[Dan Halberstein]

Robert, no - but it sounds interesting. The notion of a "national religion" being inherently "false" in favor of the mystic experience and its inherent truth, has a profound personal appeal - that's why the clergy have so little use for their own mystics. However, the particulars of a religion that give the I-and-Thou of a singular mystic experience its flavor, can only be appreciated in its absence. That is, how is it that mystic experiences have so much trouble occuring outside of known religious vocabularies? And it is those religious characters that crystalize into "national" religion, when the religious and political entities share roughly the same boundaries (I am thinking of the Jewish case here, and to some extent the Moslem concept of the umma. These are more properly described as religions than Hitler's bonfire-and-stomping festivals.)

Mysticism.

All fun and games 'til somebody loses an I.

Dan

[Katy Evans-Bush]

LOL Dan.

[Dick Morgan]

Dan:

I don't where you come down on religion. I am an intellectual atheist but a genetic believer in God--or at least I react to those symbols that would indicate a God. How do you explain the 90 oercent of humanity who believe in a "supreme being"? No gag answers, please.

Dick Morgan

[Matthew Hupert]

I'm not Dan - but i know how i would explain the 90%.
A mix of brain chemistry, misinterpretation, and flim-flam.

There are these incredibly powerful brain-states out there - but people who learn to achieve them are generally hard to control, and hard to lie to, and thus not loved by maintainers of the status quo.

Religions are created, as Carl Jung said, to protect people from religious experiences.


(Addendum)
http://tinyurl.com/djtrc

My girlfriend is reading this now (and in some ways it resembles part of the MA thesis i threw away in bangalore - only good) and i can't wait to read it myself..... here's the blurb:
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Over the centuries, theories have abounded as to why human beings have a seemingly irrational attraction to God and religious experiences. In Why God Won't Go Away authors Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause offer a startlingly simple, yet scientifically plausible opinion: humans seek God because our brains are biologically programmed to do so.
Researchers Newberg and D'Aquili used high-tech imaging devices to peer into the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns. As the data and brain photographs flowed in, the researchers began to find solid evidence that the mystical experiences of the subjects "were not the result of some fabrication, or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with a series of observable neurological events," explains Newberg. "In other words, mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.... Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology." Lay readers should be warned that although the topic is fascinating, the writing is geared toward scientific documentation that defends the authors' hypothesis. For a more palatable discussion, seek out Deepak Chopra's How to Know God, in which he also explores this fascinating evidence of spiritual hard-wiring. --Gail Hudson--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.



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Essentials:
In Brooklyn i was born;
lived in space before too long



[This message has been edited by Matthew Hupert (edited June 14, 2005).]

[Mark Allinson]

Religions are created, as Carl Jung said, to protect people from religious experiences.

Matthew, that is so true. Religious belief is a rocky ledge to which we cling, hoping to avoid the fall into the void, where we truly find out if there is something there to support us or not.




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Mark Allinson

[Dick Morgan]

Mathew:
Thank you for the quote. Very interesting. I think I will put you in for gold star. Seriously, I have a fair amount of docuemted ESP so I take the subject seriously.

Mark, I know about the edge of the ledge thing. Mine has to do with being in the "zone" (to use the commononly accepted term) as it applies to the creative process which seems extreamly narrow for me. I can very easily lead myself into believing in my work is gold when it's crap. I have never written anything and gotten back the reaction I thought I would--except in general genre terms.

Dick Morgan

[Dan Halberstein]

Dick, Matthew, et. al.,

First, before veering off into the religion topic, I would like to once again castigate Dick for not sticking to the original question to the end, even if it was on the other thread, I think. But as I understand it, Dick, you are on the record of being in favor of urinating on holy texts, in cases in which that text has been used to support one particular social evil, that is, the beheading of Daniel Perle. My follow-on question was whether the important act of urination on others' holy books should be undertaken as a coordinated U.S. policy, or be left to individual soldiers' discretion. I'd also like to know whether other social ills - for example, pogroms - which are justified by a given religious writing, similarly uphold the government-sanctioned desecration of that body of work.

