Is the Universe and Life both the same thing? (out-of-the-box)

by frankiespeakin 37 Replies latest jw friends

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  frankiespeakin

  Here's a clip on "Transpersonal Psychology"

  http://www.mdani.demon.co.uk/trans/tranintro.htm

  What is Transpersonal Psychology?

  "Transpersonal Psychology" is a branch of psychology that is concerned with the study of those states and processes in which people experience a deeper or wider sense of who they are, or a sense of greater connectedness with others, nature, or the "spiritual" dimension. The term "transpersonal" means "beyond the personal" and a common assumption in transpersonal psychology is that transpersonal experiences involve a higher mode of consciousness in which the ordinary mental-egoic self is transcended.

  Transpersonal Psychology is a relatively new development in academic psychology that has yet to be recognised formally by the American Psychological Association . However, in 1997, the British Psychological Society approved the formation of an academic Transpersonal Psychology Section , as well as one for the related area of Consciousness and Experiential Psychology.

  Among the topics currently being explored by transpersonal psychologists are:

  Experiences of love. Empathy Creativity and inspiration Channeling Transpersonal Art Altered states of consciousness Dream consciousness Mind-body relationship Psychedelic experience Mystical experiences Spiritual emergencies and crises The Dark Night of the Soul Archetypal experiences Near-death experiences, death and dying The psychology of meditation Practice and experience within Eastern and Western religious and esoteric traditions Buddhist psychology Ecological consciousness Psychology of Self and self-realisation The Higher Self Self-transcendence Male and female perspectives on the transpersonal Paranormal experiences Transpersonal approaches in psychotherapy / counselling and in education The evolution of consciousness Transpersonal research methods Integral approaches to knowledge The Perennial Philosophy

  Although transpersonal psychology is a branch of psychology, it recognises the importance of a non-parochial and integrative approach in which other disciplines are acknowledged to have their own contributions to make in our combined explorations of the transpersonal. These other disciplines include philosophy, psychiatry, sociology, politics, education, anthropology, history, literary studies, religious studies, biology and physics.

  What Transpersonal Psychology is NOT

  Transpersonal psychology is, in the broadest sense, a scientific
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  frankiespeakin

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin :

  http://www.wie.org/j19/teilhard.asp?page=2

  WIE: What is the significance of our becoming aware of the process of evolution? BS: Teilhard gave a great analogy. Our moment of waking up as a species is very much like what happens in the individual at around two years old. I don't know the exact time, but there comes a moment when the young child gets depth perception for the first time. So in their phenomenal field, there's a rearrangement of the phenomena into the third dimension as opposed to a two-dimensional map. He said that the species is going through that right now?we're discovering a depth of time. Before, we saw everything in terms of this much smaller space, and now, "Wham!" the universe as a whole opens up in the depths of time.
  
  Teilhard also had this phrase called "hominization." Hominization is the way in which human thought transforms previously existing practices and functions of the earth. Let me give you an example. The earth makes decisions all the time; it makes choices. And in a broad sense, this is called natural selection. But when you throw human thought in there, it explodes into all of the decisions we're making all over the planet. Human decision has "hominized" the natural selection process?for good and ill. Everything that has existed up until now is going through this process of hominization. Another example would be?look at young mammals and the way they play. They mess around with each other and hide and chase, and we hominize that by creating this whole vast industry of sports and arts and entertainment. Everything seems to go through this explosion when it's touched by the human imagination. Teilhard's ultimate vision of what is taking place with the human is the hominization of love. You see, he regarded the attracting force of gravity as a form of love, and the way in which animals care for one another as a form of love, and so the hominization of love would be focusing that and amplifying it to make it a monumental power in the future evolution of the earth. That is his most famous phrase: "The day will come when we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, the human being will have discovered fire." WIE: How does our becoming aware of the evolutionary scale of time help the "universe develop into God"?as you said earlier?or further the invocation of God through human consciousness? BS: He had this sense that a deep change at the level of being?a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of actual body?can take place in the human who learns to see the universe as suffused with divine action. And he made a huge deal out of this word?"see." His sense of spiritual practice would be to develop those qualities that are necessary for us to truly get it, to truly see where we are. One thing he would speak about is how we tend to be overwhelmed by large numbers, and so he would say we have to develop a capacity to see the patterns in the large numbers. As we develop this capacity, rather than being crushed by the immensity of the universe, we'll suddenly, instead, resonate with the universe as a whole as the outer form of our own inner spirit. That was his cry, for humans to develop these capacities.
  
