GENIUS FORUMS

I'm still waiting for you to post something that has some substance to it before I can take you seriously, but at least you managed not to giggle in this one! And just for the record, what you do is not laughing, it's giggling. Stop trying to act like it's not.

Nick wrote: "It's always revealing when people imply that "the real you" is a thoughtless, emotional-drunk buried some where beneath all that superfluous logic and rationality. Revealing in that it shows what they truly value, and what kind of person they are."

But that is not at all what I meant or what I mean. In many fields the people who reveal their 'whole selves', who deal with their whole selves with the import of ideas, and who are transformed in this process of living their ideas, are the people who have the greatest relevance to me personally and also whose ideas seem to have more impact. Miguel de Unamuno is one such philosopher/writer. Generally, I find that the 'Spanish' writers (I refer to Hispanicism I guess but I don't know how I would express it, it is a new are of investigation for me) represent a 'wholesome' connection to life, and I emulate that. As I have expressed from 'day one', many of 'you' who write here seem to me to have gone down one specific and very 'anglo' track. It is like going into a metal room. Everything is sharp and defined but there is also a strange violence that lurks there. I don't think you can see it because you are so much in it. But there are alternatives. I think it has to do with the way that the Whole is conceived, and what relationship one has to it. I have said it many times, but to me 'you-all' seem like 'partial men'.

This 'partialness', this incompleteness, this lack of integral self-relationship, is potentially very dangerous, as I see things.

In Chinese Wisdom it talks of a project of 'rebuilding the well that connects us to the wellspring of life', but if one only succeeds in rebuilding partially, or if a very important part is left out, that it might have been better not to have begun at all.

You can put it however you want Alex. The bottom line is that most people haven't the ability to see beyond their drunken-emotional haze, and that includes you. So, when confronted by a man of depth, clarity, and wisdom, one who exists beyond the fog, you conclude something is awry. It's not that anyone here, or anywhere for that matter is what you would call a "half-man", everyone is whole in their own right, it's just that you don't have the ability to see the whole-man when he is exists beyond the tip of your nose.

Respectful disagreement. The 'image-management' here is one of detachment, non-emotionalism, a smug superiority among sometimes bickering boys, and that is very different from an internal state of inner union, as well as what might be called 'cosmic union', like some of the sages of India, or the Buddhist sages, etc. While I cannot say that I have personally spent a great deal of time with 'authentic sages', I am not without some involvement and experience in this area (I lived in India with my parents when I was 13-14). What I can definitively say---as a 'refugee from the Human Potential movement' in California is that one must be very, very careful around those who claim 'enlightenment', who operate within absolutist mental structures, and who assume they have all the questions sewed up. There are tremendous dangers that lurk in those waters, and that is just a fact.

Now, to paint me with this brush (as I have indeed been saying...)(the brush of 'drunken-emotional') is for you-plural a sort of group-think, a group-accusation. As I said (with a note of sarcasm of course) is that 'you operate in a pack'---if one is threatened, another interposes himself to mount a defense. And when the going gets rough there is always your favorite and most useful distortion to toss up, that of emotionalism, or femininity, or aesthete. Without realizing what you do or why you do it, these are the red flags that point to a sort of pathology (sometimes this is an exaggeration, other times it is a precise description) in your self-image but also in this religion you wish to present to other people. It is certainly not the only thing that defines this list, there are indeed redemptive features (as I regularly say), but still there is these other odd currents that are quite easy to spot. It is an Achille's Heel for you. It is your weak spot. It is the place where one gains insight into what REALLY is operating under the surface. It is something that will need to be addressed and dealt with, one day or another.

What I wrote a couple of posts above, which got labeled as a cheap and typical 'Nietzscheanism' or one of any number of 'nihilisms', is much more than that. It has much more relevance than you seem to know. The whole notion of what is spirituality and how should it be conducted, what it means to the individual and what it means to culture and the collective, is a conversation very very much up in the air. We seem to be moving, over the course of a few centuries, toward radical new definitions, new understandings, new constellations, and one imagines to a new relationship to what you rhetorically refer to as the Totality. I suggest that 'you', despite all the furious assertions, and despite some bulls-eyes (or at least hitting the target and not completely missing) have not concluded this Work. You are not the Spokesman of the Divine, you are not spokesmen for 'enlightenment'.

