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. 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. Also, I am starting to wonder, this is not so much about rejecting spiritual experiences/realities but about semantics, right? 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. 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 :) 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. On 12 September 2011 01:34, Poor Richard <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:00 AM Subject: Re: is there no p2p spirituality because there is no spirituality To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>

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

On 9 September 2011 04:06, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

...

http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/spiritual-new-supernatural/

article via Poor Richard ...

Michel

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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 <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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 <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:00 AM Subject: Re: is there no p2p spirituality because there is no spirituality To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>

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

...

On 9 September 2011 04:06, Michel Bauwens <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/spiritual-new-supernatural/ > > article via Poor Richard ... > > Michel > > -- > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens >

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my comments as usual are interlinear On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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 ...

I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion of the communities in question.

for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone through this inner transformation, or not,

I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am often surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.

and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good indicator for that.

To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist or new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of intermediate phase of development, although few that I encounter actually seem to pass beyond it. That may sound superior or arrogant but I think it best that I don't sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak it in sideways. I base this on my own life trajectory as well as my last few years of study and re-analysis of myself and those I have known.

You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having experiences but not using the concept.

Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious, mystical, and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive substances) against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of comparative religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the concept of spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past decade that I have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in the past few years have I questioned the implicit associations of supernaturality (and other connotations I consider doubtful or fallacious) with the word "spirituality". It may be telling that I titled my blog post, "Is spiritual the new supernatural?," with a question rather than a statement. I am still agnostic as to the existence of anything logically and qualitatively distinct from everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything supernatural or non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my own thought pending some startling future revelation). One might think my aforementioned experiences would have provided just that revelation and indeed I interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple of decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have come to interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more satisfying to me than my former spiritual interpretations. My naturalistic interpretations are more satisfying because they are more intellectually parsimonious (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my interpretations--if it did I would retain it); because they expand rather than shrink the horizons of my mind; and because they fractally interdigitate with all the rest of my knowledge as my previous interpretations never could. The silver lining of spending years in extreme depression during which as much as half my time was spent in a semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with long periods of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs, and my entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to sort, cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an extent I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years old.

But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated by the acceptance of that said community.

Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama was quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community but of the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of science. I merely mentioned the various communities in question because they are well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the time, but usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics, ethics, conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the impression they are well-represented in the ranks of public intellectuals, internet geeks, and social activists. Very few of them seem to specialize in hyping their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the exclusion of the general spectrum of issues and ideas, any more than most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical people or handi-capable people are obsessed with talking just about their special community ad nauseum.

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

If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is usually the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I would probably avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I might be fairly neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I think I would avoid constructing many articles (with occasional exceptions, of course) that didn't allow some room or comfort level for bright, non-spiritual and anti-spiritual people to feel safe about participating.

...

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' ..

I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A lot of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had so-called spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of stuff. The thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous system that are capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample evidence of the interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably affect the proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself became fairly adept at the latter, and for years I considered various spiritual interpretations. Gradually I worked out naturalistic hypotheses that were more plausible to me. This does not exhaust the possibilities for evoking spiritual-like erotic experiences but I think it probably characterizes the whole spectrum of the phenomena. I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of a machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a WWII vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the wilderness. Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of a Willys starter, much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of the construction of the starter which actually included the problem. I disassembled the starter and found the problem exactly as I had seen it. Its possible that I had disassembled maybe one other starter, possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar, before. So go figure. I've had similar experiences with other machines. Leaky mind? What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here again I think the proprioceptive nervous system and the bio-electromagnetic fields of living organisms are recruited in exotic ways, often with the aid of psychoactive substances, music, chants, rhythmic movements, sleep deprivation, and many other devices that alter or reconfigure the neural networks and the electrochemical state of the brain and the entire nervous system of the practitioner and sometimes other participants. Even though a lot of real stuff, including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff, is actually going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not just the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense perception you ever had and every Hieronymus Bosch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Hieronymus_Bosch>-esque image you ever imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the real physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic activity being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems like magic, but is actually very natural despite its being truly unusual, mind-boggling, and poorly understood by science. That is not to say that all practices considered as shamanism, such as so-called psychic surgery, are legitimate. But there truly is real shamanic "magic", healing, and communication with nature in the manner I characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have communicated with plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of what I thought I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my brain. Lets say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).

...

