mind At Large simply decided that all grass would be coloured purple for a week - just for fun. It may be the consciousness does create everything, but why is grass never purple?

David
 
I am pretty sure Idealism is the ultimate answer, but my point is that currently Idealism fails as a scientific theory because it is un-falsifiable. Science can't really operate with a theory in which anything might happen (yes I know that QM opens up that possibility, but only at vanishingly low probability). Suppose for example Mind At Large simply decided that all grass would be coloured purple for a week - just for fun. It may be the consciousness does create everything, but why is grass never purple?

David
Yea that’s true, but I don’t think that makes it any less a valuable theory. I personally find the experiences of conscious beings better indicators of truth than science, at least in the metaphysical sense which, as far as I’m concerned, is where the bigger truths lie.

Not exactly sure where you were going with the grass color reference. But i think it’s possible (probable) that conscious agents create rule sets and impose them upon other agents or, at least, give other agents the option to agree to experience them.

For example, perhaps a group of conscious beings decided to create a system where other conscious beings, including themselves, could incarnate in order to learn valuable lessons. Maybe YOU helped create this system and decided to incarnate here just now in order to learn and experience. Pehaps we consented to experience this constricted rule set while incarnated here. Maybe there are other systems where the color of grass changes each hour. Or, perhaps there are systems where the color of grass is any color which the viewer wants it to be.

Astral travelers frequently report that other realms are far more malleable to the mind than our current system here.
 
I would never confuse anything with 'spiritual authority', because I do not think such a thing exists. The best we can do, is to attempt to understand reality.

David
I do believe spiritual authority exists, we just rarely hear/see it and are confronted constantly with its mimics.

Spiritual authority would look like this: I have been offered every evil known to man, and I have condemned it at every moment. I am far more wise than I will ever speak, or you will ever know. What ever you do, DON’T FOLLOW ME.
 
Yea that’s true, but I don’t think that makes it any less a valuable theory. I personally find the experiences of conscious beings better indicators of truth than science, at least in the metaphysical sense which, as far as I’m concerned, is where the bigger truths lie.
Yes, but I'd really like to see conventional science extended to cover some of this. I'd like to know why we seems to contain a vastly complex biochemistry. I suspect it might be that each time we probe something, more details are created to satisfy us.
Not exactly sure where you were going with the grass color reference. But i think it’s possible (probable) that conscious agents create rule sets and impose them upon other agents or, at least, give other agents the option to agree to experience them.

For example, perhaps a group of conscious beings decided to create a system where other conscious beings, including themselves, could incarnate in order to learn valuable lessons. Maybe YOU helped create this system and decided to incarnate here just now in order to learn and experience. Pehaps we consented to experience this constricted rule set while incarnated here.
Yes, but in the end that gives us a theory that says things are as they are, end of!
Astral travelers frequently report that other realms are far more malleable to the mind than our current system here.
They do, but I'd like to understand this world first.

David
 
Yes, but I'd really like to see conventional science extended to cover some of this. I'd like to know why we seems to contain a vastly complex biochemistry. I suspect it might be that each time we probe something, more details are created to satisfy us.

Yes, but in the end that gives us a theory that says things are as they are, end of!

They do, but I'd like to understand this world first.

David
The thing is the grass does change its color every so oftern, the sun moves around erratically in the sky, the dying become well,people
just develop random holes in their bodies, strange things appear in the sky. These things happen to single people and they happen to crowds.
We do need a model that brings in the unexplained that doesnt wrap it in a phrase and kick it aside.
I dont think we have enough original thought or the right type of thinking to change much at any one time but you can see a progression and a strengthening of thought memes all around us at any time.Take something simple like computing, try find the start of that thought,make a mental
movie of it, speed it up and you will see how things just randomly appear, almost like a ufo appearing in the sky.Crap example but Im struggling to find something material to explain the unexplained... basically: thought..time... something material( which we are told is just energy vibrating).
 
I agree. Also, I'm not so sure that "certitude" about the world is the same thing as enchantment. It may be that for some hunters-gatherers, the enchantment may be more to do with playing around with the plastic nature of our own awareness and sense of meaning.

To clarify, they existed in cultures that were certain about ancestor spirits, tree spirits, rock spirits, etc., and believed the creation myths they passed on were universally true. This animistic approach to the world, where everything is possessed of spirit, is enchantment in its most vital form.
 
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