If there is such a thing as a 'blessed state' (to quote Quinn), it is likely to arise in a man as a result of a unity and cooperation between the different parts of himself: the mind, the spirit, and the body (also including the heart, which I assume for you is only a 'drunken heart', you have no other way to define it). All these different and tendentious parts of us, which have certainly come asunder in the tremendous breakdown of a unitary conceptualization of the world, an old, outdated conceptual model that was severely weakened by free-thinking, science, etc., will have to come together again 'in concert'. Our age is marked by the disunity of these three poles within man. When I make any reference to the 'heart' I am referring to something beyond your ken, apparently. There is an individual inside of all of us, before the structures of language and culture are laid on top, that is such a total being. In that person, which you will never be able to escape or transcend, are those three poles I mention: heart, mind and spirit. That is the core 'stuff' we all have to work with, like it or not.

To deny this, to remain ignorant of it, and to build (mental) structures that doesn't take this human being into account, is to construct a machine-person, but it is also to cultivate madness. Meaning, mental illness. Mental illness lurks on this list, that is just a fact. It is, if you will permit me, a sort of backdrop to this list and to its denizens. But there is nothing to be ashamed of. The crisis that we face, in what appears to be a terribly difficult juncture for man and with very real ramifications is just that of madness, literally losing it, psychosis. The quest for unity, well-being, 'enlightenment', the right way to live and all of that, is a conversation, and is not decided by a snotty pack of adolescent brats who think they run the show, who claim it and own it. (I just had to tack that 'snotty brat' part on, it is almost a trademark).

Do you see, Nick, how what I say differs quite a bit from what you think I say?

No? Oh well, can't say I didn't try... ;-)

Alex, how do you know that you're right, and the "snotty brats" are wrong? Maybe you're the one with the mental illness, and speaking from a state of self-delusion? Maybe you're a brain in a vat. Maybe you're dreaming. Maybe you're hallucinating. Maybe you're just plain old conventional wrong.

Alex,

I'm going to play along with your virtual reality description, partly for the fun and creativity, and partly to make a few points of my own.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:What we seem to be coming up with is a kind of 'key' and also a sort of 'shield' so that we can enter into the mythical domain where the Australian Caballeros del Veraz roam. We might describe it as a virtual reality, and indeed it is: a virtual reality of the mind. But a very interesting aspect of the realm, and the game, the playing of the game, is in how many Units of Knowledge one has in one's possession before one enters the Domain. Because in a certain very real sense they have a limited number of Units in their possession which limits their perception and inhibits their reception.

What's also interesting to me is that the Units of Knowledge are very contextual and interrelated: they fit together in a neat little interlocking arrangement to form the apparently coherent whole of the Domain. A Unit outside of the Domain lacks the same punchy impact as when it is cosied up amongst its brother Units (there are no sister Units) within the Domain. For example Unit #11 (picking somewhat arbitrary numbers), that all things have a relative existence, and its corollary, Unit #12, that no thing exists inherently, link up through Logic[tm] (and the odd hidden assumption) with Unit #13, that the Totality is Infinite, and also, again through Logic[tm], with Units #17 and #18, that the ego is delusional, and that emotions are delusional.

This is a large part of the appeal of this particular virtual reality: that it is so wonderfully self-contained and seemingly complete. One might enter in possession of a particular Unit of Knowledge or two, and find that in the Domain, these Units find complements; find interdependency; fit together in an apparently cohesive package with all of the other Units; everything being drawn together by the over-arching Quest of the Domain: that in which the masculine-minded avatar assumes his Weapons of Logic, and with single-minded purpose does battle with his feminine Delusions (these are the "monster" characters of the Domain - one might imagine them as sensuous and full-bodied, but whose blood upon being spilt reveals itself as filthy and poisonous), and embarks upon the heroic Path to Rational Enlightenment.