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

How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the original experience? I put that in specifically because it would confirm that the correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to reproduce the full subjective experience. You can say that's impossible and will never happen, fair enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't it exhaust the issue? Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc. that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you damage or stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of subjective experience or cognition. I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the votes are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In other words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a small possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll reappraise the situation. This is not so much reductionism as a tendency to conserve ones resources by concentrating on the most probable pay dirt. We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains and it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have to be so vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our beliefs, even about our own first-person experiences, have to be provisional and have to be regularly examined, tested, and revised. The issue is whether one's reductionism is reasonable in a given context. For example, if you are even remotely fundamentalist about anything, including science, that is excessive reductionism. Many religious people have some of the most reductionist views of reality of all. I would say that one's world view must be at least 50% based on the best available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By that standard probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically reductionist world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some approximation of a scientist-shaman.

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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

Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player piano, it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to explain it. That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational parsimony. An Amazon tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit animates a chain saw or an excavating machine, but we don't. We understand the machine performs its function without requiring a spirit. In my opinion there is no credible evidence that we are anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines. That is not a reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable contradictory evidence.

...

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

That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people (including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is contradicted by fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people in all cultures who exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.

... 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 are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at all (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are generally not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer is known to help many people recover from illness, although there is also evidence that non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact. In the absence of other evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo effect. The downside of the spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology and suggestion is that false belief systems or biases may be reinforced which could have negative as well as positive consequences at some point int the future. For example, a person convinced that gods had healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic. Of course if the interventions are truly life saving I suppose future consequences can be damned.

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

I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful than individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and that altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible, are preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater achievement. However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny. I have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which at the time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little recourse but to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was once enclosed in two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent, glowing greenish-blue color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was certain they were the hands of Jesus. Another time while meditating (drugless) in a group of experienced meditators in a very special, highly conducive place, I watched myself as I lay in a small rowboat floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a far shore that was not visible at first. As the far shore just became visible, I heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but speaking softly in my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far shore was the threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two decades) might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told in a different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In form and content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a self-induced hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly remarkable that I did not feel disappointed to think of it as an hallucination. I was very impressed with my brain. Despite its past injuries and some genetic handicaps, it is a very fine brain and I gotta love it.

...

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)

I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think my interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not always the case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In the past I was often a sympathetic participant-observer of many cultural traditions and practices. In the present, my aim is not condemnation but cognitive emancipation and evolution. I only reject (for myself) beliefs that are contrary to evidence or for which I have compelling (at least to me) naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss these in what I think are appropriate venues. PR

What about a Skype based video-conference? We can make our own coffee and sip along, as if we were physically in the same place? I think this sort of discussion is more fun "in person" :) It could be recorded for archival and publishing purposes.. On 12 September 2011 16:26, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks Richard, very 'enlightening' stuff, but this time, I'm just reading ... it's a bit of time question for me now, as I'm preparing a lecture tour ....

If you had time, I'd be interested in some kind of summary of our discussions, that is readable for outsiders,

just a suggestion,

perhaps one day, when I'm back from my travels, we can have an organized, publishable, email-based discussion, less tit for tat, more an extented dialogue,

Michel

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

** my comments as usual are interlinear

On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>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 ...

I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion of the communities in question.

for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone through this inner transformation, or not,

I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am often surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.

and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good indicator for that.

To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist or new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of intermediate phase of development, although few that I encounter actually seem to pass beyond it. That may sound superior or arrogant but I think it best that I don't sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak it in sideways. I base this on my own life trajectory as well as my last few years of study and re-analysis of myself and those I have known.

You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having experiences but not using the concept.

Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious, mystical, and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive substances) against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of comparative religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the concept of spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past decade that I have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in the past few years have I questioned the implicit associations of supernaturality (and other connotations I consider doubtful or fallacious) with the word "spirituality". It may be telling that I titled my blog post, "Is spiritual the new supernatural?," with a question rather than a statement. I am still agnostic as to the existence of anything logically and qualitatively distinct from everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything supernatural or non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my own thought pending some startling future revelation). One might think my aforementioned experiences would have provided just that revelation and indeed I interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple of decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have come to interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more satisfying to me than my former spiritual interpretations. My naturalistic interpretations are more satisfying because they are more intellectually parsimonious (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my interpretations--if it did I would retain it); because they expand rather than shrink the horizons of my mind; and because they fractally interdigitate with all the rest of my knowledge as my previous interpretations never could. The silver lining of spending years in extreme depression during which as much as half my time was spent in a semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with long periods of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs, and my entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to sort, cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an extent I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years old.

