My comments are interlinear

On 9/11/2011 11:13 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
Isn't a world like "love" loaded with contradictory and unclear meanings, but does that mean we have to reject it.

We would need to define or qualify the word "love" in many instances, depending on the company and context in which we use it, and I think that qualifying  or defining our use of the word "spirituality" is the least we should do in  many contexts . Also, like spirituality, love is often inadequately examined (to paraphrase Socrates, the unexamined word is not worth uttering). But seriously, there are many pathologies associated with both sexual and romantic love. In my opinion, a majority of our species suffers from addiction to or unhealthy obsession with sexual and/or romantic love at some stage in their lives.  But what makes the term "spirituality" even more problematic than "love" in many contexts is that it is indeed a "hot button" word for many in the atheist/agnostic/skeptic/free-thought/science community.

I think Amaia puts it well, it's about the relation with what surpasses us as human ego's, what I have called before our relation with "all that is". I'm a  monophysicist pretty much myself, i.e. there is only one reality, one 'stuff', and the supernatural means, "even more natural" or super-nature ... However, I suspend my disbelief into the extent of that 'nature', and accept that there are man things we don't know, many things that may overturn our current understanding. We need the eye of matter to understand our natural world, the eye of the mind to understand each other and human culture, and the eye of the spirit to understand the numinous experiences that are beyond language.

Agreed


Richard, you say all is interconnected and that is science, and I agree, but don't you see the 'sea' of difference between understanding that mentally, and on the other hand, to experience this directly, mystically, gnostically?

Of course. There is also a sea of difference between Newton seeing the apple fall from the tree and his laws of gravity, which have themselves had to be modified over time. Part of what I'm saying is that the unexamined life is not worth living, and I know you agree with that. The more we kick our experiences around and around between all our ways of knowing, the less skewed or biased our interpretation will be. This also applies to scientism, rationalism, and philosophism (meaning the exclusion of experience or empirical data that do not conform to the paradigm). We fully agree on this. Indeed, there may be just as much pathology in science and philosophy as in spirituality.

We can say that "all is part of life", but again, isn't there a sea of difference between understanding this mentally, i.e. still separately as a watching and conversing mind, and/or to experience this directly, as a shaman might.

I behold a sunset. I am moved esthetically and emotionally, and perhaps in other ways for which "naturalistic spirituality" might serve as a place holder for other words we don't have for responses of our organism that are still insufficiently examined. I'm not even saying that we can't value the sunset without examining our experience at all. But if someone tells me the sunset moves them spiritually, I probably know less than if they say it moves them esthetically or emotionally. Most people would just accept the spiritual explanation as if that meant the same thing to everyone. If you said you love the sunset, depending on the context I might say "yeah, me too" or I might ask "why?", or "what do you love about it?," or "what do you mean?, or "why don't you marry it?"

Part of the ordinary experience of every naturalist or ecologist working with nature and contemplating the complex inter-dependencies, forms, and phenomena is deeply aesthetic and emotional, but I see little utility in calling it spiritual. That seems in such cases like a superfluous word.

We can either decide, if we do not experience this directly, to be a 'hoax', or we can accept that there is a real experience there, there is a 'there' there. Now, we always can return to the eye of the mind, i.e. "what does it all mean, for us", and we can return to the eye of matter, what is really the material "there" that is there, and as  you know, we know have at least 30 years of investigating the physical correlates of such experiences, and we now know that they are effectively there.

Agreed
But, this is crucial, just as we cannot reduce the 'meaning' of skakespeare by the physical qualities of the ink on paper,

This is a bad example for your position. Meaning is only a relevant word in the context of a conscious entity. The ink on paper only has meaning when it is given such by the reader. We have learned a great deal about how all that works, and have no good reason to think that any of the stuff we don't know about it yet is not just as naturalistic as what we already know. When it comes right down to it, there is no good, logical, persuasive way to assert that anything unknown or mysterious is unnatural, because of the very lack of explanatory evidence that makes it a mystery. I have been experiencing and witnessing real mysterious phenomena for decades and have not seen, heard, nor read any convincing evidence that anything that exists or anything that is real is unnatural. Thus one of my objections to the very prevalent "supernatural" or dualistic connotation of the word spiritual.

or the brainwaves of the author or reader

We are getting more information from brainwaves all the time but they are only a crude window into the mind. However, we have learned enough through various means to anticipate that the vast majority if not all cognitive functions have physical correlates, as you said earlier.

, similarly, we can not reduce the experience of Tibetan monks, to just the physical correlates that can be shown to occur in their brains.

