reason vs faith vs reality

[Whateverist]

http://omg-nomg.blogspot.com/p/the-most-...ts-of.html

I found your blog interesting as well as a really nice piece of work. (Must have taken you a lot of time!) Thanks for sharing it.

[Angrboda]

This is not external verification, but I wrote up a brief 2-page description of one of the experimental traditions (the Upanishadic) which led to several later schools of philosophy and scientific inquiry. I have posted the brief summary as a page on my blog at: http://omg-nomg.blogspot.com/p/the-most-...ts-of.html

"What a bunch of hooey."

[Whateverist]

"What a bunch of hooey."

Well it doesn't sound very interesting when you put it like that. Campbell looked for patterns in mythology. Jung looked for the same in dreams. Looks to me like WS is looking for the same in comparative religions with a just a dash of special sauce. This always has a campy appeal for some philosophy bums the same way outsider art appeals to some followers of the arts. (Guilty.)

Some people think curiosity about dreams and other products of the unconscious is like a curiosity about what we leave in the toilet bowl. Not me. I like poking around in there and seeing what I can find.

The phenomenology of the mind is endlessly fascinating. (Truth be told, hooey is one of the important ingredients in special sauce.)

[Chas]

"What a bunch of hooey."

Well it doesn't sound very interesting when you put it like that. Campbell looked for patterns in mythology. Jung looked for the same in dreams. Looks to me like WS is looking for the same in comparative religions with a just a dash of special sauce. This always has a campy appeal for some philosophy bums the same way outsider art appeals to some followers of the arts. (Guilty.)

Some people think curiosity about dreams and other products of the unconscious is like a curiosity about what we leave in the toilet bowl. Not me. I like poking around in there and seeing what I can find.

The phenomenology of the mind is endlessly fascinating. (Truth be told, hooey is one of the important ingredients in special sauce.)

I'm going to side with the toiletbowlists.

[Whateverist]

I'm going to side with the toiletbowlists.

Oh what you're missing. Well, I tried. *wanders off to poke around some more*

[wandering soul]

For instance, having "God" as an inner sounding board probably has no direct correlate. Your greater self, unconscious and conscious mind included, gives a more inclusive view than the conscious mind alone can access. But that is far from omniscient and I sure don't think it is infallible. "Prayer", insofar as it is a focused opening to received wisdom, can probably be accounted for as a communion with the unconscious mind/greater self. But there is enough loss to account for some regret. But the upside is you are moving toward maturity/truth/clarity. So good enough.

That's a start. But today we're doing our postponed taxes. (Major yuck!)

hope your taxes went well!

Actually reading this I think you did precisely digest and re-incorporate the important points from your earlier thought structures into your larger more effective reality structures.

When a human eats the muscle and fat of a cow, it is not the cow that is incorporated into the human but the protein and in particular the amino acids which are incorporated and made into human protein, muscle, fat, or just converted into energy.

Thus you have taken the basis of the previous ideas (rather than the ideas themselves) and re-envisioned them in the context that is now more meaningful to you.

I love your idea of the "greater self" with different levels of conscious engagement and of purposeful agency. Have you given any thought to Jung's collective unconscious. Have you done any mental exercises to delve into your personal unconscious?

Back in the 1980s I spent a couple of years in intensive dream recording. When I turned my mind to remembering my dreams I found I was flooded with dreams all night. I found them to often be symbolic representations of the issues I was facing. And dealing with the issues in dreams affected how I dealt them when awake. In reading about the function and role of dreams I found that among other things (such as processing the information experienced during the day and sorting it into long-term and short-term memory based on emotional response, or rehearsing survival skills - in the case of humans that would mean social skills) dreams could be the working of the unconscious on the same things that the conscious mind is working on during wakefulness.

In your context, augmenting your conscious experience of life with the alternative perspectives of the unconscious provides a wider scope for engagement with life and thinking about life, the universe and everything. And opening yourself to listen to the unconscious (by whatever means) serves the same function as opening the mind to the divine. After all is prayer really about actually speaking to God or is it about being open to receive whatever beneficial comes to us from whatever source.

