(modern guru theologies, paranormal activities, etc) ….
“For some of us, the ultimate goal of mindfulness meditation is to see reality as it objectively is, without feeling the need to subjectively explain afterwards what it is we are clearly seeing. We leave that to the realm of those given to the unprovable cognitive world of theology.”
On Being Courageous and Understanding Mindfulness.
It takes great courage to not label. To not stand before the incomprehensible fullness of reality and put a theistic spin on things. To see the reality as fully and as best as we can as it really is in all its observable, demonstrable, self-evident-ness. To not feel the need to explain it beyond what is factually observable or create philosophy to explain away what is not comfortable for us admit but is real, never the less. It takes a courage that most will not act upon, for we are raised in human cultural collectives that teach us that we need to place experience under a perspective veil of religious belief and thought. But, how many of us take the time to ask if we really need to do this?
If it is real, it’ll be self-evident. Seeing reality as it is, it is obviously apparent that we don’t actually need theology, we as a majority just choose to view life through such. It’s easier to rectify the discomfort of things not being orderly or moral or with meaningful purpose this way, than to simply unabashedly accept it – this reality as it really demonstrably is. A reality that plays no favorites, that responds with indifference to our thoughts and views about it, that does what it does because probability and circumstance allows for it and it does. A reality that gets meaning and morality only out of our giving it this, through deeply believed judgmental human thoughts.
When we look closely at this world and see our natural place in it, then look even closer at all living creatures and their place in it, it becomes real clear real quick that we are all part of a whole. A world of life all in competition for survival, where some must face the agony of death for the sake of life for another, where all life is struggling to survive in a universe given to indifferent execution of its mathematically orderly chaos. It is we who give rise to an idea of a creator god that has given rise to this, that allows us to wash from our minds the obviousness of the reality before us in favor of beliefs in thoughts about it. But, this doesn’t change the reality to do so, rather only our personal and collective feelings about it. What is self-evident is what is real, and thoughts about it is human commentary. Test this for yourself, and see if this is honestly not true. Are you really willing? It’s okay if you choose not, for most won’t. It’s scary to stand in the face of the not fully comprehensible and not label for the sake of self-preserving sanity.
What is demonstrable about this reality is this: We are a human primate, born into this world as offspring to human primates, and are very close cousins to Bonobos and Chimpanzees – just with an evolutionary advantage brain-wise that has allowed us to become what we humanly are. Because we were born into this reality of competing species upon a planet, we are governed by its natural laws, which mean we won’t last – no matter how many theologies we construct to defy this simple reality truth. We have a place on the cosmological time-line, it is a short one in comparison to life as a whole on this planet, as it is with all life. If we really want a self-preserving theology about life, the most we can honestly intellectually say is that we will always be somehow in someway alive within this brief moment of this time-line, even though for all it becomes a time long past.
We have a body-mind, a collective cellular form with built-in innate intelligence to take the form that it does. This form has multiple brains throughout the body that together help to form a collective consciousness. This collective consciousness then does something truly miraculous, turns its collective “we” awareness into a singular “I” personality construct. Yes, our individual “I” awareness that we treat as a disconnected soul in thought is a generated energetic construct of our collective body-mind. This is not theory, but demonstrable with every scientific tool we presently possess. But, this makes us uncomfortable to know this, because it means that when our body-mind dies, then we die, too. It won’t be long for the coherent energy construct that is “I” and unique from the body-mind to dissolve in incoherency – like the body will eventually do in the ground.
No, we are not our body, but a singular consciousness construct generated by our body. Those of us who meditate regularly and experience the silent awareness between and during the thoughts are aware of this. It is the body-mind waking up to its generated construct of “I,” seeing through its own delusion. Once the world of thoughts interrupt, the need for explaining this experiencing through an “I” preserving the(ory)ology is the route most take to explain it. We do this because we are taught to explain the not fully comprehensible in the modality of theology and religion. We don’t realize that it is just as possible and more rational to express it as it really is – as best as we can observe it and explain it self-evidently. This takes courage to not cloud the objective vision with perspective, to face reality just as it is without I-ism reaction that denies it. It takes great courage to face reality as it is, and accept it.
