by Narkissos 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Six,
Arn't you tired of your little one liners that say absolutely nothing? If you have something to contribute to the thread good contribute it but please say something substancial that shows just alittle thought with some substance.
Your little hit and run one liners reminds me of the two grumpy old men on the muppets,, nothing substancial to add,, kind of like you can't even give your $.02 it's more like $.001. I bet if I did a post search on your contribution that patern would be obvious.
lol; put your extra large ego aside for a second, and it will be blindingly clear what I meant with my two words. I wonder sometimes if the difference is so much the experiences, or the overarching need to assign extreeeeeeeeeeeee special significance to anything emanating from ones own mind that frames the experientialist/intellectual debate.
I see no reason Gumby should need to take notes from you frank; in fact, why not the other way around? Especially when the subject is egos.
Generally speaking, I reserve substance for things that have substance to respond to. Your reply to Gumby didn't give much to work with (Narkissos post certainly has substance, btw). Don't like my brand of sniping? It's an easy fix
Six,
Well this time you have a little more substance at least.
I see no reason Gumby should need to take notes from you frank; in fact, why not the other way around? Especially when the subject is egos.
So who are you Gumby's gardian? Are you trying to guide him or something??
Generally speaking, I reserve substance for things that have substance to respond to. Your reply to Gumby didn't give much to work with (Narkissos post certainly has substance, btw). Don't like my brand of sniping? It's an easy fix
You can snip all you want,,that's your privilegde. I'm just calling on you lack of substance.
I'm convinced that the so-called "religious experience" is entirely in peoples' own minds. People generally claim to have precisely the experiences their religious backgrounds tell them they need to have to gain God's or the church's approval. Thus, JWs sometimes experience the mystical "becoming anointed". Born-agains become born again. Pentecostals speak in tongues. Whoever is supposed to "get the Holy Spirit" gets the spirit. And of course, some people mistake drug-induced hallucinations or certain kinds of dreams as real experiences. Even UFO sightings and such are often part of this. The human mind is capable of amazing amounts of self-deception.
AlanF
"Boys boys.....stop your fighting.... or your both going to sit in the corner for an hour"!
Frankie.....no, sixer isn't my guardian...he's just another person who feels that many believe and feel things because they want to bad enough. That's how religion started.
So thier must be a way to break your resistance,
I sure the hell hope not. That's how people end up in cults.
Gumby
Interesting points.
Just to push on my last question: isn't resistance, reluctance or indifference to religious or spiritual "experience" equally puzzling to "experientialists" as their experiences are to skeptics? Instead of explaining it away in a condescending way (insensitivity, fear, selfishness), shouldn't it be seriously pondered over?
I guess this might be especially meaningful to the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist or Taoist traditions, as negation (e.g. of the gods) plays an essential role in their religion. When they hear the skeptics they can recognise an echo of their own critic of "idolatry", or their paradoxical highlight of the negative (the cross, the dark night, the silence of God or the ban on naming or picturing him, the non-being or non-acting).
There is a "spirituality" of the One and there is a "spirituality" of the Zero. (Or, to Frankie: there is Jung and there is Lacan.) Both are interesting and correlated I guess. What is usually despised as "materialistic" or "shallow" may just be the other side of the "spiritual" and "deep", in its own modest, discreet or humourous way. As one French writer put it, "we are superficial only superficially".
Alan,
I agree it is all in the mind,,but where is the mind? I don't think the mind and thoughts are really centered in your brain. What really is thought and awareness of thought? Is it just elctro-chemical impulses or are they more than that?
Gumby,
While it's true that these experiences can cause a person to get entrapped in a cult if they experience them in that setting,, but many experience them spontaniously,,thru psychedelics,,near death experiences,,during extreme pain such as child birth or torture,, while in participating in sports when experiencing a peak performance, hypnosis, strobelights, shamonic drumming,,trance dancing,,sensory depravation,, and a blow to the head etc...
That's right Frankie....and every single thing you mentioned is an illusion isn't it? If I take mushrooms and experience something from it......did it REALLY happen? What's your point?
Gumby
Gumby,
That's right Frankie....and every single thing you mentioned is an illusion isn't it? If I take mushrooms and experience something from it......did it REALLY happen? What's your point?
Experiencing something either through the five senses or in a vision, or thru an altered state of consciousness is all done in the mind,,what appears to be real is just the minds interpretation of sensory input, which has it's limitation and easily fooled. What is real and what is an illusion is all debatable.
Physicist are now telling us everything in the universe is an illusion and that the universe is Non-local. The Quantum Mechanics if you want to take it seriouly is proving the ancient psychopompts correct when they said every thing is "one" and seperation is just an illusion.
As far as altered states of consciousness and the so called normal states they are all illusions as well,, if the universe is Non-local as physics is helping us to understand. Everything you experience is a very skimpy mental interpretaton with no way to know for certain what is really out there.