Not yet. That will require full visibility into all levels of brain function and a way to "play back" these recorded correlates into another brain to verify that the experience induced by the recording is as complete as the original. I predict that some day it will be demonstrated so. I'd guess that to occur around 2040. I hope I'll live to experience high-fidelity brain recordings.

Hence the dialogue is always between those three levels, that of understanding material laws, that of understanding human meaning, and that of experiencing directly the transformative power of spiritual experiences.

In that scenario I'm not sure I see any difference between direct spiritual experience and, say, direct experience with a microscope. Experience with microscopes is also transformative.  Direct experience is integral to science, and science is transformative, too. So is torture. (Different strokes....)

That doesn't require anyone to believe anything said by such experiencer, but only, if we want, to follow the injunctions that may lead to those occuring in us as well. There is no obligation, but in my mind, there should also not be a rejection.

I do not reject the mysterious, the unknown, or the unexplained. I only reject what empirical evidence, either first hand or acquired from reliable sources, convinces me to reject. However, a combination of personal experience and scholarship leads me to reject many past and current explanations of mysterious phenomena, even if I do not yet have a better explanation (although in quite a few cases I do have better explanations than those that are common in the public and among my peers).

To repeat, the secular world does not offer anything remotely similar to such experiences of the human bodymind, but have occured repeatedly throughout the ages to those who are willing to following such trainings and injunctions.

I disagree. Many (perhaps all) altered states of consciousness can be induced by secular means free of any association with religious or spiritual trappings. What the religious and spiritual terminologies, narratives, rituals, sacraments, art, architecture, etc. mostly seem to contribute is to make a practice or procedure more interesting, entertaining, or emotionally compelling (sometimes frightening) to many. This is a way of exploiting human nature.

Apart from the rejection of the semantics of the concept of spirit and spirituality, it is now a historical time to go beyond the rejection of 19th century rationalism against anything that is not purely 'rational', to a time of integration and dialogue between the various levels of the human being.

That's what I'm all up in here about. My rational arguments would not be what they are without decades of practical experience and observation of all things mystical and shamanistic from a highly open and sympathetic point of view. I do not reject the experience, but I do reject many of the common interpretations of it.

PR

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Amaia Arcos <amaia.arcos@googlemail.com> wrote:
Dear PR,

I really am looking forward to reading your original post properly and your response here and come back to it. Ideally it would be done over coffee, attended by anyone who might be interested - there would be 3 of us for sure - but if it needs to be typed, typed it will have to be.

Amaia, I would very much love to be sipping coffee with you, Michel and others as we discuss this.


I am time-tied right now but coming back to supernatural and its meaning.. I am a massive fan of playing with language, accepting new meaning for words before they even become mainstream, etc, not a "proper" language fascist in the slightest, quite the opposite, I love being informal with it but to decide that something as simple as a prefix (super) is going to mean exactly the opposite of what it means in just one particular case.. To me it is a pretty obvious fallacy. And one used to reject something one cannot even begin to comprehend, hence the need to reject it. Arrogance at its best in my opinion.

I'm fine with rejecting the word supernatural or using it for the opposite of its current definition. All we need to do is take the current definition of supernatural and give it a different name and then get everybody to look up the new word and use it instead of supernatural. I'm fine with that even though I will then need to do a search and replace on all my writing.


Also, I am starting to wonder, this is not so much about rejecting spiritual experiences/realities but about semantics, right?

One of my main issues is the semantic one, especially the "hot button" aspect for some communities of interpretation.

I don't know, but who cares what people mean and/or if it differs in its characterisation? I know my idea of spirituality is very different to that of an orthodox Muslim or Catholic, or even a Hindu or a Buddhist, but if I am having a conversation with one of them and look into their eyes, we both see/feel we believe and respect God/higher force(s), I really feel no need for them to understand God/souls/spirituality as I understand "it". I think the sense of respect for a higher force that rules over us and is nothing but love is the same. I also think it is the same as your scientific acceptance that all is interconnected.

There are some situations when all you really care about is that everybody smiles and nods. In those situations I don't care what words people use. I'll smile and nod, too. I didn't take this list as such a context. This kind of venue leans, I think, towards the interplay of ideas and points of view to refine them. Sometimes the process is conflictual, sometimes it is like sitting in a circle thrashing and winnowing wheat and singing songs.

The only thing we might differ in is the level of power, control and understanding man (rational mind) has. To decide we are the measure of all things is pretty crazy in my opinion :)

I am for maximizing the utility of our bodies, brains, and language, not some kind of grand conquest or contest or anthropomorphic masturbation. My ego is old and feeble.