On A Philanthropist Atheist’s Dare To Paranormal Believers
Many years back, I read about a financially prosperous atheist who put up a million dollars into a trust, available for the taking by anyone who could prove that paranormal activity is actually real. To my knowledge, to this date, this trust is still there with million intact. If I had a million dollars to spare, I would do the same thing – just so someone smarter and more knowledgeable than I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that these things are indeed a reality. Because, despite my “I”‘s desire for it to be so, everything self-evident in this reality shows that we are engaging in a near psychosis of collective hallucinating and wishful believing. If it is self-evidently real, it will be acknowledgeable by all, regardless how you culturally choose to explain it. Like gravity or electromagnetism. I no longer wish to believe in fantasy, as appealing as it psychologically so very much is! I can’t, honestly. For, I’ve grown beyond needing religion for meaning and purpose in life, for facing the inevitable end to each of our lives, and for explaining what I still yet struggle deeply with. We never needed to merge religious inclinations, born out of earliest societies merging of ancestral national gods and goddesses traditions/rituals with societal ethics (morality) and ethnic nationalism, and combine them with how we live our daily lives. By consequence of where religion gained its prominence, it simply worked out this way. Yet, even though we’ve outgrown as a human species the need to do this, we still carry over the tradition of this to this day. It is my belief we do it more to satisfy the need for collective shared thinking and social companionship, than for any real belief in the theological premise for it. Why else would we keep trying to alter it and fit it into our modern level of awareness of how the world really works? We can thank the secularists and doubters of religious views for this advance of human awareness about our world, which has literally given us the scientifically enlightened and infused captitalistic democratic world we live in.
On Things Paranormal and The Need For Real Evidence
“Tell me which is more rational: Believing in ghosts and other paranormal activity with demonstrable evidence for their existence? Or, realizing and exploring how such claimed experiences actually occur within the normal? Paranormal means just this, folks, outside the normal. Therefore, its proof can only come subjectively, from within the believer, and discounts the just-as-valid disbelief of others.” … This is what I believe:
I believe that we do possess a, as yet unexplained, form of ancestral genetic memory. I believe that each species of life upon this planet, to include the human primate, possess some form of collective consciousness by which we unconsciously interact with each other, though this is still being research and is by far “proven.” I believe that we are capable of more than we realize, if only we could get our numerous brains (throughout the body, not just the most known ones in the head) into a truly coherent state more often, to include more experiences and cases of individual miracles for those who can do just this. But, these are my personal beliefs, based on personal experiential experience, and in no way would I ever suggest that somehow these beliefs are universal truths – if only you would believe to see them. Self-evident reality does not need, nor care to want, your belief in it for it to just simply be, doing what it does. We are not that important to the formation of reality, nor are we the center of it. Except, within our own mind and beliefs, that is. A lot of people believe in paranormal events and activities and, without anything but personal affirmation, they do just this.
I hope in my explanation here of what I believe to be reality it is seen that I am refuting what is called “confirmation bias” and “authority heuristic” in my responses to this. It was recently said to me by a scientist caught up in the modern guru-ism movement that a “real scientist does not look at evidence or information with bias.” This was the most correct statement he made during our dialogue. For it is true, science does not “prove” anything, ever. Rather, science seeks to observe objectively, without adding personal beliefs or attitudes to the results of experiments, and attempts to better “explain” what is going on. This is done by amassing evidence for a theory, or modifying/rejecting a theory based on the evidence generated through testing and observation. A white light is simply this, a white light, a spectrum of energy within our visual range that is either perceived objectively or subjectively. It is not proof or demonstrable evidence of reincarnation, as some misusing scientific results these days and pocketing money on books and classes would have us believe. Reincarnation is a religious theology (an ideology) designed to take the sting out of the self-evident, that we are born and live for a moment and then die. It is this need for rational focus to our experiments, born out of intuition and curiosity over what will result, that I repeatedly attempt to express in my posts. Wanting to believe that there is life after death as an immaterial spirit, does not make it a reality no matter how much you emotionally invest in and profess it to be. If it is self-evident, if it is real, everyone will recognize it in someway and in their way. And this is simply not true when it comes to religion born ideologies about death and how it is not actually real and final.
On miracle healing, if you can get enough energy focused in a specific place, amazing things can happen. All is ultimately energy, physics teaches, and topping energy thresholds is what brings about change. So, nothing about cases of miraculous healing suggests that a force beyond what is possible within the normal laws of the universe is at work. It only shows the degree of our intellectual ignorance to not yet understand scientifically how it happens, and how to deliberately encourage its likelihood of occurring when most needed. It’s a mystery, hence why in our humanity’s childlike ways we run to religion first for explanations, then only to science when it has explained enough to the point we can’t deny the redundant obviousness. We need to rationally explore this, using proven scientific methods, so we can better the human primates’ survival condition.
I am not interested, personally, in dogma, no matter where it comes from. But, I do note some patterns. There is the objective world that any living being, regardless of species and place within this universe, can attest to, in whatever ways of attesting each prefers. This is the demonstrable self-evident universe that we all share. This is also the universe, that to our chagrin, does not play favorites with any life or any part of it. It simply is in all its ordered chaos, and each lifeform makes its decision whether this is good or bad for them, or in need of redefining. There is the subjective world that is demonstrable and believable only to those who experience this world. This world is often expressed in the form philosophical, religious, or mystic theology and beliefs. Science attempts to study both, but the results of scientific experimentation is never a proof of anything, but rather an explanation offered based on (hopefully, sufficient) evidence.
