From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 09:20:15 MST
spike66 wrote:
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>> Charles Hixson wrote:
>>
>>> That said, I don't consider a hallucination supplied by a "God" to
>>> be any proof...
>>
>>
>> Well, if we claim that any/all experience of what appears to be a
>> transcendent reality usually considered spiritual is in fact an
>> hallucination then we have a rather closed loop system going, don't
>> we? We can't possibly get any experience of anything transcendent
>> because we will just chalk it up as hallucination or "activated
>> archetype" and be done with it. So I am not at all clear there is
>> anything that could be encountered that would in fact be convincing
>> that God is... - samantha
>
>
> There are those of us who would settle for a good
> halucination. No drugs allowed however. Advanced
> alien intelligences may apply, for I would think
> they would have nanotech, therefore creating an
> halucination in individual human brains would be
> a good way to communicate with us.
But you experience them every day. That was part of the point of the
psychology class demonstration. They aren't considered "visions from
God" unless they have a strong emotional content, and a claim to
infallibility, but lesser manifestations occur to all of us every day.
Zazen is an attempt to break out of these hallucinations. My
experiments indicate that it can be partially successful, but cause be
to be dubious that the success can be permanent ("then the mountains are
mountains again", so perhaps the Zen masters agree with me).
If you mean that you want the fill to have more emotional content, watch
someone else accepting or denouncing the current war. Lots of emotional
fill going on there, and it's much easier to see in someone who
disagrees with you (whatever your viewpoint, you can find emotionally
driven disagreement).
These "hallucinations" are the underpinnings of consciousness. Read
Dennetts "Darwins Dangerous Invention" or ... I don't remember it this
instant, the book where he is talking about the structure of mind, and
the problem of trying to find a decent meaning for "I".
> A loose paraphase of an Arthur C. Clarke comment
> says that any contact between two civilizations
> of vastly different technological ability is always
> destructive to the less advanced. Perhaps the
> aliens (gods) are not talking on purpose. spike
Aliens are (if genuine) external. The gods are archetypal. They sit at
the interface between mind and body. They are mental constructs that
appear to be external. Their usual mode of operation is not independant
external existence, but rather someone, or something, who is a good
projection screen being projected upon. Occasionally they are so
strongly activated that someone will experience them as external
entities independant of other external entities. This is usually a
symptom of something catastrophic having happened to the person. Mind
you, this is not the same as "visions", which are known as such. Those
are not necessarily symptoms of catastrophism, but are still quite
dangerous to one's sense of reality. Joan of Arc comes to mind as an
example. (She was a quite fortunate case, who was able to adapt well
to her new reality, even if it did eventually lead to her death. With
foreign troops running all over the country that might have happened
anyway.)
Freud called the activations of gods "projections", a term and concept
that is useful to an external observer, but not very useful to one who
is experiencing them. Archetypes emphasises that they are the basic
elements of though, and that they are structures of thought that are
shared by all people. God emphasis that they appear to be independant,
external, and potent (or sometimes subtle). All of these terms are
pointing at the same thing. They are all, within limits, accurate. And
they all tend to ignore that most activations are quite low-key, and
missed by both experiencerers and observers. (It may be some power law,
like the one that governs the frequency vs. size of celestial bodies.)
But I can guarantee that you experience these events every day.
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