Disclaimer: I have been a terribly arrogant skeptic all of my life up until fairly recently when "exotism" took over my life. I have fought it for the longest time, because I could not accept that I was starting to believe (with all my soul) what I had consistently rejected for so long. (Just to make clear that I have not grown up blindly believing in faith and superstition). I now accept I am not the centre of the universe and feel extremely liberated by it all to be honest.

For one who grew up as a skeptic, belief is the first step on the journey, not the destination. For one who grew up as a believer, as I did, rejection is the fist step of the journey, not the destination.

I salute all those on the great journey.

PR


On 12 September 2011 01:34, Poor Richard <poor_richard@att.net> wrote:
My responses are interlinear...


On 9/11/2011 2:41 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

discussion Poor Richard's blogpost:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Amaia Arcos <amaia.arcos@googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: is there no p2p spirituality because there is no spirituality
To: Michel Bauwens <michel@p2pfoundation.net>


I wish I had a printer so that I could see this article on paper and make notes on the side. From glancing over it:

I lean towards natural causes, even if those causes turn out to be very subtle and perhaps very surprising. (when talking about his "exotic" experiences) > eingh, spirituality is as natural as nature itself, not following.

My first problem with the term "spirituality" is semantic. I am interested in developing and promoting terminology that would carry more "invariant meaning across the global communities of interpretation" (a phrase I'm quoting from a FB  post by Jonny Cache).

The usage of the term "spirituality" has a long history. Both its historical and current usage by many implies a connotation of the supernatural or things outside the natural world. That's one problem I have with it, based on my skepticism toward mind-body dualism and natural-supernatural dualism. Amaia's comment above informally addresses this issue. I, like Amaia perhaps, consider many of the things implied by the term "spirit" to be part of nature. But others either imply or may infer a natural-supernatural dichotomy. This makes the term too ambiguous and "loaded" for me.

Some use "spirituality" as a broad basket of ideas such as reverence for all life, the inter-relatedness of all life, altruism, morality,  conscience, love of others, self-love, selflessness, virtue, etc. All these ideas have numerous different forms of expression in a variety of different "communities of interpretation" including current and past religious traditions as well as academic and secular bodies of knowledge.

I think it is fair to say that the terms spirit, spiritual, and spirituality actually mean something different to each person who uses them, and one person often means different things at different times. That is actually much of thier appeal sometimes. Spirituality is a word you can use in mixed communities of interpretation to refer to high, noble, or virtuous aspects of human nature in a very generic, non-sectarian way. I don't object to its deliberately ambiguous use in that way as a "bridge" between diverse communities of interpretation when it is used to open common ground-- if further along in the process we intend to make a transition to less nebulous or ambiguous terms.



Yes, I am very aware the term "supernatural" exists, which if analysed means exactly the opposite of how people use it or the dictionary defines it. Super is a prefix that denotes "a lot of ", according to the same dictionary it means "specially/particularly" so supernatural, if anything, means very natural, a lot of natural, specially/particularly natural. And that is what spirituality is, precisely. Super-mega-natural.

That "rational" humans decided to go against their own logic rules in language in order to make sure they were seen as rejecting stuff they could not begin to comprehend is a complete different story.

su·per·nat·u·ral
adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or adeity.
3. of a superlative degree; preternatural: a missile ofsupernatural speed.
4. of, pertaining to, or attributed to ghosts, goblins, or otherunearthly beings; eerie; occult.

Language has not been engineered in a lab. It has evolved organically. I agree that "supernatural" could logically be defined or taken to mean the opposite of what it is commonly defined and taken to mean. However, as commonly used, it is far less ambiguous than spiritual.

The words nature and natural are not without problems, too. Some (myself included) often use nature to mean all that exists, while others exclude man, god(s), ideas, man-made products, etc. from the realm of nature. It's hard to avoid using "natural" to distinguish things that are man-made from those that are not, but it has become all but meaningless on food package labeling. I often use the form "naturalistic" instead of natural to reduce some of the ambiguity.

My main point would be that if we are trying to discuss anything in an even modestly formal or precise way, it is probably incumbent on us to give a brief definition of what we mean by the word "spirituality" if we choose to use it. My main objection to the word is that it often obfuscates meanings rather than conveying them. It is my opinion that some people use the word "spiritual" because it obfuscates their own specific beliefs, beliefs that might prove less defensible, even to themselves,  if expressed more precisely.

PR


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