Kastrup: Idea of the World

I given your comments the "like", Stan, not the video. I agree and I don't get what the fascination is with Bernado's thoughts and opinions (though I do like him). Maybe somebody can explain. Has he conducted some kind of 'experiment' that demonstrates he's right ?

Well there are Bernardo's opinions for what I guess we could call Kastrupian Idealism - which leans toward ideas of No-Self and thus No-Survival - and then there's the arguments he's articulated for what we might call Objective or Top Down Idealism in General.

As to a fascination with his thoughts -> He's a Comp Engineering PhD who worked with the CERN team, and has gotten Idealism - once thought to be just ridiculous - serious enough attention to have articles published in Scientific American. [He also recently got his PhD in Philosophy, having survived a publicly recorded thesis defense for his Idealist views.]

So people who see Idealism as a way to reconcile parapsychology, theism, and the usually-seen-as-materialist general science disciplines find him a valuable ally as he's probably the foremost scientific proponent of Idealism...maybe tied with Donald Hoffman.

For example, Edward Kelly wrote the afterword to Kastrup's book Idea of the World, and Kelly obviously is a strong believer in the immortal individual who goes from body to body, reality to reality.

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So people who see Idealism as a way to reconcile parapsychology, theism, and the usually-seen-as-materialist general science disciplines find him a valuable ally as he's probably the foremost scientific proponent of Idealism...maybe tied with Donald Hoffman.

I’m a great fan of Bernardo (and Hoffman but I don’t know him ‘so well’), so I agree with all that you’ve said about him. The thing is that I think that once even highly intelligent and intuitive people get off their pet subject, the things they have put a lot of effort into, they often seem to be in the dark with the rest of us. 

Sci, what is your impression of his idea of ‘what happens to us after we die’, in as plain language as you can?

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I’m a great fan of Bernardo (and Hoffman but I don’t know him ‘so well’), so I agree with all that you’ve said about him. The thing is that I think that once even highly intelligent and intuitive people get off their pet subject, the things they have put a lot of effort into, they often seem to be in the dark with the rest of us. 

Sci, what is your impression of his idea of ‘what happens to us after we die’, in as plain language as you can?

We expand until we realize we are just the One, the Ur-Mind.

To quote Mike Carey ->

 this is okay. i can roll with it.

 my mind runs out across the universe.
 finds its level.
 i'm not leaving.
 i'm -- arriving.
 everywhere at once.

 and whatever else it might be it's not the end.
 it doesn't feel like death.
 unless a rock pool dies, when a wave breaks over it.
 or warm breath dies as it fades --
 and makes its peace with the air.
   -M.Carey, 'Eve'

Admittedly one can easily say this is papering over Oblivion with flowery language.

I personally don’t think that’s particularly logical after one life,

By the way, ‘logical’ isn’t really enough, as I don’t think we ought to assume everything is logical when discussing topics like these. I should have said it makes me feel uneasy , like something doesn’t sit right. To get closer to what I mean I ought to have included words like intuition, unease as well as ‘logical’. 

I’m beginning to realise just how important language can be when trying to get ones thoughts across, it’s a pain in the ass. That’s maybe how a picture or a song can be very effective at getting to the heart of things. A picture (sometimes)paints a thousand words...

Well there are Bernardo's opinions for what I guess we could call Kastrupian Idealism - which leans toward ideas of No-Self and thus No-Survival - and then there's the arguments he's articulated for what we might call Objective or Top Down Idealism in General.

As to a fascination with his thoughts -> He's a Comp Engineering PhD who worked with the CERN team, and has gotten Idealism - once thought to be just ridiculous - serious enough attention to have articles published in Scientific American. [He also recently got his PhD in Philosophy, having survived a publicly recorded thesis defense for his Idealist views.]

As I've said previously, he's intelligent and well qualified in his own area of expertise, but I don't see how his thoughts 
on how the universe is set up carry any more weight than anyone else's particularly (I'm not suggesting you think that necessarily BTW). There is no experiment that has been conducted that says Kastrup is right though, is there? 

He's also very selective on interpreting the data from NDE's. NDE data simply doesn't support his contentions; if it supports anything, it supports dualism. 

