Consciousness and the Paranormal

[Soupie]

we generally think that natural phenomena occur as a consequence of natural laws and prior physical states

This is one of the best explanations of the "problem" that I have read.

That is my problem with the concept of Free Will: In order for it to exist, there must be a break down of cause and effect. That's hard to wrap one's head around. But equally difficult is the idea that we don't have Free Will!

A very simplistic analogy (I am a visual learner) might be:

Pool player strikes cue ball, cue ball slams into a cluster of three billiard balls, ball A goes straight, ball B goes left, and ball C has free will and decides not to move. What!? But that is essentially what free will is. The idea that some matter/energy (i.e., humans) have the ability to subvert cause and effect. How can this be?

Thinking out loud: Either our understanding of cause and effect/physics is wrong (my suspicion) or Free Will allows some matter/energy to subvert cause and effect.

Or can it be - directly in line with this thread - that our very consciousness creates reality and not the other way around...

 

[Tyger]

This is one of the best explanations of the "problem" that I have read.

That is my problem with the concept of Free Will: In order for it to exist, there must be a break down of cause and effect. That's hard to wrap one's head around. But equally difficult is the idea that we don't have Free Will!

Love is the 'breakdown of cause and effect'. Love is a 'grace' that comes out from the future at us. Love is a gift.

As most people who deal with impossible odds will attest - we are free in our responses. With every response chosen at odds with the cause sitting in front of us, we are exercising our free will - and we are changing the world. As you can surmise, freewill is a two edged sword. But just as there is a cause-and-effect in the material/physical world, there is a cause-and-effect in the relational world of the the living beings who are endowed with freewill. The eastern term is allied as 'karma'. How does one change that cause-and-effect? By how we choose to respond.

A very simplistic analogy (I am a visual learner) might be:

Pool player strikes cue ball, cue ball slams into a cluster of three billiard balls, ball A goes straight, ball B goes left, and ball C has free will and decides not to move. What!? But that is essentially what free will is. The idea that some matter/energy (i.e., humans) have the ability to subvert cause and effect. How can this be?

Because the human is not simply the physical envelope of matter/energy. The human is 'spirit' - a complicated word in our times - a spirit that uses the physical/material universe. ('We are the ones we have been waiting for.') Spirit is free. (This freedom is the freedom to turn.) Spirit creates the laws, sets the rules in motion - and can stop the rules, abrogate the laws - at a certain level (tons of caveats here). You are - we all are - endlessly shaping and re-shaping the world around us, but it happens both too slow and too fast for us to see with earthly eyes. It's a matter of where we place our attention.

Where there is spirit there is no authority (only reverence). The meaning of a spiritual path is to find out for oneself. Unless one finds out for oneself everything stays at the theoretical level, everything is mere theories and mind-games to be taken on faith. There are no rules. The attitude is experimental. See what works. Everything is text - to be read. You already have your koan for meditation in your question regarding freewill. To meditate - on anything, or nothing - is a free decision, a free deed of consciousness. Meditation is the only free act we can do. When we meditate we perform a free act. Nothing compels us to meditate. No other living being does so.

Everything we see about us is the result of someone's meditation - someone's freewill. Had humankind not had freewill we would never have changed the world around us. There would be no cave paintings at lascaux - no Delius' song of summer - no eiffel tower - no fields of lavender, no vines of wine grapes lining undulating hills in neat rows.

Meditation is beyond thought. When we meditate we start from nothing. we always begin anew, from nothing. Mediation is the true source of love. Meditation allows us to intuit what is not yet and thereby begin to give it birth. Meditation is our most creative act.

Thinking out loud: Either our understanding of cause and effect/physics is wrong (my suspicion) or Free Will allows some matter/energy to subvert cause and effect.

Spirit subverts cause-and-effect. Love subverts cause-and-effects.

Or can it be - directly in line with this thread - that our very consciousness creates reality and not the other way around...

Just so - in a way.

