[P2P-F] Fwd: is there no p2p spirituality because there is no spirituality

[Poor Richard]

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 <poor_richard at att.net
> <mailto:poor_richard at att.net>> wrote:
>
>     My comments are interlinear
>
>     But what makes the term "spirituality" even more problematic than
>     "love" in many contexts is that it is indeed a "hot button" word
>     for many in the atheist/agnostic/skeptic/free-thought/science
>     community.
>
>
> yes, but that is exactly because they have chosen for an impoverished
> understanding of the world, and thus the world challenges that ...

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
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