[wandering soul]

Back in the 1980s I spent a couple of years in intensive dream recording.

yes Apophenia, I know, a lot of hooey.

except I'm not talking about "dream interpretation" nor psychic consultation of dreams to get advice on how to find a new love. There are reputable studies of the physiological functions and role of dreams as well as numerous psychological studies of the same.

I'm talking about listening to my own unconscious for clues about things my conscious mind is either ignoring or misrepersenting.

eg: my conscious mind is saying "I've got this. I can make this happen; I can make them understand; I can work the angles; I can power through" and the unconscious starts weighing in with dreams that are conveying that I'm missing important feedback from others; I'm behaving badly; I'm exhausting myself psychologically and physically, and the unconscious is saying "you haven't got this under control, back off, back down and re-think this"

I know that is also a bunch of hooey - I just wanted to clarify which type of hooey I was spouting.

[Whateverist]

I love your idea of the "greater self" with different levels of conscious engagement and of purposeful agency. Have you given any thought to Jung's collective unconscious.

I've read a bit of Jung and have thought about Jung's collective unconscious. Unlike our embodied unconscious, I don't believe the collective unconscious has any direct agency. I think of it more as the common core at the base of each of our unconscious minds. The similarities in architecture account for commonalities in the meanings we find/make in life. I don't believe there is any kind of disembodied being existing apart from ourselves whose purposes account for teleological direction for our species. But then I don't understand exactly what is at the core of my own unconscious nor how it works. What I do understand is that when we figure this out through science we will never usurp the unconscious because we will never be complete by way of our conscious minds alone. The architecture of our selves, like icebergs, requires deeper moorings below the surface. It is part of how we are and I don't think we could be otherwise without substantial loss.

Have you done any mental exercises to delve into your personal unconscious?

Back in the 1980s I spent a couple of years in intensive dream recording. When I turned my mind to remembering my dreams I found I was flooded with dreams all night. I found them to often be symbolic representations of the issues I was facing. And dealing with the issues in dreams affected how I dealt them when awake. In reading about the function and role of dreams I found that among other things (such as processing the information experienced during the day and sorting it into long-term and short-term memory based on emotional response, or rehearsing survival skills - in the case of humans that would mean social skills) dreams could be the working of the unconscious on the same things that the conscious mind is working on during wakefulness.

Around the same time you did your intensive dream recording. I was also recording some dreams. I don't think I was perfectly regular about it but I also found that I remembered much more this way. I've had a couple epic dreams in my life that I never forget, one in early childhood and one from the late 70's in my early adulthood. Both have meaning for me and convince me that dreams can be meaningful.

Life and duty call but for now I just want to share a little of my past and ask if you've read any of James Hillman, the American who had been the head of the Jungian Institute? I think I might of read everything he wrote with "Re-visioning Psychology" making the more lasting impression. Back when I was working as an assembler/installer of hot tubs I attended the first Institute of Archetypal Psychology held in San Francisco. Everyone else who attended had some sort of credentials. James Hillman, who had been a journalist before getting into depth psychology, presided and there were several other notable people who presented including a philosopher specializing in phenomenology. But I most impressed with Hillman and found him especially witty extemporaneously. I can't recall now if I had already begun reading him or was inspired by the conference. I also read that philosopher guy's book on phenomenology. I went back and finished lower division course work shortly after that and then went on to UC Berkeley where I majored in philosophy. However, phenomenology wasn't the inspiration for that choice of major.

While at the community college, I took a course in the philosophy of *makes room for the eye rolls* consciousness which was co-taught by a jazz piano playing psychology guy and a UCB grad philosophy guy served up with lots of woo complete with guided meditation, Alan Watts (his mentor), biofeedback, shamanism, altered states, journaling and fieldtrips to places like the Bach Dynamite and Dance Society for live music from which the lot of us went back to his house for drumming circles. At this time I was also reading and even writing a little poetry and I did a week (or a weekend?) in the woods (in cabins) with Robert Bly. I also participated in three encounter groups which I found extremely valuable for my interpersonal growth, being naturally an introverted type.