In the realm of humans and, specifically, in regards to this experiment being conducted (I was refering to an investigative journalist’s attempt at scientific experimentation to validate her new age religious beliefs), objective awareness of the universe clearly shows that there are many competing intents at work in the universe, each trying to get its way. This is at every scale of the universe, from microscopic to our human social level and, larger, to the competitions of the macroscopic. A realistic expectation to the efforts of this Intention Experiment would be that we will gather evidence on whether we socially can influence each other to “whatever” some degree. Maybe out of this, we will be able to discern the probability of such things as a human consciousness field. Then, again, maybe we will ultimately disprove it. Especially, if we are regularly weighting the evidence with personal/social bias of beliefs and expectations, which distorts the view of objectivity.
Some things are simply self-evident, and we use science to explain better the inmate workings of this self-evidence, to the best that we can discern. To apply anything more to it in meaning is to cloud this aware observation with biased beliefs and judgments. Use of intuition and intent and, of course, a belief that is ever evolving with the self-evidence can and is a useful tool in this process. But, it is not the self-evidence itself, just an applied aspect of our human approach to discerning and coming to terms with what is self-
evident.
This brings me to the question I had posted in my post on their site that led to our discussion (this scientist and I) – What would happen if we all together, for just a brief moment, suspended our thoughts and just observed? Is it possible for us humans to collectively do so? I ask this, because I am very curious as to what would indeed happen if we all – together as a human race – for just a brief moment managed to be silent and simply observe our world. What change, if any, would this produce? – in us? – in our world?
On The New Guru-ism That Justifies By Misuse Of Scientific Research Data
Defining the difference between actual scientific research and new age pseudoscience: The former observes and experiments, repetitiously for years on end seeking demonstrable evidence for and against a theory, and makes no claims that the data does not sufficiently support. The latter makes directly personable claims that are often emotional based, and uses out of context research data to substantiate, validate, and support its pre-determined conclusions (just like salvation religions do).
“To an actual scientist, this kind of book (books like The Field and The Intention Experiment, and any other guru’s book that misuses scientific data to bolster theological belief) is more than just innocent fun and games — it’s actually insulting; it’s a slap in the face to anyone with the slightest scientific background. Some say that religion is the enemy of science — well I think this (new age-ism’s takes on science) is way more dangerous than religion. At least religion doesn’t claim to be scientific in nature. But these “theories” go out of their way to show how they’re “backed up” by science! … So then, what should we tell the thousands of children in the war-torn countries of Africa who are dying of starvation and disease? Surely they “wish” for food and medicine every minute of their miserable day; surely they “intend” for a world of love, joy, and prosperity for themselves, so… where is it? Are they not intending hard enough? How can we, in good conscience, even entertain such a despicable idea?” – Dmitry Brant (parens are mine for clarification of context)
Only in religious theory-ology can we entertain such ideas, and not feel morally corrupted for doing so. ‘Cause, somehow, despite the self-evident reality staring us in the face daily and nightly, its all for the good somehow and on purpose, right? Don’t worry, just blame it on “god”, rather than rationally working together to better our situation in a world that is naturally designed to be out to get us. When does reason slip into the confused world of irrationality? When the human emotional heart can’t face up to the obvious reality, and has to seek refuge in the realms of our ideologies, it would appear. I believe we can grow up as a species and do better than this! But, by the daily influx of new, it appears that religions will have to die out first.
On Sub-Atomic Particles and Thought (Neutrinos and What Not) – Mistaking the Content as Substance
Recently, two scientists working in different parts of the world, each doing research independently of the other, made a significant scientific finding. They showed how neutrinos shift in their physical identities in space, much like a chameleon shifts colors in an outdoor environment. The two scientists are Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald. What makes this discovery so significant is that it shows neutrinos, which are subatomic particles and are more numerous than any other subatomic particle in the universe, outside of particles of light, can undergo physical transformations and do, in fact, have mass. I’ll say it again, neutrinos, sub-atomic particles that rarely interact with matter and once thought to have no mass, turns out that they do have mass.
That means they are physical, folks. All that exists within the universe, to include the thoughts we create about it, are physical. It all has a physical manifested foundation. Awareness exists even at the sub-atomic level, it is inherent within the universe itself. This leads to the infinite mutations of ever happening evolution. It is physical creation and change, and responds to physical forces containing mass. Even our thoughts have mass. But, by their nature, they only manifest within the physical life that thought them. This physical life then acts upon them, shares them, and forms more thoughts upon them.
