Psychodelirium wrote:
The problem with "these types of ideas", which is to say with metaphysics, is that instead of seeking gnosis and a broadening of experience, the metaphysician is simply one more person peddling a view of the world and trying to sort out his experience in such a way that it conforms to it. It is no accident that all the great mystics who have left a system, rather than a metaphysical picture, have stressed pragmatism and skepticism. So for instance, Crowley says "By doing certain things certain results will follow. Students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them." When the monks go to the Buddha and ask him what they were in their past lives, and the Buddha tells them that they have shed more blood being beheaded than there is water in the ocean, the point is not that this is literally what happened, but that the question is stupid (or more politely, "unskillful" ).
I am not saying all this because I have some kind of abstract philosophical objection to doing metaphysics (though I do), but because I know from personal experience that however tempting it is to spin theories around your experience, in the end all you are doing is distracting yourself. The understanding is in the doing. The "proof" is in the doing, too, which is why the mystical "system" is not a "theory" about the universe, which you are supposed to believe, but simply a finger pointing at something and inclining you to "see for yourself."
I think you are misunderstanding my worldview. You make some excellent points, and in actuality we agree on many many things.
I am a Relativist (at least for the moment, I am always willing to change my view when new information comes in). Each finds meaning in their own lives, that which gives value to their experiences. I don't discount science, I embrace it, as it is the best method we have for understanding the world in which we inhabit, and to improve the lives of others. The quantum communication paradigm we have been discussing is a scientific one, backed up by evidence. It is pragmatic, it explains the nature of reality in a way that may be true, but I am skeptical as it does not explain enough. I lend some creedence to the philosophy becasue its tenents fit in with some of my personal experiences. It is a signpost along the road of enlightenment, something that guides the way and points to a new place to look. In the grand scheme of things does it mean anything? Nope, only that for a moment there is resonance in what is meaningful for my personal journey. Some metaphysical ideas add one more piece to the puzzle, but they do not complete it, it is only a piece...but that piece is just as valid as every other one in order to fill in the "big picture"
If the questions I ask do not lead to more questions, then I know I am on the wrong track. If there is ever an "answer" that does not pose new questions, then I know it was no answer at all.
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First of all, science is a method and a body of knowledge; it is not a "metaphysics of materialism". The dogmatic materialist and the dogmatic spiritualist suffer from the same disease. The only metaphysical claim of science is naturalism, which is simply the claim that the world makes sense and that this sense can be teased out of it with the proper means.
I know what science is, though there are some who use it as a metaphysics of materialism. That is a scientific materialist. I agree dogmaticism suffers from the same disease no matter what direction it comes from. This has been a point of discussion in other threads. The naturalist ignores an enormous body of evidence that contradicts their world view, and in the end is no different than those who take the bible as the direct word of God. I think you have gotten the impression that I am a dogmatic metaphycist, which could not be further from the truth.
Quote:This is funny. You mean as opposed to theoretical physics?
I never said it was wrong, just that it is inaccessable. I guess neurobiolgy needs a better PR firm to make its ideas more readily available to those who are seeking answers. Or maybe my brain is just better geared to conceptualize the concepts put forth by physics...I dunno. I would be happy to learn more, point me to a paper, an article that can be read by a non-biologist. But when a one sentence answer is given to my question including words that look like a random collection of letters, it does not allow me to put much creedence into the idea. It has taught me nothing, educated me not one bit. It also contradicts a personal conversation I had with a neurobiologist who could not tell me difinatively one way or another what memory is.
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This is a terrible attitude. Holism and reductionism are two sides of the same coin - one is upward-looking, to see how the object of investigation fits into a bigger picture, while the other is downward-looking to see how the object constitutes a bigger picture for smaller units. It ought to be obvious that for proper understanding you need to do both, or at least you need to know how to do both, and how to decide.
How is this a terrible attitude? I said exactly what you said in response to me in without fleshing out the whole point. That we need BOTH in order to understand. There are things that science (IMO) can never tell us about the world in which we live, and thus one has to look elsewhere, ie metaphysics. But to discount the vast body of knowledge that does explain a great deal of what we experience on a day to day basis is equally ignorant. There is the mystery, and how the mystery works...having a desire for knowledge of both is important to being a complete being. Spirit and matter, Meaning and Function...two sides of the same coin.
Quote:Of course, you are not going to go out and buy a book on connectionism or evolutionary psychology or something, then have an "A HA moment" (or twenty) while reading it and connecting to what is said. Because you are prejudiced against an entire domain of human knowledge, just as the dogmatic materialist is. You think to understand something analytically is to disenchant it and to make it meaningless, but nothing could be further from the truth. If we had never "disenchanted" the flat earth and the firmament of fixed stars, we would never know the universe that we do know, which is not a few orders of magnitude more impressive and more interesting.
Personalisms and attempting to tell me you know me? Ascribing motivations and thoughtforms of which you could not possibily have any knowledge? Poor philosophical form...your hubris is not even worthy of a response.
Quote:I am surprised at having to spell this out. I think it is a common thread running through all the mystical traditions (and it has certainly been the major insight of my own experiences) that the root of human suffering and delusion is the sense of a lack of "beingness", or the lack of an intimate connection with the world, and that this lack is caused precisely by a false and confused sense of who or what one is, i.e. what the self is. Redemption and freedom then consists in remembering or rediscovering one's self, finding or constructing a unity from a sense of identity that is fundamentally fragmented.
This is the core of the human condition, of suffering, the lack of beingness. I agree with your premise and you answered my questions quite well thank you. I wanted you to explain further and you did so nicely, though the condescention could have been left out. Remembering and rediscovering ones self is highly liberating, knowing that the ego is a construct of our entrance into this world, being able to look behind it and find the truth of our being...
Quote:I think it is extremely exciting that people who are not spiritual practitioners, and who have not apprehended this dilemma in an intimate and experiential way, are looking at human cognitive architecture and rediscovering this exact same insight. The picture that is emerging from cognitive science is that "personality" or "identity" is an adaptive strategy that the organism takes on to deal with the world. And moreover, there is not one such personality, but there are really many personalities that go together with particular adaptive situations. This is exactly what one discovers through meditation or psychedelics, or any other non-ordinary state of consciousness that forces the brain to "break" its adaptive strategy and realize that a strategy is all it ever was. It was not an I, a self, or a subject. It was just something that was being done, or played, or performed. And if you ask, "well who was doing it?" the only answer that can be given is "the world itself" or, perhaps "no one", but these amount to saying the same thing.
I agree, it is exciting. Science and spirituality are merging...our technology and knowledge has gotten to the point where we are fining the difinitive answers to the questions posed by mystics and philosophers for thousands of years. Breaking the brain with non-ordinary states of consciousness do give us insight into the strategy of our apparent existence. But you make a assumption based on yoru personal experiences that those are the only two answers available to
everyone, "the world" or "no one" and thus limit yourself. That is the relativistic conclusion you have come to, and thus is valid for you and no one else. All the world's a stage, and we merely players, and the curtain remains closed...
What, you ask, was the beginning of it all?
And it is this...
Existence that multiplied itself
For sheer delight of being
And plunged into numberless trillions of forms
So that it might
Find
Itself
Innumerably.
-Sri Aubobindo
Saidin is a fictional character, and only exists in the collective unconscious. Therefore, we both do and do not exist. Everything is made up as we go along, and none of it is real.