 

[smcder]

Buddha at the Gas Pump interview with Jeffrey Kripal
217. Jeffrey Kripal, with Dana Sawyer - Buddha at the Gas Pump

BIO

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religious Studies for nine years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world.

Books Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, and Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred.

He specializes in the comparative study and analysis of extreme religious states from the ancient world to today. His full body of work can be seen at Rice University | Jeffrey J. Kripal - Home.

First three books about male sexual orientation and male mystical literature why it looks the way it does when it employs erotic language or rituals to portray these states . . .

see Kali's Child Kali's Child

The same thing that is always controversial about religion and charismatic religious figures: sex. In this case, I was showing that there are profound metaphysical, psychological, and spiritual connections between the saint's eroticism and his mysticism. I was not simply interested in sexuality per se, mind you, but in the ways that human beings often experience 'God' or the divine in and through human sexuality.
. . .

One of the things that made the book so controversial was that I concluded that the saint, like so many mystics and saints before and after him, was homoerotically oriented. This is old news, of course, to scholars. In the West, the linkage of philosophical wisdom, mystical insight, and homoeroticism is at least as old as Plato and Socrates.

It has been studied intensely in dozens of cultures around the world for about four decades now in the academy, and this in literally hundreds of books and essays. In the context of male mystical literature from around the world, in other words, Ramakrishna’s remarkable mystical homoeroticism is the norm, not the exception.

 

[smcder]

217. Jeffrey Kripal, with Dana Sawyer - Buddha at the Gas Pump
Buddha at the Gas Pump interview with Jeffrey Kripal

The mental and the material

Kripal felt he answered these questions about sexuality and mysticism and then moved to understanding the relationship between the mental and the material, particular as things break down in extreme states called the paranormal – particularly in an American context and particularly with popular culture (Esalen and comic books for example)


How the scholar of religion inhabits a Gnostic epistemology – a way of thinking about religion that is neither about belief or reason but something else in-between and beyond those things . . .

see The Serpent’s GiftRice University | Jeffrey J. Kripal - Home

RA Rick Archer
DS Dana Sawyer
JK Jeffrey Kripal


6:30 DS in academia there is a “shut-down” around paranormal events but in conferences there are groups sharing about this, a lot of academics are not “out of the closet about it”- but they have had events happen in their life - so people don’t talk about them – Jeff does talk about them and in depth . . .


10:45 JK in academics since middle 19th century what made a scholar of religion was someone who rejected miracle/magic – what I had to confront was I was talking to people who I knew well and trusted, who were telling me “miracle stories” I realized if these things were happening in the CA NJ or Nebraska or Chicago now, then they could have happened in 1st century Palestine or 4th century BCE India (in the past) – it changed how I think about history and opened up another way of looking at religion which is traditional in some sense and in other ways not


11:55 RA do you think the aversion to miracles has anything to do with the materialistic mindset that came in with industrial society and still predominates most of western science?


12:10 JK I think it has Everything to do with materialism, academically – the ultimate criterion of truth in the worlds I move in is very simple: “The truth must be depressing.” . . .

. . .
you can say anything and as long as it is depressing, it will get a hearing, you can reduce ecstasy and enlightenment to historical context to social forces to neurobiology now you can reduce it to cognitive schemata in the brain, evolutionary psychology, you can say anything as long as it pulls it down – but if you try to affirm, that well gee it does look like human beings are having some access to something transcendent, something really not-material, then that’s deeply problematic because it bumps up against this scientific materialism that is really running the culture at this point as far as I can tell . . .


this doesn’t threaten the whole paradigm

13:18 JK . . . The irony is it doesn’t threaten the whole paradigm, all it challenges is the adequacy of the paradigm – no one is challenging the usefulness of science or what it can do in the world, what we are challenging is that it can explain everything . . .