In part then this Game is a variation on the hero-on-a-quest paradigm.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Which is to say that the mental landscape they operate in, in which they 'occur', is a limited landscape. So, let us imagine that they have, say, "10 units of Understanding" and they construct the 'ramp' that leads toward what must be described as nearly infinite, a jumping-off point, the point where true Higher Life begins.

But what if one enters into their Game with "12 Units of Understanding" or fifteen---or fifty? One is surrounded with a more ample atmosphere and entering their strict Domain, and believing it (it is part of the nature of a perceived world that one is forced to 'believe' it, right?), one is thereby reduced and not expanded, as is the real goal. Since one does not want to shrink one has to carefully sort through their Tenets and select those that accord with a more ample understanding. Or, one has to allegorize those limited tenets, expand them if you will.

I think that what happens is that through the appeal of the virtue of the Quest, and under the fear of being guilty of rejecting the ultimate gift of Ultimate Truth as repeatedly hammered home ad nauseum by the authoritative three Masters of the Domain and the Favoured Disciples, some players start believing in the Absolute Truth[tm] of the links between all of the Units as forged by Logic[tm]; they forget that Logic[tm] is but a tool of the Game; that there are other games in town which are as you say more "ample"; games that deal with questions of relevance that are either ignored or dismissed in this Game.

So I agree that it's very possible that a character entering the Game will be reduced and not expanded by it. A follow-up question is whether those who spectate and commentate on the Game from the sidelines are reducing or expanding themselves through the experience.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:I have come under the sway of an interesting idea, but I am finding it hard to articulate. It is essentially that we live in the aftermath of a sort of 'death' of an entire conceptual order that sustained us (The Medieval Order, European man, and the 'self' that had been constructed to live in a complete, a Totality, world, universe, kosmos...)

Can you elaborate a little on the details of this conceptual order? It's not so much that I don't agree with your general idea, as that I'm not so sure what I'd be specifically agreeing with.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Our relentlss pursuit of knowledge, in all fields but especially all that is subsumed under 'science' and materialism (science of the senses), essentially undermined an old conceptual order with which the world was sustained, and was understood (and which 'made sense'). This is an event of real magnitude for humankind but especially for the modern individual, the individual sentient being. It is nothing less than losing the ground under one's feet. But, very few can really grasp what is happening, or why. So in the world in which they now exist, they are essentially surrounded by shades and ghosts that rise up from the 'Graveyard of Meaning'.

It is fair to say that no one really understands any longer where they exist, why they exist, and how to act in existence. It is therefor a strange and dangerous territory, a land through which one must voyage without a Guide.

All the more dangerous and bewildering for the variety of philosophies, religions, beliefs, cultures, addictions, perversions, possibilities and temptations to which one is now ever more being exposed by virtue of the technological shrinkage of the world.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:However, we are in fact (or perhaps it should be a question: Are we in fact?) on the cusp of the formation of a new total relationship to the Whole (or 'the Totality' as QRS like to put it). A relationship that involves the whole man, not just the reasoning side. In the death of a conceptual order which I mentioned there is a schism, a stark and dangerous separation: the spirit goes one way, the mind goes another, and the 'body' is left in the dark. This leads, obviously, to various pathologies. When we lose our unity we naturally become desperate, and one of the 'signs' of modern man is just this desperation. It is a dangerous point in the psychic life of the individual and, of course, the collective.

There might well be in the air a sense of impending social and spiritual revolution. The New Age movement for some is that spiritual revolution, or at least it was to be: unfortunately it's become all too easy a target for mainstream satirisation due to some of the directions that it's taken, to some of the unverifiable claims and practices that it respectively makes and welcomes under its banner, to the vagueness of its overall doctrine, and to the asinine nature of such aphorism as sometimes - rightly or wrongly – are associated with it as: "if it feels good, do it". It does, though, attempt to address the mind-body-spirit connection - in fact a popular New Age event here in Australia is titled Mind Body Spirit Festival.