But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated by the acceptance of that said community.

Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama was quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community but of the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of science. I merely mentioned the various communities in question because they are well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the time, but usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics, ethics, conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the impression they are well-represented in the ranks of public intellectuals, internet geeks, and social activists. Very few of them seem to specialize in hyping their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the exclusion of the general spectrum of issues and ideas, any more than most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical people or handi-capable people are obsessed with talking just about their special community ad nauseum.

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

If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is usually the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I would probably avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I might be fairly neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I think I would avoid constructing many articles (with occasional exceptions, of course) that didn't allow some room or comfort level for bright, non-spiritual and anti-spiritual people to feel safe about participating.

We can say that "all is part of life", but again, isn't there a sea of

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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' ..

I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A lot of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had so-called spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of stuff. The thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous system that are capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample evidence of the interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably affect the proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself became fairly adept at the latter, and for years I considered various spiritual interpretations. Gradually I worked out naturalistic hypotheses that were more plausible to me. This does not exhaust the possibilities for evoking spiritual-like erotic experiences but I think it probably characterizes the whole spectrum of the phenomena.

I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of a machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a WWII vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the wilderness. Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of a Willys starter, much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of the construction of the starter which actually included the problem. I disassembled the starter and found the problem exactly as I had seen it. Its possible that I had disassembled maybe one other starter, possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar, before. So go figure. I've had similar experiences with other machines. Leaky mind?

What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here again I think the proprioceptive nervous system and the bio-electromagnetic fields of living organisms are recruited in exotic ways, often with the aid of psychoactive substances, music, chants, rhythmic movements, sleep deprivation, and many other devices that alter or reconfigure the neural networks and the electrochemical state of the brain and the entire nervous system of the practitioner and sometimes other participants. Even though a lot of real stuff, including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff, is actually going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not just the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense perception you ever had and every Hieronymus Bosch<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Hieronymus_Bosch>-esque image you ever imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the real physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic activity being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems like magic, but is actually very natural despite its being truly unusual, mind-boggling, and poorly understood by science. That is not to say that all practices considered as shamanism, such as so-called psychic surgery, are legitimate. But there truly is real shamanic "magic", healing, and communication with nature in the manner I characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have communicated with plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of what I thought I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my brain. Lets say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).

...

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

How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the original experience? I put that in specifically because it would confirm that the correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to reproduce the full subjective experience. You can say that's impossible and will never happen, fair enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't it exhaust the issue?

Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc. that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you damage or stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of subjective experience or cognition.

I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the votes are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In other words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a small possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll reappraise the situation. This is not so much reductionism as a tendency to conserve ones resources by concentrating on the most probable pay dirt.

We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains and it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have to be so vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our beliefs, even about our own first-person experiences, have to be provisional and have to be regularly examined, tested, and revised. The issue is whether one's reductionism is reasonable in a given context. For example, if you are even remotely fundamentalist about anything, including science, that is excessive reductionism. Many religious people have some of the most reductionist views of reality of all. I would say that one's world view must be at least 50% based on the best available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By that standard probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically reductionist world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some approximation of a scientist-shaman.

...

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

Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player piano, it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to explain it. That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational parsimony. An Amazon tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit animates a chain saw or an excavating machine, but we don't. We understand the machine performs its function without requiring a spirit. In my opinion there is no credible evidence that we are anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines. That is not a reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable contradictory evidence.

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

That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people (including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is contradicted by fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people in all cultures who exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.

... 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 are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at all (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are generally not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer is known to help many people recover from illness, although there is also evidence that non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact. In the absence of other evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo effect. The downside of the spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology and suggestion is that false belief systems or biases may be reinforced which could have negative as well as positive consequences at some point int the future. For example, a person convinced that gods had healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic. Of course if the interventions are truly life saving I suppose future consequences can be damned.

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

I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful than individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and that altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible, are preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater achievement.

