Dec 12th: Kastrup vs Woerlee

I have to admit that while I do admire Kastrup's advocacy it does feel a bit odd to have him being a public advocate.

After all NDEs, especially veridical cases, seem to suggest some of his Idealist ideas are wrong:

-- The Life Review suggests we are individual souls with individual wills, rather than playing out the subjective PoVs of the One Will.

-- The meeting with the dead, especially when they were unknown or were not known to have died, suggests we do not get absorbed into the Ur-Mind.

I'm pretty sure Kastrup's idea is that the idealistic consciousness is like a river, while human minds are little whirlpools throughout, hence our individuality. Life review isn't universal remember as well, more of an American thing. I know he's put some posts up on his website about it but haven't read them in a while.

After all NDEs, especially veridical cases, seem to suggest some of his Idealist ideas are wrong:

To me idealism is really about reality all being some form of ‘energy’ that is capable of deceiving us into thinking that ‘the table is real’. While is appears real on one level, on another it’s more vapour like. It’s imaginary, an illusion of the mind. That’s about as far as I am willing to go with detail. All I really think I know at this point is that I exist, the reality in which I currently exist is not what it appears to be, I appear to have free will but I don’t know for sure if that is true, I can choose to live this life, or end it. Is that what someone meant when they said suicide was the only thing really worth thinking about? 

I’ve said this before, but to me speculating about much beyond that is a bit pointless imo. Yes, NDEs do point to there being more to existence, but knowing if that continues as an individual or part of something bigger I’m happy to have ideas about, but not to nail those ideas to the wall. 

My thinking about the possibility of being an individual or being part of ‘God’, goes like this. We seem to be individual as we exist now, and at least soon after dying, although we have some insights into the ‘bigger, stronger,’ feelings that exist in reality, as well as the awesome potential that exists. That seems to me to be something to ‘ground’ us or bring us back to ‘the bigger reality’ after our latest dip into life on earth. We or at least I, am only prepared to accept these early stages of what might happen after we die, because we only hear from those NDErs that return to earth. The experiences of those that stay must be found through other means, like mediums, past life memories, dreams, etc. 

So, while I’m willing to tend quite strongly towards there being more to us than three score years and ten here on earth (actually a  number of such lives), much beyond that I’m happy to say I haven’t really a clue. 

Using my imagination as well as my intuition, I like to think that if the time is eventually right to return to being the ‘mind of God’, and giving up our individual ‘ness’, it will be willingly, perhaps even eagerly, but by then, we should be mature enough to not yell with excitement!

I have to admit that while I do admire Kastrup's advocacy it does feel a bit odd to have him being a public advocate.

After all NDEs, especially veridical cases, seem to suggest some of his Idealist ideas are wrong:

-- The Life Review suggests we are individual souls with individual wills, rather than playing out the subjective PoVs of the One Will.

-- The meeting with the dead, especially when they were unknown or were not known to have died, suggests we do not get absorbed into the Ur-Mind.

Good points, Sci !  He (Kastrup) seems to me to 'tip-toe' around the blatantly obvious (veridical NDE/OBE's) without really saying much about how he feels he can do this. If we accept that these patients (experiencers) are providing us with honest accounts (and I think that is now beyond reasonable doubt) then why should we discount part of what they are telling us, namely that they viewed their body and surroundings from an outside vantage point. 

Of course, I get it that that can't happen according to our current understanding. But, if it wasn't actually happening, and the whole (typical) veridical report was just a retrospective confabulation (a mind model based on the subtle retrieval of information by whatever pathway the sceptics can make a case for) then I would expect the accuracy of the reports to be ninety per cent wrong instead of ninety per cent right (Jan Holden) 

Furthermore, a mind model is in no way the same as viewing reality. These patients are adamant that they didn't imagine anything, they actually 'saw' it. And we will all (arguably) experience the same thing and surely find it just as convincing as everyone else that went before us. Yet this all seems to be irrelevant somehow and the arguments continue in the same manner as before. Still at square one.

I'm pretty sure Kastrup's idea is that the idealistic consciousness is like a river, while human minds are little whirlpools throughout, hence our individuality. Life review isn't universal remember as well, more of an American thing. I know he's put some posts up on his website about it but haven't read them in a while.