Other attempts at bringing multiple spiritual traditions under one banner that seem to be worthwhile raising in this discussion are Unitarian Universalism and the (somewhat narrower) Bahá'í faith.

There is a tension between scientific materialism on the one hand and these attempts at spiritual synergy on the other hand. The revolution seems to require a harmony or synthesis between the two.

The social revolution - or at least the building clamour for it – might be heralded by such signs as the protest movement that dogs the meetings of the World Economic Forum and similar organisations.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:In this dangerous space, the world that we live in, in this terrible division between spirit and mind and body---horribly---a new player has come on the scene. It is an invention of man but it also become independant of him. In the absence of the Whole Human it necessarily arises. And that is the Machine.

Since we live, effectively, in a world divorced from a conceptual order where God is real, and really interacts with us, what arises to order existence, to control it and offer sense, is the Machine. It is all very, very peculiar because the structures we create begin to look more and more like machines, and one is 'asked' to imitate the machines that rule over us. In a sense the successful personality of today is a machine-personality. But we are in no sense such machines. To become machines is, very really, a kind of madness. And in our modernity this is something we really do deal with. There is a very real pressure that is put on us.

Many fiction authors and movie-makers have warned us of the potential consequences of the dangerous direction in which our increasingly complex machinery is leading us. Some people, though, welcome such possibilities as cybernetic enhancement: the possibility of better cognitive or bodily functions as aided directly by technology embedded in the brain or body; some even speculate about the eventual possibility of being able to “upload” our consciousness itself onto superior hardware, and thereby attain immortality.

Is this madness, or is it the inevitability of progress? I wish I knew the answer; I will say though that at the very least I think we ought to be very wary.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:So, the questions seems to come forward, If we once had an organic relationship to the Totality, if once 'the world' made sense, can't we again redefine and reexperience---in a somatic/spiritual sense---a new unity? I mean, isn't this what all of us who struggle with ideas in an existential sense are attempting to do? Do the doggy stroke just to survive? Just to keep from drowning?

But we don't really know what 'spiritual life' is anymore. We don't seem to know how to 'recover' our relationship to the Whole. It certainly cannot be done exclusively mentally, that seems true enough. One cannot 'think' one's way to wholeness, one cannot 'reason' one's way. No, it has to be the Whole Person who finds the magical key.

I agree with you that reasoning is not the be-all and end-all of the process, controversial as that opinion is here on GF. The question becomes then how to truly live an holistic life.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Most people---I have found---who pontificate about spiritual life, often just cobble together portions of the Old Mysticism, that is to say, they take hold of concepts they find in the Graveyard of Meaning, they blow a little life in them and try to get them to walk about on the land, but they are just partial-entities...ghosts...phantasms. They do not ever seem capable of really answering the questions we are all posing, whether we are conscious of it or not.

It is of paramount importance that we somehow come to articulate the right questions.

Do you have any of these questions for us to explore?

guest of logic wrote: "Can you elaborate a little on the details of this conceptual order? It's not so much that I don't agree with your general idea, as that I'm not so sure what I'd be specifically agreeing with."

Well, here's the short list:

1) That the Earth is the center of the universe, the heart, and everything revolves around it.
2) Man is the lord of all created things and creatures. The earth-world is an independent creation beyond which only the gods and God exists.
3) Man's reason is absolutely trustworthy (truthful). One can confide in it and have faith in it.
4) Man's faith (say, his Christian faith) is entirely reasonable, and that is because it was inspired by God and by God's revelation.
5) Man has the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.
6) To practice 'the good' conduces toward the good in life and toward 'sanctity' (that sanctity is a real thing, is possible), and 'the blessed life'. Inner and outer union. And opposite conduct will lead inexorably to death and punishment.
7) Reason and faith reveal Godhead. Godhead is 'good' and it is one.
8) Man's grasp of the natural world, while incomplete, is fundamentally correct. There are three main reasons why this is so (please choose):
a) Our senses enable us to know reality.
b) Our reason corrects our sense-perceptions, enabling us to know reality.
c) Because God, wisdom, faith supplement and correct the senses and reason, enabling us to know reality. (And no need to put 'reality' in quotations!)
9) We know what matter is, even if we cannot create it.
10) We know what thought is, as distinctly different from matter.
11) The laws of cause and effect, upon which logic and science is based, is absolute.
12) Time and space are real; are independent of our intelligence. We exist in them rather than they in us.
13) The individual (the human individual) whether we call is a soul, spirit or 'self' (ego), exists, not relatively, but absolutely in time and space.
14) Michael Jackson is undoubtedly in Heaven.