However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny. I have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which at the time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little recourse but to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was once enclosed in two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent, glowing greenish-blue color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was certain they were the hands of Jesus. Another time while meditating (drugless) in a group of experienced meditators in a very special, highly conducive place, I watched myself as I lay in a small rowboat floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a far shore that was not visible at first. As the far shore just became visible, I heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but speaking softly in my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far shore was the threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two decades) might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told in a different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In form and content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a self-induced hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly remarkable that I did not feel disappointed to think of it as an hallucination. I was very impressed with my brain. Despite its past injuries and some genetic handicaps, it is a very fine brain and I gotta love it.

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)

I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think my interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not always the case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In the past I was often a sympathetic participant-observer of many cultural traditions and practices. In the present, my aim is not condemnation but cognitive emancipation and evolution. I only reject (for myself) beliefs that are contrary to evidence or for which I have compelling (at least to me) naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss these in what I think are appropriate venues.

PR

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Video content is the way forward they say ;) On 12 September 2011 16:39, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

we could start a series of recorded skype talks, with 3-4 people, on different topics, with this as a first one?

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Amaia Arcos <[email protected]>wrote:

...

What about a Skype based video-conference? We can make our own coffee and sip along, as if we were physically in the same place?

I think this sort of discussion is more fun "in person" :)

It could be recorded for archival and publishing purposes..

On 12 September 2011 16:26, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:

...

thanks Richard, very 'enlightening' stuff, but this time, I'm just reading ... it's a bit of time question for me now, as I'm preparing a lecture tour ....

If you had time, I'd be interested in some kind of summary of our discussions, that is readable for outsiders,

just a suggestion,

perhaps one day, when I'm back from my travels, we can have an organized, publishable, email-based discussion, less tit for tat, more an extented dialogue,

Michel

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

** my comments as usual are interlinear

On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>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 ...

I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion of the communities in question.

for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone through this inner transformation, or not,

I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am often surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.

and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good indicator for that.

To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist or new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of intermediate phase of development, although few that I encounter actually seem to pass beyond it. That may sound superior or arrogant but I think it best that I don't sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak it in sideways. I base this on my own life trajectory as well as my last few years of study and re-analysis of myself and those I have known.

You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having experiences but not using the concept.

Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious, mystical, and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive substances) against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of comparative religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the concept of spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past decade that I have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in the past few years have I questioned the implicit associations of supernaturality (and other connotations I consider doubtful or fallacious) with the word "spirituality". It may be telling that I titled my blog post, "Is spiritual the new supernatural?," with a question rather than a statement. I am still agnostic as to the existence of anything logically and qualitatively distinct from everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything supernatural or non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my own thought pending some startling future revelation). One might think my aforementioned experiences would have provided just that revelation and indeed I interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple of decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have come to interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more satisfying to me than my former spiritual interpretations. My naturalistic interpretations are more satisfying because they are more intellectually parsimonious (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my interpretations--if it did I would retain it); because they expand rather than shrink the horizons of my mind; and because they fractally interdigitate with all the rest of my knowledge as my previous interpretations never could. The silver lining of spending years in extreme depression during which as much as half my time was spent in a semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with long periods of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs, and my entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to sort, cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an extent I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years old.

But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated by the acceptance of that said community.

Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama was quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community but of the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of science. I merely mentioned the various communities in question because they are well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the time, but usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics, ethics, conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the impression they are well-represented in the ranks of public intellectuals, internet geeks, and social activists. Very few of them seem to specialize in hyping their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the exclusion of the general spectrum of issues and ideas, any more than most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical people or handi-capable people are obsessed with talking just about their special community ad nauseum.

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

If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is usually the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I would probably avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I might be fairly neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I think I would avoid constructing many articles (with occasional exceptions, of course) that didn't allow some room or comfort level for bright, non-spiritual and anti-spiritual people to feel safe about participating.

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' ..

I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A lot of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had so-called spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of stuff. The thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous system that are capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample evidence of the interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably affect the proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself became fairly adept at the latter, and for years I considered various spiritual interpretations. Gradually I worked out naturalistic hypotheses that were more plausible to me. This does not exhaust the possibilities for evoking spiritual-like erotic experiences but I think it probably characterizes the whole spectrum of the phenomena.

I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of a machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a WWII vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the wilderness. Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of a Willys starter, much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of the construction of the starter which actually included the problem. I disassembled the starter and found the problem exactly as I had seen it. Its possible that I had disassembled maybe one other starter, possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar, before. So go figure. I've had similar experiences with other machines. Leaky mind?