Now on to religion its ownself.

Matthew- interesting post, and not at all surprising; for centuries repeatable experiments have documented that particular neurological/mental/psychic states accompany anomolous physical states. The usual examples are the faqir who can walk over hot coals or lay on razor-sharp nails, etc. The faqir can meet the skeptic's demand that he repeat the experiment, over and over. Finally the skeptic comes up with "unusual facility with physical control," or somesuch, to discount the validity of the exercise of mind in regard to body. This latest round of data will produce more of the same. The skeptics will now rush to make certain the data are sound (as they should,) and if the data are found to be sound, will discount the fact that one is physically altered during a meditative state as irrelevant. One is also physically altered by ingesting LSD. It proves nothing other than the very scientific viewpoint they start from, vis., all sorts of things are out there. They need only be explained to be demystified.

Where I come down on the subject of religion is here: The scientific mindset is a tool to more and more thoroughly understand the physical world. It is also absolutely impotent to describe subjective states of being. Reliance on the "hard" scientific mindset in, say, pharmopsychology, actually misses the entire point. Objectively, I can look at your levels of seratonin, dopamine, etc., give you a cocktail of pills to put those levels back on the main sequence, say "have a good day," and expect it to happen. When it does not, I can try another cocktail to fix one or another level that has gone haywire, tell you to "have a good day," and be amazed by the novel interaction of your body chemistry with my extrasomatic chemicals. What the psychopharmacologist or pharmopsychologist or whatever the hell they are refuses to realize, is that the levels are not the phenomena of depression, rage, etc., they are the measureable manifestations. Some individuals will continue to be untreatable as long as they are at odds with the world as they find it, or as long as the individual feels unable to affect his world satisfactorily. It's the subjective landscape that defies quantification. Realizing this, some even try to reason away the subjective self in favor of measurable data representing that self from an objectivist standpoint, in essence treating subjective experience as illusory.

This comes very close, in fact, to the Buddhist perspective, except the Buddhist has the sense to know the measurables are illusory as well, in the grand scheme of things, not to mention the rage and/or depression, so he tends to bother less with the drugs.

My own belief is that God is one; that we lie by so much as discussing it, in that we limit by discussing; and that I will continue to do so at such great length because I came among you in this form to learn such limitations Our words are symbols, and our thoughts are models of the real. We do not have the neurons to describe what we claim to describe, even if God is only the sum of all that is. We can only fool ourselves into believing we grasp with the forebrain what can only be partaken in, not understood.

As Wallace Stevens put it, "The squiming facts exceed the squamuus mind." (Correct the quote, somebody - it's from memory. But I'm pretty sure I'm close.)

I respect the Jungian sentiment repeated above regarding the function of religion, in that I do distrust clergies far more than mystics, but I see both communities as necessary. To experience as a self, then to experience something transcendent from the starting point of self, is one experience. To experience from the starting point of millions of selves, at least insofar as you bring their tradition with you, is quite another. Even if the mystic's solo flight is the crowning glory of all religious searching (which you would have to convince me of, although it's the most attractive candidate for that honor,) it's most commonly achieved after a sojourn in the dogmatic confines of one creed or another.

Does religion cause bloodshed? Yes. Does irreligion cause bloodshed? Also yes. Therefore bloodshed is. There should be less. I don't lay it at the door of any particular religion, but it's very easy to see the same characters who use a bible viciously would use a copy of Capital just as viciously in Russia in the 20s, given a different set of life experiences.

Finally, I believe that posts like this will act much as a mandala for most readers, bringing them a bit of nirvana as they go "huh?" because they are lost in my convoluted sentence structure.

Om Vey,

Dan

[Dick Morgan]

Dan:

SAY WHAT?

Dick

[Lo]

Originally posted by Dick Morgan:
Dan:

SAY WHAT?

Dick

Well, he DID say "convoluted", didnt he?

Lo-Crackin-Up

[Alexander Grace]

Nice post, Dan.