These were the blocks with which the 'European house' was constructed and in which resided the 'European spirit'. There have been distinctive ways of interpreting these laws, some place emphasis in one area while ignoring the others, and some take issue with specific of them, but within this 'construct' and this Weltanschauung men have lived and died.

That whole 'house', with modernity, fell asunder or was torn down ('God is dead---and we killed him', etc.) It's a slow death to be sure. But the curious thing is that though this 'European body' died, and as I said the 'spirit' went one way, the 'mind' another, and 'the body' is left in the dark, the individual cells that make/made up the body are still very much alive. A dying body really an alive body in its dying. There is furious activity.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote: "The solid base of matter has been torn down. The old foundations of scientific ideas have become unintelligible. Time, space, matter, 'ether', electricity, mechanics, the organism, configuration, structure, law and function---all require a new interpretation". (Translated from Spanish by yours truly).

guest wrote: "There might well be in the air a sense of impending social and spiritual revolution."

Since a new grappling with our entire reality from a radically new perspective is the 'order of the day', it seems unlikely that a real revolution (whatever in fact that would be...) could come from among the partisans of the Old Order, or from out of the dying 'Graveyard of Meaning'. I personally doubt that such a new way of thinking will come from the New Age circle.

But let's cut right to the chase: I am supposing that Q-R-S (*genuflections, bows*) has, in its way, 'been to the mountain top and seen the Promised Land'. So again, the ramp that leads to a new mysticism, a new 'total relationship' which contains, holds, accepts the scientific findings (as we know, 'religion' often just ignores science, the way the 'house' of Europe fell apart, and this is certainly true of the common sort, and we all have the mental vestige of the Middle Ages as part and parcel of the structure of our minds (and our psychologies), it is just that we have to be sure that we are not leaving something (important) out.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:But let's cut right to the chase: I am supposing that Q-R-S (*genuflections, bows*) has, in its way, 'been to the mountain top and seen the Promised Land'. So again, the ramp that leads to a new mysticism, a new 'total relationship' which contains, holds, accepts the scientific findings

So, QRS as launching point for a new mysticism that takes the correct attitude towards science. If you're willing to indulge me then, I'd like you to get into some specifics about how we might proceed up the ramp: which "Units", if any, in the "Domain", do we drop, revise or supersede, and which new "Units" do we bring in to make up the deficit?

dejavu wrote:God is one such 'unit' that may be dropped (superceded as opposed to revised) Alex of course disagrees. Laird is likely to, but I would like to hear it from him.

Yes, disagreed. I go with revised, not superseded - revised at the very least to something along the lines of "the power that underlies and forms the foundation of meaning and experience". I have some more specific notions of the nature of God, but I wouldn't want to install them as part of a Unit as they're much more speculative and intuitive.

dejavu wrote:That's fine, so out with these specific notions!

Specific notions of that nature aren't going for free, at least not publicly...

I have gone into some of my speculations in the past here in my two prior incarnations though, as "earnest_seeker" and "Laird" - I can't recall the titles of the threads in which I did that though.

dejavu wrote:This 'power that forms the foundation of meaning', self, you may also like to give out why you think the word god is fitting, or do you conceive this power as something other?

Because it is transcendent.

guest wrote: "So, QRS as launching point for a new mysticism that takes the correct attitude towards science. If you're willing to indulge me then, I'd like you to get into some specifics about how we might proceed up the ramp: which "Units", if any, in the "Domain", do we drop, revise or supersede, and which new "Units" do we bring in to make up the deficit?"

