On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <poor_richard@att.net> wrote:
My comments are interlinear

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.

yes, but that is exactly because they have chosen for an impoverished understanding of the world, and thus the world challenges that ... for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone through this inner transformation, or not, and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good indicator for that. You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having experiences but not using the concept. But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated by the acceptance of that said community. I understand that position perfectly, for the same reason I do not use the loaded s- and c-words .. but rather p2p to start a fresh investigation of emancipatory possibilities

 


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?"

The sunset is not a good example, as anyone can 'easily' experience that, but what about shamanistic, mystical, gnostic and other experiences, that are not reducable to an external input from nature, but are rather inner events, from problematic origins (your 3 mind theory) . THere is more to life than nature 'mysticism' ..

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.

ok again, there is no need to accept the supernatural at all; but here is a crucual difference, you seem to argue that one day, we'll know enough of the brain to explain the inner experiences of shakespeare lovers and tibetan monks, and that is the reductionism I object two. These are entirely different planes or aspects. No matter how much we know about how the brain works, that does not say anything about the hermeneutic aspects of Shakespeare. For that you would need psychological and social sciences but even more: intersubjective dialogue, irreducible to any 'science'.
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.

again, for me that has no bearing on understanding the phenomena in question, physical correlates are just physical correlates, they do not exhaust the issue at all


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....)


well it is the difference between physical torture, mental torture, and what it all means to the human being doing and experiencing it ... multiple levels of reality, not reducible to the physical correlates ... each new level of complexity is based on the lower level and cannot exist without it, but brings new 'laws' to the table .. i.e. emergent realities


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 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.


well again, "a means of exploiting human nature" "hoaxes", instead of : different cultural and historical ways to experience human and other realities ... there is a sea of difference between the dead western funerals I experienced in Belgium (for my father) and the lively, communal, rich funeral rites I experienced here in Thailand (for my mother). An incredible difference in effectiveness, psychological, social, spiritual .. there is really a sea of difference between artificially creating a altered states through drugs and machinery, and the collective process that goes on through a spiritual path. Which is not to say we could not develop and are developing, contempary methodologies, such as John Heron's Cooperative INquiry and many others, http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Spirituality#Key_Articles


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.


Understood, so do I, but I believe what is needed is participant observation, not a superior condemnation from a morally higher vantage point (i.e. rational thinking vs. hoaxes and human exploitation)

 

PR