  He also had an interesting view of spiritual traditions in general about this. He seemed to say that eternity is easier than evolution. The idea of awakening to eternity he regarded as very, very significant in human history?but not as difficult as awakening to the time-developmental or evolutionary nature of the universe.
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  frankiespeakin

  Omega Point very interesting out of the box idea:

  http://www.wie.org/j19/teilhard.asp?page=3

  WIE: Teilhard is probably best known for his idea of the "omega point." The term has become quite popular, but it seems that few people really understand what he meant by it. Can you explain Teilhard's omega point? BS: By the "omega point," Teilhard meant a universe that had become God. He meant God in embodied form. He regarded the omega point as two things. It's an event that the universe is moving toward, in the future. But what he also imagined, which is difficult for us to really conceive, is that even though the omega point is in the future, it is also exerting a force on the present. When we think of the omega point, in our Western consciousness it's hard to escape thinking in terms of a line with the omega point at the end of the line. His thinking wasn't that way; it was that the omega point permeates the whole thing. He imagined the influence of the omega point radiating back from the future into the present. In some mysterious way, the future's right here. Teilhard regarded that the way in which the future is right here is in the experience of being drawn or attracted, or in our "zest." That's his word, and I love that so much. We?"we" meaning anything in the universe?are drawn forward, and this attractive power is what begins a process that eventuates in deeper or greater being. That attraction he regarded as love, and it is evidence of the presence of the omega point. When you experience that attraction, that zest, you're experiencing the future. You're experiencing the omega point. You're experiencing God. You're experiencing your destiny. WIE: What does it mean for the universe to become God? BS: Because we're in the midst of this process, at the best we can have crude images, metaphors. We have little glimmers and insights. The image that I like is this: You have molten rock, and then all by itself, it transforms into a human mother caring for her child. That's a rather astounding transformation. Of course, it takes four billion years. You've got silica, you've got magnesium. You've got all the elements of rock, and it becomes the translucent blue eye and beautiful brown hair and this deep sense of love and concern and even sacrifice for a child. That is a deep transfiguration. Love and truth and compassion and zest and all of these qualities that we regard as divine become more powerfully embodied in the universe. That would be an image of how I think about the universe becoming divine.
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  frankiespeakin

  Now after reading again some more about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (Abaddon first brought him to my mind on a thread somehwere).

  You kind of have to read about PTC,, then pull away reflect and then read about him again latter and then different things become clearer because my mind can't just jump out of the box and stay out I keep getting pulled back to the box,,but each time I get more and more comfortable with ideas that are out of the box.

  If what he says is true in a general sense then,,Love is the force that pulls from the future on our "present" and this account for the seeming intelligence in nature all around us,,the appreciated beauty,,the growing of a greater consciousness,,a higher form of being,,to eventually an ultimate God or beyond???
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  Narkissos

  I come back to my original question.

  Consciousness is a word. A human word. A part of the complex human symbolical system which is built on language.

  Within language we speak of human consciousness which includes language. When we apply the same word to non-human beings (whether animal, vegetable or mineral) we use an anthropomorphic analogy. Anthropomorphism is also a word, within our language system, by which language expresses its self-consciousness. Whenever we lend human consciousness, feelings, emotions, to non-human beings, we are also conscious that we just don't know what we're speaking about. It is poetry rather than science. Whatever lies without language we can only reach within language -- so we are bound to miss it just as well.