I don't know if I would have said 'takes the right attitude', but rather that it is one of the 'building blocks' to an entirely 'new' model of the cosmos, of existence. My sense is that---if you'll allow me to say it like this---this is what the 'soul' (or individual entity) clamors for. It is just a fact it seems to me that all people, in all times, establish (discover or devise) a unified, mystical relationship to the Totality (kosmos).

The word mystical is important because it would combine 'mind' 'spirit' and 'body'. It is not just having an intellectual model that is convincing, or a spiritual model (theological, otherworldly) that does not and likely cannot take the mental and the physical (as in sensual sciences) into consideration, does not incorporate them, it implies a unified perception, which would have to be a radically new model. Not the old model---the Graveyard of Meaning---brought back on stage with a new top hat and gloves, but a completely new model.

One of the main problems of 'modernity' is this 'ontological uncertainty' isn't it? The profound sense of angst that moderns feel, consciously or unconsciously, because they no longer possess a Unified Model. The possibility of mystical union, it would seem, does not exist.

Is it recoverable, rediscoverable?

Clearly, Q-R-S have, with a considerable amount of pain and struggle, come to some conclusions about these problems, this impasse, this swamp for modern man---this nihilism. But the question seems to be is Do they take enough into consideration? Does the Program they offer or suggest or direct one to meet all the qualifications for what can only be a new religious model?

Deja vu wrote: "God is one such 'unit' that may be dropped (superceded as opposed to revised) Alex of course disagrees."

Wait, can't I become an atheist apparatchik if I want to? A servant of the Machine? "A brat in a vat" as Jason would have it? ;-)

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Wait, can't I become an atheist apparatchik if I want to? A servant of the Machine? "A brat in a vat" as Jason would have it? ;-)

Why do you refuse to deal with possibility of the world being a dream/hallucination/illusion?

Jason wrote:Why do you refuse to deal with possibility of the world being a dream/hallucination/illusion?

Well it's not. It's utterly real and visceral. But only for Princy.

You masochist, you....

You want some suffering too Dan? i'll gladly give you some.

People are dying every day of starvation and disease.

Fuck me, did I have something to do with that?

Yes, and more so since you became a moron. The Prince I know/knew was an irritating little cunt, but he was at least interesting, challenging and occasionally inspiring.

So how does one become more of a moron? Short of getting a blow to the head or oxygen deprivation.

I am not a moron mate, far from it. Use your terms clearly. I eat you for breakfast, I own you , I play you.

I am the only truly enlightened one who ever lived on this planet. The Universe created me, and only me.

Jason wrote: "Why do you refuse to deal with possibility of the world being a dream/hallucination/illusion?"

What makes you think that I don't see things that way? Existence, the fact that things exist, the weird contrast (an impossible contrast) between existence and non-existence, is just too strange of a consideration. It rapidly becomes imponderable, and yet laden or charged with 'meaning'.

The essence of everything is in that, and it surrounds any examination of the essence of human situations (phenomenological considerations/meditations). Instead of entertaining such an idea in a modern-popular-cinematic way (Diebert has recently mentioned PK Dick, the science fiction writer, who dreamed up so many scenarios that made their way into popular films), I would likely instead 'call to mind' some of the Vedic conceptualization of this idea/fact.

I do in fact see this life and this world as a participatory dream. It would explain quite a few anomalous elements to my own perception/experience of the world, and the sense that more awake beings---individuals, actual persons beyond this particular 'dream'---do enter into this world (of mine, ours) from time to time, and also a very peculiar, and also meaningful, configuration of circumstances that I have sometimes called 'the exploding metaphor'.

If the world is such a dream, made of dreamy stuff, there seems to exist the possibility that we can act unusually on the surrounding dream. The dream itself, or the way we logically apprehend it, induces us to imagine it is singular, constant, inviolable, but there are whole schools of thought that see the world as responsive to man's will: the science and practice of magic. If I think thus-and-such, if I will thus-and-such, I can affect the world, the present, the future. It is an interesting idea that our modern science is really, in a similar way, an applied magic. The manipulation of 'things' strictly resulting from application of will.

