Hmm, how very odd. I just got a comment from someone who was delighted
that my email was word wrapping when everyone elses was giving him problems
and that is what I have it set to in my Eudora Pro 3.0, which is the latest
version. What kind of email program are *you* using?
Ah, I see....Pine...<whince>....no wonder.
>
>> Well it's the Church of All Worlds to be exact, drawn from SISL, so it's
>> slightly different. (http://www.caw.org).
>
>Yeah, I met some CAW-ers (or perhaps ex-CAW-ers, I'm not entirely sure)
>on my last trip to America.
>
really? I probably know them! tell me in private who they were if you
don't mind...your name, btw, looks vaguely familiar to me.
>> I can't understand the complete and utter rejection of such
>> things as Shamanic or spiritual experience...I don't understand why
>> technology and those experiences can't be integrated.
>
>*Is* there a complete rejection of such things? I'm rather fond of that
>transcendant bliss stuff myself. I just regard it as a property of my
>brain that certain experiences activate, rather than something external.
>
Well I guess I believe that it is both actually. Because I have such
*strange* synchronistic and unusual things happening in my life on a
regular basis, because I have done pretty intense ritual with some really
amazing and experienced ritualists, because I've seen somethings that just
can't be explained as merely my "internal" filters on reality, and which
many of those on this list probably wouldn't believe, so I won't talk about
them, I think that there is much more to it than just an internal
experience. THis is not to say that my brain isn't experiencing it at the
same time, however.
>In fact, AFAIR the reading list used to include 'Prometheus Rising' by
>Robert Anton Wilson. The fifth of the eight brain circuits in the
>Leary/Wilson model was primarily concerned with such states.
>
Well I agree, that the brain is experiencing the ecstatic, (though I
experience it more than with just my brain, thank you very much), but this
doesn't mean that it's not connected to something outside of it. Leary,
btw, also believed that there was more to our consciousness after we left
as well. I think that the universe and we are much more complex than
that....no man is an island unto himself and all that. One of the greatest
damage that Monotheistic/Abrahamic trads has done on the Psyche is this
idea that somehow we are separate from the Creator/Divine. I don't see it
that way. I don't believe we are merely fleshy machines that can be reduced
down solely to the data in our brains (especially with the new information
that is being learned about the heart and it's imortance, other than just
being a "pump" new research is showing that it has it's own form of
"intelligence" as well and is vitally connected to the braina and how the
brain reacts to certain things. (http://www.heartmath.com) And there is
more and more evidence of a cellular type intelligence as well. And on the
subject of the brain, once we've described it down to the various chemical
and physical processes, etc, that's all fine and dandy, but people like
Crick are missing an essential, at least to me, point. Just *what* is it
that is having the experiences of all the processes? Something is
experiencing that, right?
Of course I could be completely wrong too...but intuitively this makes more
sense to me.
Peace!
Joy