the way it explains everything is to put everything it can measure or replicate or explain on the table and what it can’t measure or replicate or explain, it puts under the table and says they don’t exist or calls it anecdotal and of course, that’s just a magic trick – that’s sort of dishonest from my perspective, all I’ve tried to do is put all that stuff back on the table and say look at this – not that it’s the whole truth either, but when we look at all the stuff together, it changes the way we look at the whole table again


15:45 DS the culture in general is unwilling to do that – I’m sure there would be people who would watch this interview and say Bertrand Russell was right – and yet they will claim that they love their wife and science can’t prove that – and that the painting on the wall behind their couch is beautiful and I can see squiggly lines in red and green but point to the beauty – there’s no way to quantify those things . . . even inside the “normal” world, the paradigm is incomplete

robust paranormal events and trauma
16:30 JK with the paranormal, the problem is particularly acute . . . it presents a philosophical conundrum for this materialistic world-view . . . and basically the problem is that most robust paranormal events occur in traumatic situations . . . in normal circumstances nothing strange is going to happen because our egos and bodies and brains are healthy and keeping the rest of the world out, but when that body-brain container gets cracked open – all this other stuff comes pouring in


And this is why I think it’s so hard for the sciences, because essentially what the debunkers want to say is show me a robust paranormal event in a controlled laboratory . . . well, what you’ve just done is take away all the conditions in which such a thing can happen . . .


18:15 JK this is why these spontaneous accounts are so important – because that’s where trauma happens, that’s where these things appear in a very robust, meaningful fashion but these aren’t things science can study – these are things humanists and anthropologists can study . . . we actually have the goods here

 

[smcder]

This is one of the best explanations of the "problem" that I have read.

. . .

This is one of the best explanations of the "problem" that I have read.

For a good statement of the problem - there's nothing like a philosopher! For a good, broad outline of what a solution entails . . . there's nothing like a philosopher! For the solution itself . . . you better ask someone else.

But, once the solution is in . . . for a good critique of that solution - there's nothing like a philosopher! (start over here)

 

[smcder]

Thread Summary - up to page 11

Trained Observer
Has anyone ever used their consciousness to contact the paranormal and come back with actionable information that doesn't sound like dime-store philosophy full of pretentious religious imagery? In other words, is there anything to suggest that revealed knowledge through paranormal means is anything more than the work of the human mind?
Ufology
. . . assuming the common interpretation of "paranormal" as something supernatural, there are the usual anecdotes, and I personally believe there issomethingto it, but I've yet to see any claim substantiated
. . .

Personally I believe there is some rational explanation for every phenomenon, even if we don't know exactly what that explanation is, and that it's important not to draw any conclusions without sufficient information. Such conclusions include the typical religious, mystical, New Age and occult, claims that involve concepts like deities, afterlives, and OOBEs. However I think some psychic phenomena like manifestations of telepathy and premonitions are different from the first set and may be grounded in real physical processes rather than beliefs

Ufology on the word “spiritual” (from page 7)

The word "spiritual" is itself a nonsense word because it has no universally agreed upon definition and is generally interpreted as being connected in some way with the supernatural. At best it's a convenience term for some set of ideas and beliefs that as you say are subjective because they're modeled into a personal worldview. In some cases these worldviews might be internally coherent, but it's been my experience that nobody has been able to demonstrate that.

the use of person-first language
Guidelines for Nonhandicapping Language in APA Journals

Survival of consciousness

Stephen Braude Immortal Remains

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00E1CYFJK?tag=bbcodes-20&camp=8641&creative=330649&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B00E1CYFJK&adid=0GE594J7KEH56F4RN6X2&&ref-refURL=https://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/consciousness-and-the-paranormal.14383/page-7

. In the best cases the evidence is so remarkable that, ultimately, one must adopt either survival or super-psi (coupled with other abilities) as the most likely interpretation. But how do we decide? This is where Braude's book really shines through. He fully explores both hypotheses in their strongest and most plausible forms.

short paper presented by Michael Cremo at the second Tucson Consciousness Studies Conference surveying some of the leading scientists who pursued paranormal and psychic phenomena at the SPR and parallel groups in other countries and their conclusions from the research.