(And there of course all the mythic symbolism of a Mephistophelean activity, the creation of automaton machines that take over the planet, etc.)

Now, the question gets more interesting when that 'magic' becomes 'spiritual magic' or 'holy magic'. Maybe that sort of 'magic' (an existential attitude and activity) is one where the individual is conscious of a surrounding, 'superior' consciousness? And it is less about a strict application of his will, which is sometimes a little maniacal, and a surrender or giving-over to another will. There, of course, a whole other sort of path opens up. And I suggest, of course, that is where 'divine life' might begin. What that seems to mean is that this 'thing' or possibility known as God/the Divine is only knowable through grace; that one comes into it only to the degree that one renders oneself susceptible to it, sensitive to it, and that in this strict sense one has to 'go and meet it'. I am not trying to 'get religious' on you (the Christian language, the metaphysical essence is, when you strip it down to the basics, the language of just such a 'magical school of thought', the blending of Jewish mysticism and Isis-worship/magical practice, among many other currents, a sort of pan-Mediterraneanism), and am only trying to fill out a little what you seem to be suggesting.

If as you seem to imply we are 'taking place' in a dream construct, and if as I say there is a sort of 'Lord' or designing intelligence of the realm (I wince too at some of these terms and those who use them, they all have to be carefully explained anew), what if one can never get to the bottom of anything here unless one shows the right attitude? Unless one 'turns over one's will'? In this scenario the individual has no power, or very limited power, to 'open his own front door' (in this far broader, existential sense), and what is more, the door is so tightly closed that only, on occasion, does an 'exploding metaphor' get by the Gatekeeper and hearken to something entirely other?

Kind of does a number on a strict atheistic/rationalist group of presuppositions, I admit that... ;-)

Deja vu wrote: "Merrily, merrily row your boats! When shall we wake?"

And that is exactly the question: what does WAKING mean?

prince wrote:So how does one become more of a moron? Short of getting a blow to the head or oxygen deprivation.

I am not a moron mate, far from it. Use your terms clearly. I eat you for breakfast, I own you , I play you.

I am the only truly enlightened one who ever lived on this planet. The Universe created me, and only me.

Through willed ignorance. When you have two conflicting streams of thought, what is called cognitive dissonance and you are invariably inclined to resolve the conflict, it is easy to fall into a rigid pattern of thought that isn't rational but in accordance with emotional intuition. Doing so, in my opinion is moronic and leads to more moron.

prince wrote:So how does one become more of a moron? Short of getting a blow to the head or oxygen deprivation.

Too much fluoride in the water.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:The word mystical is important because it would combine 'mind' 'spirit' and 'body'. It is not just having an intellectual model that is convincing, or a spiritual model (theological, otherworldly) that does not and likely cannot take the mental and the physical (as in sensual sciences) into consideration, does not incorporate them, it implies a unified perception, which would have to be a radically new model. Not the old model---the Graveyard of Meaning---brought back on stage with a new top hat and gloves, but a completely new model.

"In search of Scientific Mysticism"... is that how you'd title this new Quest?

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Clearly, Q-R-S have, with a considerable amount of pain and struggle, come to some conclusions about these problems, this impasse, this swamp for modern man---this nihilism. But the question seems to be is Do they take enough into consideration? Does the Program they offer or suggest or direct one to meet all the qualifications for what can only be a new religious model?

Well yes, and with all due respect - as borne out by the fact that I wouldn't expect just any random GF poster to be capable of meaningfully responding to my request - the point of my last post was to indicate that as far as I understand it, both of us would - if pressed under extreme torture such as being deprived of the smiles of comely females - answer no to those questions, and to prompt you for some specific revisions to the QRS "conclusions". I won't press the point beyond this though - I know that it can be difficult to extract specifics from a perpetual work-in-progress.

dejavu wrote:God transcends nothing. I have ruled it thus. Theologists can either love me, or curse me unto death for such a ruling!