Then, without any conscious decision or intention, I was surprised to find myself standing in front of two automatic doors just inside the front entrance of what was obviously a hospital, though not one I had ever been in. There were ordinary people coming and going. A woman in a wheel chair, a guy hobbling on crutches. None of them seemed to notice me. If I was in someone's path, I would try to make eye contact with them and when it got to the point we were obviously going to collide, before I could even get out of their path, they were already 'through me' and walking away, a really peculiar feeling. What the !!...  I thought.  I called out to an old maintenance guy, pushing one of those furry dust brushes across the tiled floor, but he was completely oblivious too!  

@tim, I agree with your sentiments, and particularly appreciate the quote which does support your view. I was wondering where it came from. I looked in The Self Does not Die but couldn't find it.

@tim, I agree with your sentiments, and particularly appreciate the quote which does support your view. I was wondering where it came from. I looked in The Self Does not Die but couldn't find it.

Hi, Typoz it came from a much bigger report from a 'friend' of mine whose NDE I turned into a short book. Unfortunately the project is up in the air at the moment because I wasn't able to verify some parts of it. Some parts were verified. This part above was not open to verification but I have little doubt that he was telling me the truth. He described walking around the hospital where his body was lying in a coma (this is all verified). Not the kind of guy to make anything up.

I've read this type of scenario many times, down the years. He saw his friend coming to visit him in the hospital for instance (whilst he was comatose) and that was correct but there was just a couple of small details that varied (not that significant but..). There was lots of other remarkable details too. I'm a stickler for detail.

As I've said previously, he's intelligent and well qualified in his own area of expertise, but I don't see how his thoughts on how the universe is set up carry any more weight than anyone else's particularly (I'm not suggesting you think that necessarily BTW). There is no experiment that has been conducted that says Kastrup is right though, is there?

Ah yeah I wasn't arguing for his position's correctness, rather why he gets a certain degree of air time in proponent circles.

Kastrup has an updated Analytic Idealism Course on Essentia Foundation's Youtube Channel[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDbCTxm6_Ps&list=PL64CzGA1kTzi085dogdD_BJkxeFaTZRoq][/url]

That's the link to the playlist.

Each video has a relevant literature section. I've not gone through them, might make some commentary if I do...

As I've said previously, he's intelligent and well qualified in his own area of expertise, but I don't see how his thoughts 
on how the universe is set up carry any more weight than anyone else's particularly (I'm not suggesting you think that necessarily BTW). There is no experiment that has been conducted that says Kastrup is right though, is there? 

He's also very selective on interpreting the data from NDE's. NDE data simply doesn't support his contentions; if it supports anything, it supports dualism. 

Then, without any conscious decision or intention, I was surprised to find myself standing in front of two automatic doors just inside the front entrance of what was obviously a hospital, though not one I had ever been in. There were ordinary people coming and going. A woman in a wheel chair, a guy hobbling on crutches. None of them seemed to notice me. If I was in someone's path, I would try to make eye contact with them and when it got to the point we were obviously going to collide, before I could even get out of their path, they were already 'through me' and walking away, a really peculiar feeling. What the !!...  I thought.  I called out to an old maintenance guy, pushing one of those furry dust brushes across the tiled floor, but he was completely oblivious too!  

I have always felt that Idealism is probably ultimately true, but it isn't really useful right now. Right now science is utterly materialistic, and it would really help if it tentatively admitted some break from materialism - like the concept that minds may exist free from the body and possibly transfer from body to body. Once science expanded to that degree, I think it would be groaning with evidence for non-materialism and would soon have to give way further.

I feel there is an analogy with Newton's theory of gravity. If by some miracle Newton had come up with what we now know as Einstein's general theory of relativity, it would probably have gone nowhere. The problem would be that nobody would have been able to handle the heavy algebra, and initially people would not know that there is a much simpler version of reality (Newton's laws as we know them) implied by the theory as a good approximation.

In other words, nobody knows yet how to handle Idealism. On the face of it, it implies that everything is subject to the will of consciousness, and therefore any scientific law is more like a human law - people can break the law if they see fit! I think science needs a more gentle (but possibly intermediate) introduction to incorporating consciousness into reality.