paranormal

 

[smcder]

Thread summary - page 14-21

Operation Star Gate
! Operation Star Gate: U.S. Intelligence & Psychic Spies

Joe McMoneagle
Remote Viewing Joseph W. McMoneagle Menu


Dr. Harold Puthoff on Remote Viewing

PAGE 15

Ouija board
Creative writing

Thomas Kuhn the structure of scientific revolutions
Precognition of Ep. 86: Thomas Kuhn | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog

PAGE 16
Discussion/digression on gender
illness and magic
Sigil magick

Burnt State’s Ouija experience

Ufology’s experience seeing an aura:
I had looked away from him momentarily at something and then back out of my peripheral vision and that's when I saw it ( apparently this is also similar to a technique for training one's self to see them ). His body was sort of silhouetted somewhat against the shadows behind him and all around the perimeter was a glow that can best be described as the kind of thing you see in a solar eclipse, where there is a soft peripheral glow interspersed with a flame like plasma that changed color and moved. It is reminiscent of Kirlian photos, but not as electric, and instead of steady it was dynamic, like those glass encased high energy plasma things, but without the sharp spark. Once I saw it, it was as if I had somehow focused on it analogous to the way a stereogram works, and I was able to look directly at it. It was really cool, very beautiful, and alive.

Frans de Waal
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals: Frans B. M. de Waal: 9780674356610: Amazon.com: Books

Edgar Cayce

PAGE 17

Program that classifies gender from written text:
Gender Classification from text

PAGE 18
Schrodinger

PAGE 19
(skeptic) Martin Gardner as trickster and theist:

Although Gardner was a fierce critic of paranormal claims, under his "George Groth" pseudonym he wrote an article forFate magazine(October 1952, pp. 39–43) titled "He Writes with Your Hand," which touted the psychic abilities of mentalist Stanley Jaks as genuine.[23]

Gardner had an abiding fascination with religious belief. He was afideistictheist, professing belief in a god as creator, but critical of organized religion. He has been quoted as saying that he regards parapsychology and other research into the paranormal as tantamount to "tempting God" and seeking "signs and wonders". He stated that while he would expect tests on the efficacy of prayers to be negative, he would not rule out a priori the possibility that as yet unknown paranormal forces may allow prayers to influence the physical world.

"I am a philosophical theist. I believe in a personal god, and I believe in an afterlife, and I believe in prayer, but I don’t believe in any established religion. This is called philosophical theism.... Philosophical theism is entirely emotional. As Kant said, he destroyed pure reason to make room for faith."

– Martin Gardner, 2008

The Trickster - George Hansen
Table of Contents, Annotated, The Trickster and the Paranormal
http://tricksterbook.com/Intro.htm

PAGE 20

CSICOP and the Skeptics – George Hansen
CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview by George P. Hansen

Jessica Utts – replication and meta-analysis
JESSICA UTTS' HOME PAGE

Tim Cridland on Radio Misterioso (The Real James Randi in the Anaomalist #14)
Tim Cridland: True Disbelievers and Rogue Archaelogy | Radio Misterioso

 

[manxman]

CSICOP and the Skeptics – George Hansen
CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview by George P. Hansen