What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here again I think the proprioceptive nervous system and the bio-electromagnetic fields of living organisms are recruited in exotic ways, often with the aid of psychoactive substances, music, chants, rhythmic movements, sleep deprivation, and many other devices that alter or reconfigure the neural networks and the electrochemical state of the brain and the entire nervous system of the practitioner and sometimes other participants. Even though a lot of real stuff, including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff, is actually going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not just the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense perception you ever had and every Hieronymus Bosch<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Hieronymus_Bosch>-esque image you ever imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the real physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic activity being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems like magic, but is actually very natural despite its being truly unusual, mind-boggling, and poorly understood by science. That is not to say that all practices considered as shamanism, such as so-called psychic surgery, are legitimate. But there truly is real shamanic "magic", healing, and communication with nature in the manner I characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have communicated with plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of what I thought I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my brain. Lets say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).

...

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

How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the original experience? I put that in specifically because it would confirm that the correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to reproduce the full subjective experience. You can say that's impossible and will never happen, fair enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't it exhaust the issue?

Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc. that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you damage or stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of subjective experience or cognition.

I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the votes are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In other words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a small possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll reappraise the situation. This is not so much reductionism as a tendency to conserve ones resources by concentrating on the most probable pay dirt.

We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains and it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have to be so vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our beliefs, even about our own first-person experiences, have to be provisional and have to be regularly examined, tested, and revised. The issue is whether one's reductionism is reasonable in a given context. For example, if you are even remotely fundamentalist about anything, including science, that is excessive reductionism. Many religious people have some of the most reductionist views of reality of all. I would say that one's world view must be at least 50% based on the best available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By that standard probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically reductionist world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some approximation of a scientist-shaman.

...

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

Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player piano, it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to explain it. That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational parsimony. An Amazon tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit animates a chain saw or an excavating machine, but we don't. We understand the machine performs its function without requiring a spirit. In my opinion there is no credible evidence that we are anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines. That is not a reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable contradictory evidence.

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

That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people (including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is contradicted by fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people in all cultures who exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.

... 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 are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at all (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are generally not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer is known to help many people recover from illness, although there is also evidence that non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact. In the absence of other evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo effect. The downside of the spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology and suggestion is that false belief systems or biases may be reinforced which could have negative as well as positive consequences at some point int the future. For example, a person convinced that gods had healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic. Of course if the interventions are truly life saving I suppose future consequences can be damned.

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

I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful than individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and that altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible, are preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater achievement.

However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny. I have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which at the time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little recourse but to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was once enclosed in two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent, glowing greenish-blue color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was certain they were the hands of Jesus. Another time while meditating (drugless) in a group of experienced meditators in a very special, highly conducive place, I watched myself as I lay in a small rowboat floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a far shore that was not visible at first. As the far shore just became visible, I heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but speaking softly in my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far shore was the threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two decades) might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told in a different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In form and content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a self-induced hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly remarkable that I did not feel disappointed to think of it as an hallucination. I was very impressed with my brain. Despite its past injuries and some genetic handicaps, it is a very fine brain and I gotta love it.

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)

I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think my interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not always the case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In the past I was often a sympathetic participant-observer of many cultural traditions and practices. In the present, my aim is not condemnation but cognitive emancipation and evolution. I only reject (for myself) beliefs that are contrary to evidence or for which I have compelling (at least to me) naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss these in what I think are appropriate venues.

PR

-- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

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-- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

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-- “We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin

Hehe, no obligation, it was just an idea. Audio would do too.. On 12 September 2011 20:10, Poor Richard <[email protected]> wrote:

** Oh my. I haven't ever used my webcam, and don't know from skype. I'm camera shy and people shy, too. But I'll think about practicing some and see how it feel.

PR

On 9/12/2011 9:36 AM, Amaia Arcos wrote:

What about a Skype based video-conference? We can make our own coffee and sip along, as if we were physically in the same place?

I think this sort of discussion is more fun "in person" :)

It could be recorded for archival and publishing purposes..

On 12 September 2011 16:26, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:

...

thanks Richard, very 'enlightening' stuff, but this time, I'm just reading ... it's a bit of time question for me now, as I'm preparing a lecture tour ....

