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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value
    #8614912 -

William James mentioned something that got me thinking.  There is a crappy, unrealized paradigm that floats about these days, that a lot of people use in an arrogant, self-masturbatory fashion.  This is the assumption that exposing the existential origin of a spiritual phenomenon as simple somehow negates the subjective importance of event. 

To rephrase, medical materialists will say "oh, a samadhi state is caused by the activation of the cerebral cortex (or whatever, this is not accurate unless by chance)" and then sit smug as they assure themselves that they have deconstructed thousands of years of prehistoric and modern Vedic practice.

Somehow a connect-the-dot is made.  A gap in logic is leaped unnoticed.  No connection can be drawn from an existential judgement (where and how it occurs) that can relate to the internal meaning (what it means and why it means).  It means nothing to the nature of the experience, the significance or personal meaning, etc.

Everybody knows there is a thin line between genius and madness, and yet nobody disregards the intellectual's contributions because he is neurotic.  The error should not be so easily accepted and easily undetected in discussion of spiritual topics.


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Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: jonathanseagull]
    #8616561 -

This is the assumption that exposing the existential origin of a spiritual phenomenon as simple somehow negates the subjective importance of event. 

True, the subjective is always up to us.


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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: jonathanseagull]
    #8618579 -



I saw my cardiologist the other day on a routine visit. I wore a T-shirt with this alchemical representation of The Philosophers' Stone. Now, in the past I have worn a glyph of the Kabbalistic Tree around my neck, or a Tibetan Buddhist bracelet (which he commented on thinking that he saw Hebrew instead of Tibetan script). On this occasion, he asked me what the words meant, but before I could finish the English translation, he cut me off with some irrelevancy to his question. I added, briefly, "It is an alchemical symbol, not scientific." I then added to the silence, "I don't wear sport shirts, I wear arcane symbols." Briefly, he commented on Madonna and Kabbalism, and since she gets my goat, I called her "The Great Whore of Babylon," and I wondered if he knew that title from Revelations because he is a yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jew. But then he commented that 'it was all BS anyway' and time being short, I couldn't really ask him if he believed that Kabbalism is all BS.

Now this doctor is really a nice guy in his demeanor, and very bright. When I confided that in addition to the list of supplements I take, I also take mushrooms a couple times a year. He laughed and told me a short story about having attended a Jewish retreat when the retreat director, speculating on a psychedelic cause for ancient religious visions, mentioned mushrooms. My doctor said he perked up, remembered college days, and exclaimed "Shrooms?!" as everyone in the room turned to look at him. I did not receive any scolding or warning, but the disconcerting thing was that a man who lives out of a religious tradition might consider anything non-rational to be BS.

Perhaps he is a Jew after the Aristotelian based Maimonides school, and then he can more easily rationalize being exclusively rational-scientific AND religious. Even his exclamation "Shooms?!" might have a reductionistic philosophy behind it. I mean, I'm probably way too serious and even reverent about the sacramental use, but with one word, in the way he said it, an entire lifestyle (mine) can be dismissed as a way-extended, late adolescent past-time!

High states of consciousness, including those which are evoked by entheogens, find themselves mapped by any number of arcane systems, be they kabbalistic, alchemical, gnostic or religious. And, I quite agree with you about scientific reductionism. Pointing out the physiological and biochemical correlates to any state of consciousness does nothing, in reality, to reduce the Mystery of consciousness to much more simple processes. I think it was Alan Watts who commented on this saying, in effect, that a Mozart violin concerto was nothing more than horse hair being rubbed on cat-gut. William James is the philosopher-psychologist par excellence when it comes to experience, qua experience and the "stream of consciousness." He understood that meaning and value far outstrip more rudimentary processes along with which these human phenomena coincide. Even his nitrous oxide experiments led him to write of the "metaphisical significance" which is evoked by the intoxication. That he would even use the words "metaphysical significance" speaks volumes about the man.

I've studied neuroanatomy in connection with neuropsychological assessment and I welcome any new scienctific discoveries, but science never negates experience, replete with human speculation, consideration of meaning. As James said, such non-rational states "may determine attitudes, though they cannot furnish formulas, though they fail to give a map." I love arcane maps - just like the one, with occulted directions given above:

Visit the Interior of the Earth and [there being] Rectified Find the Hidden Stone.

The spiritual reality (consciousness/spirit) is found within our earthly bodies. By going within and by combining masculine (solar) and feminine (lunar) attributes, consciously (symbolized by the glyph for Mercury), the Philosophers' Stone can be Realized. And like the Diamond Body of Vajrayana Buddhism, or "the stone which the builders rejected," or the "pearl of great price" in Christianity, or the Hall of Jade in Taoist Yoga, nobody is talking about a physical object. It's all about Eternal Life.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #8619568 -

Chill out. Just take some shrooms and try not to think about it.


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"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #8619598 -

But he loves to think about it. It's his thing and he does it well.:thumbup:


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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Icelander]
    #8619674 -

I think about "it" too, but "it" keeps changing...


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"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #8619985 -

only some people explain things to wrap them up and put them away.
others explain things to get closer.
I would chose the explanations that bring things closer and make them live better.


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: redgreenvines]
    #8620668 -

I would chose the explanations that bring things closer and make them live better.

You have to have balls as big as kettlebells for this. Explanations that bring things closer are rarely the things we plan on or feel we need and want.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Icelander]
    #8622848 -

Icelander said:
But he loves to think about it. It's his thing and he does it well.:thumbup:


Yes, well, it's either mental masturbation or the regular variety.
:shrug:

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #8622883 -

Science is just another method of inventing meaning, like colour coding. If enough people focused on colour coding everything for a long enough time we could come up with technology, cures, arguments in colours, whatever you like. It would achieve the same thing. Science is a means, not an end. It's just conditioning that makes reasoning so strong and convincing.


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Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.

joseph campbell


For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

jesus

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: burgatory]
    #8622913 -

Science is just another method of inventing meaning, like colour coding.

honestly...??  what??


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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: burgatory]
    #8623244 -

burgatory said:
Science is just another method of inventing meaning, like colour coding. If enough people focused on colour coding everything for a long enough time we could come up with technology, cures, arguments in colours, whatever you like. It would achieve the same thing. Science is a means, not an end. It's just conditioning that makes reasoning so strong and convincing.


HUH?

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Icelander]
    #8623249 -

Quote:
You have to have balls as big as kettlebells for this


What? Did someone say kettlebell??


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"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

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Re: Exposure of Existential Origin never undermines Spiritual Value [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #8627176 -

Oh grow up (or down) (or sideways)


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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