Psience Quest

Always fun spending a bit of time debating over the ground of reality on a nice August Sunday afternoon!

(2022-08-14, 07:45 PM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]Wow that's such a large issue to contemplate, I don't know if I have my feet on solid ground here.  

I agree with your second sentence ("But mysticism of the kind..."). But then I'm examining certain models or religious philosophies (like AV) to the extent that they share what I understand coming through paranormal phenomena, including NDEs. In his book Lessons from the Light, NDE researcher Kenneth Ring has a penultimate chapter called "Journeys to the Source: The Ultimate Lessons from the Light", which goes over themes that come across from certain NDErs' testimonies, subjects who seem to have during their NDE progressed further "into" the Light, into what Ring calls a "second" and "ultimate Light' - and I can't help but equate that knowledge as very similar to what usually comes across in perennial "mystic visions". And I will personally hold that higher (if the themes are consistent, which I find to be) than veridically-verified communications that most likely are saying something true and empirical about one dimension of reality, closer to where we are and can relate to as incarnate finite minds. (But that's just me).

So, for example, I wouldn't assume that the mediumship case about the dead child reassuring her grieving parents is the be-all and end-all of what that reality is. It's certainly one level or dimension, but who knows if there are larger truths or other dimensions? I tend to assume there are others, given what I've digested over the years as information. My 2 cents of course!

I need to go through Shushan's examination of NDEs across human history but my current thinking is there seems to be varied realities where people can go.

This world (universe) seems like something of an intersection point used by varied groups with different paths, why we get transcendent experiences along with afterlives that seem as mundane as this one. And of course, the spirit journeys of shamans and other figures...I am wary of assuming it's all harmoniously ordered though as that seems a bit too neat when compared to the disorder of this reality...

(2022-08-14, 07:57 PM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]Always fun spending a bit of time debating over the ground of reality on a nice August Sunday afternoon!

I'm sure we'll have it all wrapped up even if the debate extends across human history....just....one...more...post...

(2022-08-14, 07:16 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I guess I have to admit confusion here, because I'm not sure what this means:

Quote:If we go to Sankara's model of Advaita Vedanta, for example, and go to the topic of painful emotional experiences in general (grieving, suffering in general), the empirical level of reality is real. Those experiences occur. If at an underlying, more deeper ontological level, it is all Brahman and there is no differentiation, does this mean the empirical level is a "farce"? Wouldn't it be more accurate to describe it as tremendously real, but not absolutely real? (So that not-absolute does not mean unreal, but just less-real-than-absolutely-real).

To me this is like "proto-consciousness" invoked by some panpsychists and even materialists...but this seems to try and add gradations to something that seems either-or? Similarly what does it mean for an aspect of reality to be "less-real-than-absolutely-real"?

I think there might be a very rough analogy from physics, where it is recognized that the "empirical" physical world experienced by humans is absolutely real, but from a very much deeper perspective this empirical physical world is actually vast numbers of quantum mechanically interacting subatomic particles in a void (with there being even deeper physics visualisations). Both realms are real, but actually are "one", and aspects of each other. The realm of quantum mechanically interacting subatomic particles is "realer than real" from the empirical physical perspective of humans, but is certainly physically invisible to humans .

To continue the analogy, as "all is Brahman and there is no differentiation", so (according to materialist physics) all consists of vast numbers of quantum mechanically interacting subatomic particles, and all macroscopic physical objects are qualitatively the same types of subatomic particles, just arranged differently, the same basic "substance".

"The materialist theory is a logical blunder, because it is based on a confusion between the object and subject. It asserts that matter is objective, but at the same time it tries to show that it is also the cause of the subject, which it can never be. “A” can never become “non-A.” Materialism begins with the idea that matter is objective, and ends in attempting to prove that this objective something has become the subjective mind, spirit or ego. It first takes for granted that matter is that which is perceived, or the cause of sensations, then it gradually claims to show that it produces that which feels the sensations, which is contradictory and absurd.

As materialism is onesided and imperfect, so is the spiritualistic or idealistic theory of the world, which denies the existence of matter or object, and says that everything is mind . . . that all is mind and that there is no matter, is as erroneous as the materialistic theory. Spirit or mind or ego, which is always the subject, can exist as perceiver or knower so long as there is an object of perception or knowledge. If we admit the existence of one, that of the other is implied. Therefore, Goethe was correct in saying: “Matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit or spirit without matter.”

The universal substance appears as possessing these two attributes of subject and object, of spirit, mind or ego and matter or non-ego. They are like the two modes of the one eternal substance, which is unknown and unknowable existence. . . . This substance is not many but one. All varieties of phenomena have come out of this one source, Brahman, and into it they will be reduced at the time of dissolution. It is the universal energy, the mother or producer of all forces. We know that all forces are related to one another and that they are, as modern science explains, the manifestations of the same eternal energy or the infinite substance. From this one source all mental and material forces have come into existence, and have evolved into various forms and shapes.

This is monism."

-Swami Abhedananda

So rather than dualism or idealism (or materialism), this would be something more along the lines of a "dual-aspect" theory? This might fit the paranormal data best?

Abhedananda was an Advaita Vedantin, it should be noted, follower of Ramakrishna.

(2022-08-15, 03:49 AM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]Abhedananda was an Advaita Vedantin, it should be noted, follower of Ramakrishna.