Yeah I will admit to being a bit confused on that point. His earlier work seems to be a kind of Idealism where everyone is an individual, but his later work seems to be more inline with the idea that we are just PoVs of a singular Subject.

Of course it could simply be that I am failing to understand the Nondualist aspects of his arguments...

To me idealism is really about reality all being some form of ‘energy’ that is capable of deceiving us into thinking that ‘the table is real’. While is appears real on one level, on another it’s more vapour like. It’s imaginary, an illusion of the mind. That’s about as far as I am willing to go with detail. All I really think I know at this point is that I exist, the reality in which I currently exist is not what it appears to be, I appear to have free will but I don’t know for sure if that is true, I can choose to live this life, or end it. Is that what someone meant when they said suicide was the only thing really worth thinking about? 

I think I've heard the specific argument you mention regarding suicide, though I can't place it exactly right now.

Oddly enough, though I've seriously been close to suicide more than once, after I recognised the reality of reincarnation, I understood that - for me at least - suicide was the only thing NOT worth thinking about. After all, if the result of jumping off the ride is that you land back on it again, it doesn't offer much utility. Instead, for myself I had to look for reasons to carry on, and what to do with life.

I think I've heard the specific argument you mention regarding suicide, though I can't place it exactly right now.

This is what I was thinking of, Albert Camus, the philosopher.

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/11/07...s-suicide/

This is what I was thinking of, Albert Camus, the philosopher.

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/11/07...s-suicide/

Yes, that's the one I was thinking of as well.

It was also as a result of discussing the ideas of Camus as a young student that several of my friends and myself, each in our own way, entered into a spiral of depression and suicidal thoughts. Thus came to an end my academic studies. It was, however painful at the time, a catalyst for gradually studying all of the things we discuss on forums like this.

Yeah I will admit to being a bit confused on that point. His earlier work seems to be a kind of Idealism where everyone is an individual, but his later work seems to be more inline with the idea that we are just PoVs of a singular Subject.

Of course it could simply be that I am failing to understand the Nondualist aspects of his arguments...

I have similar trouble with Spira who tends to agree with his good friend Kastrup. I would describe myself as an idealist and in broad agreement with them but I think they jump ahead too far and too quickly. I do think that we are all fragments of the same consciousness and therefore reality is ultimately non-dual. However, I also think that the fragmentary nature of consciousness which is responsible for our individual personalities does not dissolve at death or shortly thereafter. I think that we go on developing as individual souls or as gestalt souls over a great span of time (which is part of the illusion of separation too). I think that we evolve from and into different forms, both physical and spiritual.

Spira also maintains that consciousness has no purpose, nothing to learn (being omniscient) and nothing to gain from the experience we feed back to the greater being. Again, I disagree. I think that this consciousness desires to learn and evolve and does so through those experiences.

I have similar trouble with Spira who tends to agree with his good friend Kastrup. I would describe myself as an idealist and in broad agreement with them but I think they jump ahead too far and too quickly. I do think that we are all fragments of the same consciousness and therefore reality is ultimately non-dual. However, I also think that the fragmentary nature of consciousness which is responsible for our individual personalities does not dissolve at death or shortly thereafter. I think that we go on developing as individual souls or as gestalt souls over a great span of time (which is part of the illusion of separation too). I think that we evolve from and into different forms, both physical and spiritual.

Spira also maintains that consciousness has no purpose, nothing to learn (being omniscient) and nothing to gain from the experience we feed back to the greater being. Again, I disagree. I think that this consciousness desires to learn and evolve and does so through those experiences.

Yeah if nothing else I would think Non-Dualism would find that we are neither the One nor the Many, that as William James said our separation is united in the Deep...

Of course the idea that reality is illusory, that suffering is meaningless or just a result of transmigrating through lives - "swelling the cemeteries" as Buddha once said - is quite beneficial to the people on top of the ancient caste system from which these ideas came. One can't help but wonder if certain illusions last even beyond a culture - I mean it is odd that Native Americans seem to be able to choose their incarnations without thought to karmic cycles.