What the hell here is a poem I wrote about relationships while I was reading William Blake:

Wholest each together be.
Between the two a rainbow see.
All is seen through either eye
but depth requires two should try.

Oh what the hell, here is another which was inspired by my exploration with altered states and reading Lao Tzu.

Not doing.
Not withholding doing.
Nothing above,
no thing below.
See.

Guess we must both be a couple of old, latter day hippies .. of course the age I am isn't yet elderly by the latest revisionist definitions.

[wandering soul]

Campbell looked for patterns in mythology. Jung looked for the same in dreams.

The phenomenology of the mind is endlessly fascinating. (Truth be told, hooey is one of the important ingredients in special sauce.)

I love both Campbell and Jung.

writing my brief summary did not take a lot of time - I have a love of language and a love of ideas which causes me to write extremely long and involved stuff.... which I am told, no one wants to read through! My difficulty is not in writing a lot and fast, but in editing it down to a length that might actually be read!

I find the entire human project endlessly fascinating. A lot of my thinking was kick-started when I read Dawkins' work on the "ideosphere" (again back in the 1980s!) where ideas and thoughts evolve in mutual interactions --similar to the biological evolution and interactions of populations of plants, animals, insects, bacteria, etc. in the biosphere. The units of thought ("memes") combine in different configurations to form new conceptual structures which inhabit different populations of minds interacting with each other. Thought structures which are successful in populating a sufficient number of minds will reproduce and become more complex and developed.

In my own thought structures this became one of the foundational ideas which shapes my thinking about all the stuff of being human. I also incorporated a lot of the idea structures from biology to provide models for thinking about the evolving dynamics of being human.

I see our humanity as not a static state but an evolving dynamic interaction between all human minds comprising not merely the universes of thought and ideas but including social interactions, emotional and psychological relationships, cultures, societies, political governance, and everything else we do as humans. All of that is evolving and changing constantly. We are continuously working out what we want our humanity to be.

This whole thing is what I find endlessly fascinating - with a particular soft spot for the phenomenology of the mind ;-)

Unlike our embodied unconscious, I don't believe the collective unconscious has any direct agency. I think of it more as the common core at the base of each of our unconscious minds. The similarities in architecture account for commonalities in the meanings we find/make in life.

yes I agree with your conception of the collective unconscious. But I think of it like a communal well - we can each draw from it and we also each contribute to it. So for the extended self, it seems the collective unconscious could provide a wider scope for engagement of thought and evaluation.

I've had a couple epic dreams in my life that I never forget, one in early childhood and one from the late 70's in my early adulthood. Both have meaning for me and convince me that dreams can be meaningful.

most of my dreams were prosaic but a few were, like yours not only memorable but have stayed with me as touchstones of my self-conceptions.

love James Hillman - discovered him in the 1990s I think. Also one of his students who has also published some great books: Thomas Moore ("Care of the Soul").

I was introduced to the phenomenological approach to the anthropological study of religions along with a dozen other approaches (psychological, sociological, political, economic, etc. etc.) and was particularly attracted to the phenomenonlogical methodologies.

Afraid you are right about our old hippie souls. You were on the right coast for that. Wow, Alan Watts and Robert Bly. I just read them, never studied with or met them.

What the hell here is a poem I wrote about relationships while I was reading William Blake:

Wholest each together be.
Between the two a rainbow see.
All is seen through either eye
but depth requires two should try.

Oh what the hell, here is another which was inspired by my exploration with altered states and reading Lao Tzu.

Not doing.
Not withholding doing.
Nothing above,
no thing below.
See.

Guess we must both be a couple of old, latter day hippies .. of course the age I am isn't yet elderly by the latest revisionist definitions.

yes, 60 is the new 40. We baby boomers are still revising definitions!


Love your poems. I also sometimes think better by making images or poems. They seem to get at more of what I see than mere descriptive sentences can.

[Rahul]

yes, 60 is the new 40. We baby boomers are still revising definitions!

I turn 40 next year, what is that the new of?