Just to throw another contender into the ring:

"I mean something very specific by “Tantric” and “Tantra” and probably not what you think. Much too briefly and simply, Tantra is a comparative term used by scholars of Asian religions to describe any number of Asian philosophical, ritual, and practice systems that profess a bipolar but nondual vision of reality that consists of a transcendent form of Consciousness, Mind, or Godhead that emanates or expresses Itself, energetically and immanently, in and as the human body and the material universe. The physical cosmos is not an illusion (māyā), neither quite real nor unreal, as one has it in some forms of Advaita Vedanta. Here, in the Tantric traditions, the physical universe is an actual, intimate, even erotic expression of the Godhead, and the human body, particularly in its esoteric dimensions, constitutes the surest set of contact points into this same cosmic Being."

-Kripal

(2022-08-15, 03:09 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]"The materialist theory is a logical blunder, because it is based on a confusion between the object and subject. It asserts that matter is objective, but at the same time it tries to show that it is also the cause of the subject, which it can never be. “A” can never become “non-A.” Materialism begins with the idea that matter is objective, and ends in attempting to prove that this objective something has become the subjective mind, spirit or ego. It first takes for granted that matter is that which is perceived, or the cause of sensations, then it gradually claims to show that it produces that which feels the sensations, which is contradictory and absurd.

As materialism is onesided and imperfect, so is the spiritualistic or idealistic theory of the world, which denies the existence of matter or object, and says that everything is mind . . . that all is mind and that there is no matter, is as erroneous as the materialistic theory. Spirit or mind or ego, which is always the subject, can exist as perceiver or knower so long as there is an object of perception or knowledge. If we admit the existence of one, that of the other is implied. Therefore, Goethe was correct in saying: “Matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit or spirit without matter.”

The universal substance appears as possessing these two attributes of subject and object, of spirit, mind or ego and matter or non-ego. They are like the two modes of the one eternal substance, which is unknown and unknowable existence. . . . This substance is not many but one. All varieties of phenomena have come out of this one source, Brahman, and into it they will be reduced at the time of dissolution. It is the universal energy, the mother or producer of all forces. We know that all forces are related to one another and that they are, as modern science explains, the manifestations of the same eternal energy or the infinite substance. From this one source all mental and material forces have come into existence, and have evolved into various forms and shapes.

This is monism."

-Swami Abhedananda

So rather than dualism or idealism (or materialism), this would be something more along the lines of a "dual-aspect" theory? This might fit the paranormal data best?

I prefer Sankara's Advaita Vedanta. Kripal's model doesn't propose a system that automatically unfolds as the actual human-experienced duality of empirical physical realm and separate empirical spiritual realm or system of subrealms, with there at the same time being the very much deeper "realer than real" ground state or Source or Brahman of absolutely all that exists that is sometimes sensed by NDEers and in episodes of "cosmic consciousness". A teaching of an absolute Monism at the bottom of all that exists, in addition to very much real separate physical and spiritual realities. It seems to me that this system of existential philosophy somewhat more simply and completely and automatically accomodates the paranormal data. Kripal's system as he expounds it (like Idealist Monism) doesn't explain the how (the mechanism) and the why (the teleology) of the "two attributes" of the ground monistic substance splitting up in actual human experience.

(2022-08-02, 08:12 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Going back to the idea of Eternal Individual Selves, from the Monika Mandoki paper that Ninshub posted...

I think I might be somewhat like McTaggart...

From the SEP:

McTaggart’s Metaphysical Pluralism

Quote:McTaggart’s realism about relations seems to be a relatively mild realism: he believes in the existence of relations, and grants that statements attributing relations to things might be true to the fullest degree, but it is not clear the extent to which he believed that facts about the obtainings of relations were metaphysically basic.[32] It is true that the notion of perception, which is on the face of it a relational notion, plays a fundamental role in his idealistic system. Recall that McTaggart held that reality consists of immaterial selves that are unified by perceiving each other. What is not clear is whether McTaggart believed that whenever some x perceives some y, it is virtue of the intrinsic qualities of x and y. (In one sense of the term “intrinsic relation”, perception would be an intrinsic relation if this claim were true.)

McTaggart believed that the most extreme kind of monism, namely the doctrine that there is exactly one thing, is incoherent. For if there were exactly one thing, it could have no attributes or features, and hence, on McTaggart’s view, would really be nothing.[33] For this reason, McTaggart held that we must not think of ‘the absolute spirit’ as an undifferentiated unity. In McTaggart’s early paper, “The Further Determination of the Absolute”, McTaggart argues that if the absolute has features, then it must have parts standing in relations to one another.

McTaggart also rejected the less radical version of monism that holds that there is only one substance. In first volume of the Nature of Existence, sections 65 and 73, McTaggart defined “substance” as that which has features without being a feature. In his later article, “an Ontological Idealism”, he defines “substance” as that which has features without being a feature or having a feature as a part. The reason for the revision is that at this point in McTaggart’s career, he accepted the existence of facts construed as complexes of particulars and properties. Facts satisfy the older definition of “substance” but not the newer one. McTaggart argues that we perceive that there are many substances, but also holds that it is a priori that, if there is one substance, then there are many, since it is a priori that every substance has infinitely many parts. McTaggart also rejected solipsism understood as the view that reality consists of a single person, which although infinitely divided is such that nothing exists that is not a part of him. Solipsism thus understood is strictly compatible with the existence of a plurality of substances; however, McTaggart held that solipsism was ruled out by the requirement that there be a relation of determining correspondence.[34]