Thoughts have a limited power to create change, because the physical universe is compromised of a lot of mass. In its very nature, it has more mass and many competing forces looking for balance than we have believed collectively in thoughts in our short time as a physical species. It doesn’t matter the content of your thoughts, the imagery you conjure up, it is the placement of mass in balance through direct limited action that determines its effect within the whole. What has mass is real. If it is indeed real, then it has mass. It is physically manifested and self-evident to all who look at it. If it is not self-evident to all, is within the realm of subjective imagery and beliefs, then perhaps we are mistaking the content, the imagery, of our thoughts for the affecting mass it is comprised of. Something to think about today. All that actually exists has mass and is self-evident. If it doesn’t and isn’t, then it is a personalized image, a perspective, physically generated by what does possess mass.
On Religious Cults And Occults, Its All About Money
In reference to any cult of ideology, from the traditional theocratic religion to the pseudoscience of new-age mysticism:
It’s easy to get caught up in religious cults, both traditional religions (aka, religions that are “thought” to date back to BCE times) and modern religions (spin offs from or in rejection to traditional religions). The obvious self-evident reason for this is due to the cultural idea that “thought” and, especially, “thought in of itself” is some how as real or more real than reality itself and can directly affect or create reality. This is a blatant misconception, but these days it is widely believed in regardless, in the same manner that most people once thought the world was flat not too long ago. So, it is no wonder that where one is found engaged in one cult of ideology, one is also found partnered up within another. Especially, when money is involved, which is another great human mental fiction. People wrapped up in cults of ideology are one of two kinds – they are either the leaders/teachers seeking to be paid in some way (the takers), or they are the followers needing to be led and taught and believe or are coerced into giving payment (the takens).
Cults have been around for ages in the form of theistic religions, as far back as the ancient temple times and all the way to the present. With the creation of capitalism and the idea of making a quick buck, a whole plethora of new cults have taken hold, all espousing the concepts of “righteness of thought” and of “behavior” to align yourself to a higher self or a more prosperous lifestyle. In today’s Western world, cults now abound everywhere, and many of them you may have personally participated in at one time or another, or bought one of their books or self-enlightenment programs. How did it work out for you? Besides lessening your bank account balance? Do you want to understand why they don’t seem to work, strangly, for you? Why they seem to work only for those who make money or acquire others forms of wealth leading such cults of thought?
For the last hundred or so years, a trend towards viewing our thoughts as the foundation to which all physical reality emerges has taken root – think “in the beginning is the word.” Today, it is the law of modern guru based new age thinking. Descartes is a well known quote on this, “I think, therefore I am.” But, this is actually backwards from reality. The self-evidence around and within us shows that it is actually, “I am, therefore I think.” Without body-mind, there can be no words to think. To be a personality or presence with thought, an “I,” requires that we be a body originating this thought. The modern masses believe that thought proceeds and, thus, if one only thinks “right” and “intent”fully well enough …. while, as well, disregarding or justifying away all the “unrealized” thoughts, in this process. Instead, those devoted to making a name and lifestyle for themselves utilize this present human phenomena to their financial advantage. They may even truly believe in what they teach, as well. In the end, though, thoughts are thoughts, and it is flesh and blood doing creative action. Nothing gets born without a physical act, regardless how much its thought of.
A friend made an astute observation recently about modern “thought” cults. He mentioned that many of the originators of modern religious and self-help cults mention “a particular understanding that they had about society” and they wanted others to share in this understanding. He went on to say, “That’s the reason why are there so many different Christian Protestant denominations is because different groups said they had new understanding on something. And that new understanding, that thought, becomes more important than the things that don’t change meaning. For example, how you are supposed to treat people. And it then becomes all about the rightness of your thought, as if it is more important to be right in thought then to do good by people. As if the good that I do can only be good as it related to how right I am.” He is exactly correct on this!
The modern gurus of thought cults are more animated, interested, attracted, and fervently demanding about the “rightness” of their thoughts and the “rightness” of one’s behaviors, than about fervency in demanding and establishing basic human recognized ethics, regardless how the thoughts of this take form. And these thoughts, whether traditional religious cult or untraditional social/new-age cult, often take some rather interesting turns from the observable every day reality. It is as if they really believe and want you to believe that if you say its so, they way they say, then somehow magically reality will prove to be what they say is so. And, because people in general would like to believe that this is so, they buy into it whole-heartedly and with their monetary donations and purchases. But, the only thing important, really, is not the “thought” expression, but the actions that either follows or preceeds it. Rightness of thought is often tied to monetary venture, have we not noticed? Those that do for the sake of what’s best for us, often only considers money when it becomes too much for one alone to do. Keep this in mind before making that next purchase into someone claiming to hold the answers for your life. He/She is probably just making money, offering you thoughts that ultimately do not change or improve the lives of most.
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