  Now to me the big question remains: is there continuity or discontinuity between human consciousness and whatever non-human phenomena to which we are inclined to extend, poetically, the analogy of our consciousness? Is man, as Elisée Reclus had it, "nature becoming aware of itself"? Or did human consciousness, either as an "accident", an "error" or a "providence", make us radically different from, or strangers to the world of being, by adding an excess of symbol, or meaning, which no ontology can ever capture? I guess both -- but it can't be more than a guess.
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  logansrun

  Are you all familiar with what Ken Wilber calls the "pre/trans fallacy"?

  Some people call "transpersonal" or "transcendent" when, in fact, what they are experiencing is really "pre-personal" or "pre-egoic." People yelling at trees, praying for plants to grow or dabbling in astrology are, imho, "pre-egoic" -- more primitive not more spiritual (whatever that word might mean).

  Personally I think people do themselves immense damage when they dabble in "transpersonal" pscyhology or other New Age stuff. What they really would benefit from is a more down-to-earth form of therapy and life management. Too much for what passes as "spritual" is just childish escapism from the real world where we must behave pragmatically and interactionally.

  And....beware of totalistic answers to your problems. One of the real dangers is that people go into New Age philosophies (which may or may not include transpersonal psychology) looking for quick and easy answers, when real psychology fulfillment and change is hard work and may even seem boring at times.

  So, all in all, I don't really recommend the "transpersonal" approach.

  B.
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  frankiespeakin

  Nark,

  Whenever we lend human consciousness, feelings, emotions, to non-human beings, we are also conscious that we just don't know what we're speaking about. It is poetry rather than science. Whatever lies without language we can only reach within language -- so we are bound to miss it just as well.

  I agree we really don't know what we are speaking about when we use the term consciousness. Language is a tool but it is also a prison that limits our understanding. Consciousness and what it really is "precisely",,, if you ask me, is unatainable, we can only generalize it and speculate what it is. Altered states of consciousness and the consciousness that a tree or atom may or may not have,,merely depends on your use of this term and what you consider it to mean. Maybe the word recognition could be use as a substitute but then again what is recognition?

  Now to me the big question remains: is there continuity or discontinuity between human consciousness and whatever non-human phenomena to which we are inclined to extend, poetically, the analogy of our consciousness?

  I'm inclinde at present to think there is continuity,,I think non-duality has its strong points,,as our seperation is also a false contruction of the mind a imaginary metaphoric "I". We can also ask are thoughts "just" electro-chemical in nature,,and confined only to the brain ? We can speculate about it,,make educated guesses,,but if the universe is non-local as physicist think then everything is up for grabs,,but it tends toward what mystic's have been saying all along that everything is one.

  Is man, as Elisée Reclus had it, "nature becoming aware of itself"?

  I don't think we can be certain with an answer to this,,but I'm inclind to think yes,,with the additional thought to tag on to it. Namely that not only should man be considered but so should everything else,,stars,,galaxies,,atoms,,electron they all seem to be sensing devices connected to each other.

  Or did human consciousness, either as an "accident", an "error" or a "providence", make us radically different from, or strangers to the world of being, by adding an excess of symbol, or meaning, which no ontology can ever capture? I guess both -- but it can't be more than a guess

  Could be both,, and I don't see why not. This subject certainly lends itself to much speculation. I think unless one had extordinary proof it is best to leave the subject open ended.
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  frankiespeakin

  LR,

  And....beware of totalistic answers to your problems. One of the real dangers is that people go into New Age philosophies (which may or may not include transpersonal psychology) looking for quick and easy answers, when real psychology fulfillment and change is hard work and may even seem boring at times. So, all in all, I don't really recommend the "transpersonal" approach.

  I understand your cautious nature. Totalistic answers I take with a grain of salt at present. I suppose one could have a experience that may seem to answer all questions about existence. I'm inclinded to think totalistic answers are beyond human intellect and language metaphors.