page 35

John Schumaker (1990) explores the detrimental psychological consequences of being skeptical of religion and the paranormal. He frankly acknowledges that skeptics can have difficulty adjusting to society and are susceptible to certain mental disorders.
There are striking parallels in the advertisements for membership for both skeptics’ groups and atheistic-secular humanist organizations. Both appeal to the feeling of isolation in an “irrational” culture. The first issue of the National Capital Area Skeptics’ newsletter asked: “Do you sometimes feel that, as a skeptic, you are all but isolated in a sea of credulity? ... we are eager to have you join us” (p. 3).
The feelings of loneliness and isolation are quite real, and there seem to be reasons for them. Individuals in both groups sometimes display disdain for others. This is exemplified in the widely publicized comment made at a humanist convention by Ted Turner, who called Christianity “a religion for losers” (“Turner Sorry,” 1990). I have encountered these attitudes among atheists and secular humanists. Some describe religious believers as “weak” or “unwilling to face reality.” Similar opinions are expressed by debunkers. Given such beliefs, it is no surprise that some skeptics feel alone and isolated. Certainly not all of them hold such attitudes, and some have even expressed dismay at the behavior of fellow debunkers.
Although religious issues seem to be quite salient in the lives of many skeptics, not all are so involved. Yet as shown in Table 3, 29 official members of CSICOP have publicly identified themselves as holding nontheistic or atheistic beliefs. This is a remarkable number, and it has clearly influenced the organization.


this is the kind of teenager/ 20 something that you get with/in skeptical forums, all singing the same chorus, all wearing their individual psychosis's on their sleeve's, truly some of them should be on 'watch' list's, their need to stand out amongst a crowd of social mis-fits as defined by John Schumaker puts them over the line in what is acceptable social behaviour, as Schumaker says, He frankly acknowledges that skeptics can have difficulty adjusting to society and are susceptible to certain mental disorders.

im not even half way through yet, theres alot to take in, and its the first impartial indepth look at skeptics ive really taken in, it is good to see there are skeptical skeptics out there, ready and willing to give honest appraisals of their movement.

 

[smcder]

217. Jeffrey Kripal, with Dana Sawyer - Buddha at the Gas Pump
Buddha at the Gas Pump interview with Jeffrey Kripal

the idea of the imaginal mind and the ultimate meaning of the paranormal

24:40 the idea of the imaginal mind – authors of the impossible, hermeneutics of the impossible, levels of realization and authorization (the idea that we are being written)

JK Paranormal experiences
often described as

• Like a science fiction movie
• It felt like I was in a movie or a novel

I realized we are all caught in a movienovel, called culture, language

What the paranormal is about ultimately

None of us as individuals wrote our culture or language or our story lines that we are born into, often we don’t even like them – they don’t even work for us, sometimes they are destructive,

so the realization aspect of a paranormal event is understanding that we are caught in such a movie or novel and understanding that at a very gut level and having the paranormal event then call us to author a different story – a different narrative of who we are and what we want to be – I think that’s what the paranormal is about ultimately . . . it’s about showing us

a) that we’re caught in a story someone else wrote
b) inviting us to write a new one, both individually and together . .. and I think that’s what a lot of people are doing right now

Mutants and Mystics
Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal: Jeffrey J. Kripal: 9780226453835: Amazon.com: Books

is about a series of studies of professional artists and writers who create popular culture . . . do an end-run around everybody and go right to the imagination – which is where they have their real effect and I think that’s why people say:

“God, it was like science-fiction”

because that hits deep

 

[smcder]

217. Jeffrey Kripal, with Dana Sawyer - Buddha at the Gas Pump
Buddha at the Gas Pump interview with Jeffrey Kripal

29:26 JK

If you have a spouse/children could we live with each other if we were swimming in an ocean of mind all the time? I think we may be limited for a reason, it’s just a doubt . . . it’s just a thought I have a lot, actually . . .

30:11 DS
Authorization and Phillip K Dick

When you talk about authorization, somebody like PKD - the stories I’ve been told aren’t working for me, so I'm going to tell a bigger story that makes sense to what I’m intuiting true, in a noetic, psychic kind of way . . . do you see authorization as a paranormal ability? Some people have a knack for the imaginal.

30:43 JK
I don’t want to overuse the word paranormal

But if you talk to people who truly creative, what they will always tell you is it wasn’t me

That’s the essence of creativity . . . having the ego step aside and having something else come through


And I think in a previous age people would use religious language to describe that - What I like so much about artists and modern writers is they are essentially describing a religious experience, but they’re not being literal about it

They’re not setting themselves up as a prophet or writing a new scripture, they’re saying “wow, something came through and I turned it into art” – I didn’t turn it into a truth that you now have to believe and if you don’t then x, y and z will happen to you.