If you had time, I'd be interested in some kind of summary of our discussions, that is readable for outsiders,

just a suggestion,

perhaps one day, when I'm back from my travels, we can have an organized, publishable, email-based discussion, less tit for tat, more an extented dialogue,

Michel

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

my comments as usual are interlinear

On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <[email protected]>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 ...

I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion of the communities in question.

for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone through this inner transformation, or not,

I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am often surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.

and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good indicator for that.

To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist or new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of intermediate phase of development, although few that I encounter actually seem to pass beyond it. That may sound superior or arrogant but I think it best that I don't sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak it in sideways. I base this on my own life trajectory as well as my last few years of study and re-analysis of myself and those I have known.

You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having experiences but not using the concept.

Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious, mystical, and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive substances) against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of comparative religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the concept of spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past decade that I have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in the past few years have I questioned the implicit associations of supernaturality (and other connotations I consider doubtful or fallacious) with the word "spirituality". It may be telling that I titled my blog post, "Is spiritual the new supernatural?," with a question rather than a statement. I am still agnostic as to the existence of anything logically and qualitatively distinct from everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything supernatural or non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my own thought pending some startling future revelation). One might think my aforementioned experiences would have provided just that revelation and indeed I interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple of decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have come to interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more satisfying to me than my former spiritual interpretations. My naturalistic interpretations are more satisfying because they are more intellectually parsimonious (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my interpretations--if it did I would retain it); because they expand rather than shrink the horizons of my mind; and because they fractally interdigitate with all the rest of my knowledge as my previous interpretations never could. The silver lining of spending years in extreme depression during which as much as half my time was spent in a semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with long periods of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs, and my entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to sort, cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an extent I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years old.

But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated by the acceptance of that said community.

Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama was quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community but of the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of science. I merely mentioned the various communities in question because they are well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the time, but usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics, ethics, conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the impression they are well-represented in the ranks of public intellectuals, internet geeks, and social activists. Very few of them seem to specialize in hyping their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the exclusion of the general spectrum of issues and ideas, any more than most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical people or handi-capable people are obsessed with talking just about their special community ad nauseum.

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

If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is usually the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I would probably avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I might be fairly neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I think I would avoid constructing many articles (with occasional exceptions, of course) that didn't allow some room or comfort level for bright, non-spiritual and anti-spiritual people to feel safe about participating.

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' ..

I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A lot of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had so-called spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of stuff. The thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous system that are capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample evidence of the interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably affect the proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself became fairly adept at the latter, and for years I considered various spiritual interpretations. Gradually I worked out naturalistic hypotheses that were more plausible to me. This does not exhaust the possibilities for evoking spiritual-like erotic experiences but I think it probably characterizes the whole spectrum of the phenomena.

I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of a machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a WWII vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the wilderness. Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of a Willys starter, much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of the construction of the starter which actually included the problem. I disassembled the starter and found the problem exactly as I had seen it. Its possible that I had disassembled maybe one other starter, possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar, before. So go figure. I've had similar experiences with other machines. Leaky mind?

What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here again I think the proprioceptive nervous system and the bio-electromagnetic fields of living organisms are recruited in exotic ways, often with the aid of psychoactive substances, music, chants, rhythmic movements, sleep deprivation, and many other devices that alter or reconfigure the neural networks and the electrochemical state of the brain and the entire nervous system of the practitioner and sometimes other participants. Even though a lot of real stuff, including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff, is actually going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not just the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense perception you ever had and every Hieronymus Bosch<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Hieronymus_Bosch>-esque image you ever imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the real physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic activity being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems like magic, but is actually very natural despite its being truly unusual, mind-boggling, and poorly understood by science. That is not to say that all practices considered as shamanism, such as so-called psychic surgery, are legitimate. But there truly is real shamanic "magic", healing, and communication with nature in the manner I characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have communicated with plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of what I thought I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my brain. Lets say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).

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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'.

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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

How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the original experience? I put that in specifically because it would confirm that the correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to reproduce the full subjective experience. You can say that's impossible and will never happen, fair enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't it exhaust the issue?

Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc. that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you damage or stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of subjective experience or cognition.

I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the votes are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In other words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a small possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll reappraise the situation. This is not so much reductionism as a tendency to conserve ones resources by concentrating on the most probable pay dirt.

