Nature of consciousness

[Eric the Green]

(10-30-2018, 05:59 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-29-2018, 07:11 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Intellect is only one means of describing reality, and is so superficial that it misses most of it. 

Name some things the intellect cannot describe.

Words and numbers are only symbols of reality, not reality. There is really nothing that the intellect can describe. It can only make an attempt, and that's often valuable, but that's as far as it gets. Pain, pleasure, emotions, intuitions, desires; these are immediate experiences not mediated by rational thought. And who knows where thoughts comes from either; they just pop in.

The source of your knowledge is your own experience, not just words from scientists. Without your awareness, you cannot read facts from science either.

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Quote:My above descriptions of actual, real experiences are not beliefs.

Show me one anatomy or physiology handbook which mentions a thing called chakras. They are only mediaeval Hindu nonsense.

I look at things from a broader point of view than traditional materialist science textbooks. It is those which are out of date. Enlightenment-era intellectualism is out of date.

The chakras are nerve ganglia on the physical level. You experience them as chakras.

https://socratic.org/questions/what-are-...ous-system

http://yourpresenceheals.com/science-behind-chakras/

https://www.llewellyn.com/encyclopedia/article/249

The chakras are also connected to the endocrine system
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/endocrine-system-facts
https://www.sharecare.com/health/mind-bo...ine-system

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Quote:I don't think you can pinpoint a location for any feeling or awareness. We experience reality with our full bodies, and beyond; not just with neurons in our brains. That is not magic or myth; it's just common sense experience.

We need our full bodies to experience reality, but our senses only collect information which is processed in the brain. This is basic physiology, not any transhumanist speculation.

The senses are our whole body that experiences reality. The senses are connected to the brain, but we sense things where they are, not in our brains. If you hurt your little finger, you hurt in your little finger. In fact, everything in your body is in your consciousness, which is one, and everywhere in your body.

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Quote:Great frontiers of knowledge beckon on this inner journey. Joseph Campbell aroused a lot more sense of adventure than Carl Sagan did. See The Power of Myth.

A book can raise a sense of adventure while being completely fictional. I suppose more people enjoyed Arabian Nights than Joseph Campbell. Enjoying a work of fiction doesn't require believing in it.

Those who understand myth, realize that it is more than fiction (aside from the fact that sometimes myth turns out to be history). Myths teach us about ourselves and the world.

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Quote:We do indeed need to revive and update the deeper traditions within western civilization, as well as eastern civilization, that lie beyond the purview of so-called post-Enlightenment intellect. These western esoteric traditions were in fact a highlight of the Renaissance, and were only suppressed later on, in the 18th century. Renaissance artists and intellectuals were well aware of the soul centers.

They were wrong about many other things, too. For example, even Shakespeare believed that some parts of Africa are populated by headless people with faces on chests.

I can't disagree that Renaissance and Medieval people were wrong about many other things. Our modernist tech believers of today are also wrong about many things.

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Quote:The more people peer into the nature of what they call "matter," which is just a description of a feeling of resistance we experience with our senses, the more empty space they find. Even within protons is more empty space. The most elementary particles are just impressions on a screen in a particle accelerator. String theory says these small constituents of reality are massless. Since we know that matter really is energy anyway, why carry around this delusion that the world is made of "matter," and call those who question this myth, the ones who are like Papuan hunters? No, a better description of the universe is that it is music. When you peer into yourself, instead of into a microscope or through your own senses to look outside yourself, or even at yourself from the outside, you don't experience any matter anyway. You are only pure consciousness.

The above doesn't change the fact that the materialist paradigm has resulted in glorious achievements in medicine and engineering, which resulted in more human well-being than any medieval mystic ever dreamed.

And that fact, if so it is, does not change the truth of what I said above.

The point is, if you base your values and your ideas of life on "matter," it is no less a myth and a symbol than "spirit" or "soul."

And to be clear, belief in soul as opposed to matter does not destroy the ability to do science or to develop technology. In fact, the real originators of today's materialist science also actually believed in astrology, alchemy and religion. They wanted to demonstrate divine order. This quest emerged out of western civilization including medieval and renaissance times.

If you base your ideas of reality on what's useful for glorious achievements, then you have no sense of essential values, and the purpose or value of all this usefulness. Useful for what?


People like me see the benefits of materialist science and its technology, but also see its price, for example:

1. climate change (which doesn't concern you, but is a real danger) and other pollution and destruction of precious nature, ecosystems and wildlife

2. our personal alienation from earth and life, and from ourselves and ability to have good relationships, do well in sports, etc. As Bergson says, the intellect is characterized by the inability to understand life.

3. the disenchantment of the world without appreciation that it IS a miracle

4. more dangerous weapons of war

5. the use of technology to further the aims of dictators

6. the loss of respect for the arts, and for that spiritual quest that you dismiss as nonsense, but which is the most essential thing in life and your very being

7. diminishing returns from materialist medicine; inability to recognize the value of alternative therapies, especially for lifestyle diseases, and tendency to repress these alternatives

The above does not make me a luddite who doesn't want or appreciate technology. It makes me a skeptic about your kind of tech-oriented materialist worldview. I see there's a place for mechanical cause and effect ideas, and how they facilitated industrial technology. But there are other ideas that are also valuable, and in the quantum age, I'm not sure how materialist science really is anymore, anyway. Opinions differ on that. What is clear is that a materialist philosophy is not, and never was, needed to do good science.

Thanks for reading and sharing your views. May you stay curious, and open to new ideas. I did not become a spiritualist through my rebellion against technology or materialism. I became a spiritualist because I was curious about just what all this is that's going on.

A science guy who does the videos called It's OK to be Smart ends his shows with "stay curious." Good advice!