This is the problem with religion in general, it’s essentially a story that we’re asked to believe literally, and the beauty of the modern scence is that we have a whole plethora of religious worlds but we don’t have to believe them literally, we can appreciate them as true fictions

32:36 JK
I don’t want to give a free pass to the founders either, or the prophets

I think they were sincere, genuine – but they were living in a different age and had different assumptions about the world that are no longer our assumptions . . .

. . .

Take Jesus for example, I think he had some experience of being one with God, I think that’s probably very accurate to say – but he concluded from that a lot of things, at least in the Gospels, that I don’t want to sign up to, there’s some pretty nasty stuff in there . . . this is our dilemma . . . we can appreciate and honor these past religious experiences, but I don’t think any of us can honestly sign on to what these texts and traditions ask us to sign on to – I can’t.

. . . what I’ve tried to say in my work is we can’t look to the past for our answers and they are clearly not working in the present, so we have to look to the future and write another story together – have to be deeply critical and deeply appreciative of these traditions at the same time and we have to have this conversation –

it’s just begun, maybe 150 years and only in the West until very recently . . . another part of my project is not to let people forget that what we do at least in the study of religion that what we do is deeply problematic to most of the planet


If you compare religions fairly, it comes with tremendous cost to any traditional religious view, it also comes to cost if you have a scientific or materialist world view – no matter what your world view is – we haven’t come to terms with religious pluralism and what that means in the modern world

 

[trainedobserver]

The Gospels (as well as any other sacred text you care to mention) are art misused and misinterpreted by succeeding generations to mean what they want them to mean, or what they need them to mean. Art and the artistic impulse to create new worlds from the imagination is the real soul of religion in my view. Religion being the interpretation and reordering of reality through the creative facilities of the human mind in the attempt to cope with or to reconcile irreconcilable aspects of life. Art.

 

[manxman]

probably why arts inner meaning is incomprehensible to your average joe, including me.

 

[smcder]

probably why arts inner meaning is incomprehensible to your average joe, including me.

nah . . . I mean you know what you like, right?

 

[smcder]

The Gospels (as well as any other sacred text you care to mention) are art misused and misinterpreted by succeeding generations to mean what they want them to mean, or what they need them to mean. Art and the artistic impulse to create new worlds from the imagination is the real soul of religion in my view. Religion being the interpretation and reordering of reality through the creative facilities of the human mind in the attempt to cope with or to reconcile irreconcilable aspects of life. Art.

I'm not seeing here that cheerfulness you spoke of . . . ;-)

thinking out loud and playing with these ideas:

Art in itself isn't enough, unless you mean to practice aesthetic asceticism - it is a response, I definitely like that -

. . . as a response to the religious sense . . . JRR Tolkien talked a lot about creation as an artist . . .

Do we admit of a religious impulse as something separate from the aesthetic and a quest for truth? Or is it a compound? I think it's something that stands to its own response to the irreconcilable - certain forms of awe that are not aesthetic or in response to truth - but of a kind of overwhelm.

I don't think the two (art/religion) can be entirely conflated but I like the idea of art as the soul of religion, that is nice . . .

 

[trainedobserver]

I don't think the two (art/religion) can be entirely conflated but I like the idea of art as the soul of religion, that is nice . . .

I can't see the difference myself. The religious impulse is the impulse to connect to something larger and more in control than ourselves. It's another case of trying to scratch that itch that cannot be reached. To extract or perhaps more correctly, establish order in the chaos of existence. Life is thus and such and therefore a path is seen through it. Never mind that we cut that path through the living underbrush, laying waste to what was to establish the new might be.

 

[smcder]

I can't see the difference myself. The religious impulse is the impulse to connect to something larger and more in control than ourselves. It's another case of trying to scratch that itch that cannot be reached. To extract or perhaps more correctly, establish order in the chaos of existence. Life is thus and such and therefore a path is seen through it. Never mind that we cut that path through the living underbrush, laying waste to what was to establish the new might be.