We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains and it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have to be so vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our beliefs, even about our own first-person experiences, have to be provisional and have to be regularly examined, tested, and revised. The issue is whether one's reductionism is reasonable in a given context. For example, if you are even remotely fundamentalist about anything, including science, that is excessive reductionism. Many religious people have some of the most reductionist views of reality of all. I would say that one's world view must be at least 50% based on the best available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By that standard probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically reductionist world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some approximation of a scientist-shaman.

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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

Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player piano, it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to explain it. That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational parsimony. An Amazon tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit animates a chain saw or an excavating machine, but we don't. We understand the machine performs its function without requiring a spirit. In my opinion there is no credible evidence that we are anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines. That is not a reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable contradictory evidence.

That doesn't require anyone to believe anything said by such

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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

That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people (including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is contradicted by fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people in all cultures who exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.

... 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 are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at all (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are generally not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer is known to help many people recover from illness, although there is also evidence that non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact. In the absence of other evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo effect. The downside of the spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology and suggestion is that false belief systems or biases may be reinforced which could have negative as well as positive consequences at some point int the future. For example, a person convinced that gods had healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic. Of course if the interventions are truly life saving I suppose future consequences can be damned.

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

I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful than individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and that altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible, are preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater achievement.

However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny. I have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which at the time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little recourse but to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was once enclosed in two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent, glowing greenish-blue color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was certain they were the hands of Jesus. Another time while meditating (drugless) in a group of experienced meditators in a very special, highly conducive place, I watched myself as I lay in a small rowboat floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a far shore that was not visible at first. As the far shore just became visible, I heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but speaking softly in my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far shore was the threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two decades) might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told in a different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In form and content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a self-induced hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly remarkable that I did not feel disappointed to think of it as an hallucination. I was very impressed with my brain. Despite its past injuries and some genetic handicaps, it is a very fine brain and I gotta love it.

Apart from the rejection of the semantics of the concept of spirit

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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)

I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think my interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not always the case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In the past I was often a sympathetic participant-observer of many cultural traditions and practices. In the present, my aim is not condemnation but cognitive emancipation and evolution. I only reject (for myself) beliefs that are contrary to evidence or for which I have compelling (at least to me) naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss these in what I think are appropriate venues.

PR

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-- “We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin

(My comments are interlinear) On 9/11/2011 11:13 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote: <skip>

*As defined by Jorge Ferrer*: */Spiritual knowing is a participatory process. What do I mean by "participatory"? First, "participatory" alludes to the fact that spiritual knowing is not objective, neutral, or merely cognitive/.* On the contrary, spiritual knowing engages us in a connected, often passionate, activity that can involve not only the opening of the mind, but also of the body, the heart, and the soul.

Evidence favors the position that body, mind, heart, and soul are one entity. Yes, some parts of the body and brain are relatively specialized, but mostly below the level of the modalities mentioned. Emotion, for example, is based in multiple specialized areas of the brain and body.

Although particular spiritual events may involve only certain dimensions of our nature, all of them can potentially come into play in the act of spiritual knowing, from somatic transfiguration to the awakening of the heart, from erotic communion to visionary co-creation, and from contemplative knowing to moral insight, to mention only a few (see also Ferrer, 2000a, 2002).

"somatic transfiguration", "awakening of the heart", "erotic communion" "visionary co-creation", "contemplative knowing" and "moral insight" all exist in secular theory and practice free of any "spiritual" trappings. Granted, the secular, a-spiritual approach is not nearly as well known or represented as the spiritual and religious counterparts. Even in the universities, institutes, and labs where these secular equivalents are being developed, some "homage" to traditional antecedents (if any exist) is often made in the form of retaining some legacy terminology. In the long run I think that practice will pass.

*Second, the participatory nature of spiritual knowing refers to the role that our individual consciousness plays during most spiritual and transpersonal events. This relation is not one of appropriation, possession, or passive representation of knowledge, but of communion and co-creative participation.*

Despite the popular misconceptions of science, the same can be said for the experience of many professional and amateur scientists who work with living systems. It is the fact of working and interacting with people and other living systems in an open and sympathetic way that produces communion and growth, not the spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

*Finally, "participatory" also refers to the fundamental ontological predicament of human beings in relation to spiritual energies and realities. Human beings are - whether we know it or not - always participating in the self-disclosure of Spirit.* This participatory predicament is not only the ontological foundation of the other forms of participation, but also the epistemic anchor of spiritual knowledge claims and the moral source of responsible action.