And what on that cloudless day upon which you transcend these "rulings", "love", "curses" and "death"?

Thanks for that, Deja vu. Was that inspired by cubensis do you think? Because I thought I heard a little bohemica in there. Or was it azurescens?

Laird wrote: "Well yes, and with all due respect - as borne out by the fact that I wouldn't expect just any random GF poster to be capable of meaningfully responding to my request - the point of my last post was to indicate that as far as I understand it, both of us would - if pressed under extreme torture such as being deprived of the smiles of comely females - answer no to those questions, and to prompt you for some specific revisions to the QRS "conclusions". I won't press the point beyond this though - I know that it can be difficult to extract specifics from a perpetual work-in-progress."

I'll get back to you on that.

Animus wrote:

Ataraxia wrote:Unfortunately, both the Churchlands are sending philosophy of mind in exactly the wrong direction, IMHO.

Can you elaborate on that?

They are attempting to turn Philosophy of Mind into a evolutionary and/or neuroscience. Rather than doing philosophy, they spend most of their time 'special pleading' for physicalism; so does Daniel Dennet.

I like some of the things David Chalmers is doing (I'm hoping to do a thesis under him sometime in the not to distant future). Something along the lines of Colin Mcginn

Laird wrote: "Well yes, and with all due respect - as borne out by the fact that I wouldn't expect just any random GF poster to be capable of meaningfully responding to my request - the point of my last post was to indicate that as far as I understand it, both of us would - if pressed under extreme torture such as being deprived of the smiles of comely females - answer no to those questions, and to prompt you for some specific revisions to the QRS "conclusions". I won't press the point beyond this though - I know that it can be difficult to extract specifics from a perpetual work-in-progress."

I have been reading some essays of Gnostic Christianity and had to refer to the Gospel of John---the odd-ball Gospel that doesn't fit in to the 'synoptic' Gospels. It is distinct, phrased very differently, has a far stronger essential message, and so in fact actually serves the purpose of framing a conception (in this case of a divine Jesus, Jesus as God, etc.) that explains how one should look at Jesus Christ. It is really rather peculiar when I looked at it closely. Chapters 13-17 have the narrator presenting Jesus revealing his mission to the disciples who do not grasp what he is referring to. He is saying 'Soon I will go away and where I go you can't come'. The disciples go "Huh?!" The Reader of course knows where Jesus is going and in this the Narrator is secretly playing with the Reader, forcing him to participate in the 'core' of the story, to get it, but it is done in a rather subtle and even ingenious manner. Very tricky, that John.

The author of the essay asked a question: what if instead of John to provide the frame through which to view the Gospel events, it had been the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas? The thrust of John is to divinize the man, and the thrust of Thomas is to exhort anyone to go inside and discover a way to do what Jesus did (according to Gnostic understanding). If John were to have been replaced by Thomas we would likely be in a different world given the vast influence of Christianity. A peculiar speculation, but worth consideration.

So, what in the name of Pete (ha ha) does this have to do with QRS? Glad you asked!

I see QRS as framing a group of perceptions. I see it as a quite strict model. Meaning, there is a vast portion of possible frame-elements that they leave out. But according to their frame-model those things have to be left out. The cite authorities to bolster that selection, arbitrary though it may be. They cite Mr Jesus in fact, but oh-so-selectively. They present a group of conclusions that are based in a group of exclusions.

QRS philosophy, as I have said, has pretty noticeable doctrinal stresses, a pretty strict and exclusive platform that it operates in and presents. If it were a theological position, I submit, it would be similar to the Gospel of John in comparison to the other Gospels, which are more open-ended. QRS offer a framework with which to view 'the world', and in this limited and exclusive presentation leave out so many different possibilities. Everyone who reads here already knows, pretty much, what they are. Ryan, for example, accepts the basic definitions and, indeed, narrows them further. (Just one example).

I didn't offer anything specific, I am just interested in the question about their presuppositions.