That is very interesting, because I think there is a clear difference on my view, if we are talking about the same thing and not caught up in semantics - but a sense of what is beautiful and my desire to create, to make something, to bring forth something from some kind of inner sense (I'm calling this art) . . . seems entirely different to how I view my relationship and response to the ultimate (I am calling this religion), that kind of awe seems entirely different - in fact, I don't think I have experienced awe in the presence of mere beauty - there was always something more. That would be very hard to put further in words, though.

The other thing is, there is a kind of asceticism in your view, I think - GK Chesterton might have called it scientific asceticism but I think it may spring from deeper sources (Ian McGilchrist on hemisphericity) although Nietzsche had this to say:

Nietzsche describes the morality of the ascetic priest as characterized by Christianity as one where, finding oneself in pain or despair and desiring to perish from it, the will to live causes one to place oneself in a state of hibernation and denial of the material world in order to minimize that pain and thus preserve life,[30] a technique which Nietzsche locates at the very origin of secular science as well as of religion.

. . . but I think it's in the air, in the larger culture - and in the US we still have a kind of deep split on this, a kind of Puritanism where we allow so much indulgence of certain kinds and maybe that's because we hold ourselves to this kind of asceticism, this facing of the "hard facts" about reality - even celebrating them in our popularization of materialism. The bon mot of The Big Bang Theory are a kind of horror story to the Romantic.

Kripal talks about truth in the academic world:

the ultimate criterion of truth in the worlds I move in is very simple: “The truth must be depressing.” . . .

Kripal talks about depressing in this context as anything that pulls it down, so not just something that might be hard to swallow or offensive to the Romantic imagination. (again, I think of Bulkington in Moby Dick) But as something that is literally depressing, a contracting and reduction, the it's just or it's merely formulation and that, I think, may be what creates that unscratchable itch.

It's hard to talk about religious experience without paradox - but my earlier view that paradox was a kind of limit of language, was language breaking down at its limits, I think was incorrect. I wonder now if language is robust enough to have a kind of grammar of paradox? And if so, then the following should be robust enough to absorb charges of literality.

Being in control, extracting, establishing - to order sound like responses to fear. And rightly so! The New Age mysticism soft peddles the idea of unitive knowledge of God when I can think of nothing more terrifying. And this counter-culture, which I think is not only every bit as powerful as it's "dominant" materialistic counter-part, but comes right out of it . . . you could say is in league with it . . . doesn't want to admit that there God is the God of the cordyceps mushroom:

Cordyceps species are able to affect the behaviour of their insect host: Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (formerly Cordyceps unilateralis) causes ants to climb a plant and attach there before they die.

For fans of Youtube:

And I think of the cordyceps example for two reasons:

1. it's absolutely horrifying to us (although, I'm not sure if the ant experiences anything subjectively in the process - or perhaps it is in a kind of ecstasy when everything goes right?)
2. the cordyceps is a tonic mushroom popular among herbalists and wikipedia assures us:

The Ophiocordyceps fungus contains various known and untapped bioactive metabolites, and is being investigated as a new source of natural drugs with immunomodulatory, antitumor, hypoglycemic and hypocholesterolemic functions

so we have life feeding on life and giving back to new life . . . which is a New Age version of God if I have ever heard it!

But I can't think why this is an argument against God generally and I never really believed those who said if they had designed the universe they would have left that bit out - which is one answer, or a retort, at least - to the problem of Theodicy.

 

[Burnt State]

That artistic impulse that refers to the muse, or as Kripal described the artistic process when making things (it wasn't me; I wasn't there) is very similar to what contactees describe when channelling information, or, when in a state of ecstasy, the saint starts speaking in tongues. All of these experiences, like the heightened moment of the body brain container break during moments of trauma & paranormality do seem to collect, for me, into what i feel is the most tangible thing said so far about consciousness and the paranormal. If you've ever surrendered to the experience of 'making' or a god, you know what I mean.