I cannot interpret or parse that stuff at all.

Spiritual phenomena involve participatory ways of knowing that are presential, enactive, and transformative:

1. Spiritual knowing is presential: Spiritual knowing is knowing by presence or by identity. In other words, in most spiritual events, knowing occurs by virtue of being.

Granted that this is the common belief. In fact, spiritual-seeming phenomena may simply be presented by the unconscious part of the brain to the conscious part that way.

Spiritual knowing can be lived as the emergence of an embodied presence

Typically this is primarily emotion and proprioceptive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception> sensation mashed up with associative memory samplings.

pregnant with meaning

Alternatively, an appropriate-seeming meaning associated with the internal experience is supplied by the brain. The actual, objective appropriateness of the interpretation may vary from 0-100%.

that transforms both self and world. Subject and object, knowing and being, epistemology and ontology are brought together in the very act of spiritual knowing.

This is typical of the nebulous, grandiose claims of some spiritual apologists. It can mean much or little depending on the detail and the evidence provided for the particular claims.

2. Spiritual knowing is enactive: Following the groundbreaking work of Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991), my understanding of spiritual knowing embraces an enactive paradigm of cognition: Spiritual knowing is not a mental representation of pregiven, independent spiritual objects, but an enaction, the bringing forth of a world or domain of distinctions co-created by the different elements involved in the participatory event. Some central elements of spiritual participatory events include individual intentions and dispositions; cultural, religious, and historical horizons; archetypal and subtle energies; and, most importantly, a dynamic and indeterminate spiritual power of inexhaustible creativity.

The same can be said of many psycho-physical practices without spiritual trappings, such as sports. The counter argument might be that sport which meets the above criteria is spiritual, but I suggest the spirituality inference is redundant. To settle the argument once and for all no doubt we must race a spiritual athlete with a non-spiritual one.

3. Spiritual knowing is transformative: Participatory knowing is transformative at least in the following two senses. First, the participation in a spiritual event brings forth the transformation of self and world. Second, a transformation of self is usually necessary to be able to participate in spiritual knowing, and this knowing, in turn, draws forth the self through its transformative process in order to make possible this participation. (http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/articlesN81+/N83Ferrer_part.htm)

I've already noted that both science and sports are transformative. So is psychosis. The issue is how and why something is transformative. If spiritual appologists address those questions in detail I can respond in more detail. Definition by John Heron

"The parties involved in a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation reciprocally and dynamically shape and reshape - in and through the process of meeting – how they understand each other, the regard they have for each other, and how they act and interact in relation with each other.

This definition is framed to apply to the central person-to-person relations. It can, with appropriate modifications, be applied to relations between ways of knowing, to relations between persons and their worlds, and, including and transcending all these, to the relation between persons and the divine.

There is nothing particularly spiritual about any of that until the last word, which blasts through the flimsy ectoplasm of spirituality right into the presence of god and and the holy grail.

Person-to-person relations are central because they are a precondition for setting the scene for divine self-disclosure and for persons to participate in it. In previous epochs this precondition was met by teacher-disciple hierarchical relations. Today divine self-disclosure can manifest through person-to-person peer relations, serviced from time to time by temporary hierarchical initiatives rotating among the peers.

The priestly class is diluted but still essential?

Person-to-person /peer/ relations are central, in my view, because of the intimate relation between epistemic participation and political participation. Epistemic participation is about the participative relation between the knower and the known. Political participation in this context is to do with participative decision-making among those involved about how we know and what we know. If participative knowing between persons is consummated in fully reciprocal encounter, then co-operative decision-making, both about how to engage in such reciprocal knowing and about what it reveals, is necessary for authentic interpersonal knowing - the realm of the /between/ where divine self-disclosure can manifest."

Again nothing necessarily spiritual about that until the word "devine" in the last sentence. However, "devine" could possibly be replaced by "group", "communal", "higher", "further", "greater", etc.

*Spiritual practice: A primary ground for the practice of participatory-relational spirituality can be cultivated by collaborative peer-to-peer relations between persons engaged in fully embodied, multidimensional, transformative flourishing in and with their worlds.* See [1] <http://www.human-inquiry.com/igroup0.htm>

Alternate version: Community-building practice: A primary ground for the practice of participatory-relational community building can be cultivated by collaborative peer-to-peer relations between persons engaged in fully embodied, multidimensional, transformative flourishing in and with their worlds. QED PR