The Buddha at the Gaspump with Kripal is really quite exceptional and worth listening to even though Steve has summarized large swaths of it above (you seem to have a Herculean strength when it comes o completing the heavy lifting tasks).

If there is a difference between art and religious creative impulses I would say that while religion may be inspired by the divine and it seeks to be in contact with the maker or central command, the artist does not have the same desire. What they are surrendering to in terms of the muse, or painting on autopilot, or under intense drug influences, is something as deeply personal as it is about destroying the ego at the same time - that's if you can accept that paradoxical drive to be part of the grand process while simultaneously naming one's own vision and place in the grand dance. For the artist, I don't believe there is a central control centre at all. I'm not even sure about order either, as chaos is always the artist's pillow.

 

[trainedobserver]

"seems entirely different to how I view my relationship and response to the ultimate (I am calling this religion)"

Where does this "relationship" and response come from? From you or from the outside? I'm pretty sure it comes from you (the individual). It is your creation. Your ideas about "the ultimate" (whatever that is) are either borrowed and adapted from other humans and their notions of these things, or they are created by yourself through the facility of artistic creation. The gods (however you wish to interpret that) do not sit in the temples revealing their natures to us. No, we dictate what the ultimate must be.

I have had innumerable "religious experiences" some absolutely hair-raising. Some I still cannot fully explain, but that doesn't give any validity to any given framework I care to drop them into.

The Truth is simply this. We live in a hostile and aggressive universe that we neither have the perspective or the capacity to understand beyond our limited experience of it. Sweetness and light are wonderful distractions from this fact, and we rightfully look for them wherever we can, even if we have to make them up, so to speak.

 

[smcder]

That artistic impulse that refers to the muse, or as Kripal described the artistic process when making things (it wasn't me; I wasn't there) is very similar to what contactees describe when channelling information, or, when in a state of ecstasy, the saint starts speaking in tongues. All of these experiences, like the heightened moment of the body brain container break during moments of trauma & paranormality do seem to collect, for me, into what i feel is the most tangible thing said so far about consciousness and the paranormal. If you've ever surrendered to the experience of 'making' or a god, you know what I mean.

The Buddha at the Gaspump with Kripal is really quite exceptional and worth listening to even though Steve has summarized large swaths of it above (you seem to have a Herculean strength when it comes o completing the heavy lifting tasks).

If there is a difference between art and religious creative impulses I would say that while religion may be inspired by the divine and it seeks to be in contact with the maker or central command, the artist does not have the same desire. What they are surrendering to in terms of the muse, or painting on autopilot, or under intense drug influences, is something as deeply personal as it is about destroying the ego at the same time - that's if you can accept that paradoxical drive to be part of the grand process while simultaneously naming one's own vision and place in the grand dance. For the artist, I don't believe there is a central control centre at all. I'm not even sure about order either, as chaos is always the artist's pillow.

Beautifully said.

- early on the forum here, I thought about comparing the language of persons with mental illness (the so called "word salad" of mania or schizophrenia) with mystics with contactees . . . but I think it's clear the grammar of paradox is employed in all of these (and in the next day's description of a dream) and I don't know how we would form the basis of an analysis or how we would prevent others from merely mimicking the description . . . we could all probably sit down now and write up a dream that we'd never had and who could tell?

There is plenty more to be heard at the BATGAP interview and it's worth getting the tone and emphasis - I also was fairly free in summarizing, those are not exact quotes - as for the Herculean part, I start well more than I finish, but I have always had an irresistible urge to share ideas or new connections that I am excited about, I actually feel a flush in the skin or spine - so, as Kripal says, it's not me . . . maybe it's a kind of creative act for me.

 

[trainedobserver]

I scratch my head and I think ..."What is the divine?" "What is this thing people call God?"

My inner-man groans and gives me the face-palm.