Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Probably because I'm too tired now after the Fair to go on a search for scientific evidence of the "life force."

LOL fair enough. But when you feel more up to it, don't limit yourself to "scientific" evidence. Any first-hand account will do. Science rejected the life force hypothesis a long time ago, so you're not going to find anything in science alleging its existence unless you go way, way back.

The actual world does not conform to the rules of logic.

And there you've crafted for yourself an escape hatch by which you can dodge any argument you don't want to accept but can't refute, merely by rejecting logic.

The life force is not something "generated" either. It is that which does the generating.

Perhaps, but it is experienced as coming from something. When I do hands-on healing, for example, I can feel it coming from my own body (as can others). When I perform a ritual and do an invocation, I can feel it coming from the principles and powers invoked. When I touch a powerful talisman, I can feel it coming from the talisman. This is, of course, what I meant by "generated."

The point is that the power coming from a non-living talisman is perceptibly the same force as the power coming from my body when I do body work. That is how I know that it's not unique to living things.

I think we went over this before. That from non-living sources may be like what you are describing as a quasi magical force; that which living beings have is higher on the evolutionary scale; more conscious.

There is a difference in feel to mana derived from one source compared to another source. The source colors the force. I don't know that I'd agree with your assessment about "higher on the evolutionary scale" or "more conscious." I find the mana from an invocation of, say, Jupiter or the Moon to be quite highly conscious, more so than what I sense from a tree, as well as stronger.

But since the source colors the force, yes, naturally there are some minor differences between the mana associated with living things and that associated with the nonliving. The question is whether those minor differences justify classifying it as a wholly different force. I don't see that. It behaves the same way, and it can do exactly the same sorts of things. One might as well say that the light from the sun and from an electric bulb are two different forms of energy. There are differences between them, to be sure, but both are light and have all the properties of light.

As far as I can tell, the only reason why you are so insistent on classifying the mana from living things as a unique force is because of your (rather desperate) desire to believe in something non-physical as a necessity of life. And that's not a good reason.

That is false. A living force can generate an energy that a non-living force does not, even though they also may generate an energy that is the same. Speaking logically now as you proposed.

Please provide evidence that it does so. Chi has already been dealt with.

Doctors are not scientists.

So you're saying that a non-medical scientist, say a physicist, couldn't tell the difference between a dead cat on the highway killed by a car and one purring in his lap? That's absurd, Eric.

Congratulations, but I disagree, just as you disagree with my models.

You disagree with my model. You cannot reasonably disagree that I created it.

(Q)Kaballah and chakras are both incomprehensible and meaningless without the idea of emanation or degrees of difference between the spiritual and the material.

No, they're not. Everything of significance incorporated into either one is fully accounted for by my own model of magic.

So you have need for both words as well as I do. You dualist!
If mind emerges from the material world, then mind is different by degree from matter, to the extent that something has emerged.

No. Mind is still matter, just matter in new forms. It's no more true to say that it has departed from matter than to say that a planet is no longer matter because it is no longer a cloud of gas floating in space. But here we see a clue to where you are making your fundamental mistake, Eric: you have a very limited and limiting concept of what "matter" is. You cannot conceive of matter thinking, feeling, or being conscious, and so the recognition of these properties is, for you, departure from materialism.

But matter is what we observe and experience it to be, and we observe and experience matter to think, feel, and be conscious -- in some manifestations at least. (I believe in all manifestations, at least to a rudimentary degree, although that's hard to prove.) Therefore, an idea of matter that excludes thinking, feeling, and consciousness is observably, demonstrably false. Matter is broader and greater than your limited and, frankly, antiquated concept of it.

I don't believe in a distinct spiritual world, because it's all one. But there are "spiritual worlds" in the sense of what is beyond normal consciousness to experience, but which in some altered states or sensitive states of mind can be experienced.

Actually, you do believe in a distinct spiritual world, you just refuse to label it as such. And I do not. I believe in the same properties as you do, including thinking, feeling, and consciousness, but I assign these to matter, not to some alternate reality.

Our discussion here is about whether the nature of "life" is a scientific question. Although science can study any subject, the interpretation of its findings is the issue. Your idea that the "material" world has "spiritual" properties or has an emerging mind, is no more a scientific question than my idea that life is a force called the life force. But with these ideas we do seem to be closer to agreement.

Actually, the idea that the material world has an emerging mind is a scientific question, insofar as we are discussing what can be observed. At least, on a smaller scale, we can observe mind emerging from matter in living organisms, and recognize that the information-processing abilities exhibited by living brains also exist, although in cruder form, in nonliving processes, and from this the idea that the entire universe may be a mind becomes plausible speculation. Finding actual evidence for it is another matter, of course, but it's not inconceivable that someday we might.

A continuum is continuous, hence one world.

No, it's a whole bunch of worlds hastily stapled together to give the illusion of unity.

Eric, what I realized some years ago is that reality can be understood in ways consistent with the data as being either entirely material or entirely mental, so that which one we choose is a matter of what we're trying to accomplish. I've explained how I see things when wearing my materialist hat: all mental functioning, including the generation of imaginary worlds, and including magic, represents processes of the brain, consciousness is universal and emerges whenever matter provides a vehicle, individual consciousness is an illusion.

Here's how I see things when wearing my idealist hat, which admittedly I do less often, but for some magical purposes it's appropriate. We begin with consciousness, and the dream world, which is a world of possibility. As the possibilities become more limited in range, eventually what's known as the "material" world emerges as a collapse of probability into actuality. The material world has fixed and regular properties and behaviors which descend from the dream world, but follow their own rules as emergent properties, and these rules may be observed and understood through scientific method.

Either of these ideas describes the same world. The world is one. From the materialist perspective, the dream world and the experience of other planes of reality is a function of the imagination, a function of the brain. From the idealist perspective, the physical world is a product of the dream world, a congealing of possibility into actuality. These sound very different, but in fact there is no difference between them at all in terms of what we would expect to experience. Both, therefore, are true.

What doesn't work, in my opinion, is to mix the two frameworks, and that, all declarations to the contrary notwithstanding, is what you seem to want to do. You have a concept of "matter" that rejects many of matter's observed properties and characteristics, you assign these instead to a spiritual reality, and you have that spiritual reality impact matter in some supernatural manner. To bring the above two perspectives down into a more easily-understood context, consider the human mind/brain/soul. From the materialist perspective, the brain (which is part of the body) accounts for all mental functioning. From the idealist perspective, the mind (a function of consciousness) manifests the body (including the brain) as part of its experience. In neither view is there any such thing as a soul separate from the body; either we have the body thinking, or we have the mind doing; either there is no soul, or there is no body, and between these two statements there is a difference only of perspective and viewpoint -- not truth or falsehood. Both are true, but only one can be true at a time, because we can take only one of these perspectives at a time.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

And there you've crafted for yourself an escape hatch by which you can dodge any argument you don't want to accept but can't refute, merely by rejecting logic.

Perhaps, but it's also recognizing reality that life and reality can't be forced into logical arguments. You can't use logic to force me to abandon my point of view, because logic is not the only basis for them; experience and realization are. Recognizing reality takes one beyond logic alone.

Perhaps, but it is experienced as coming from something. When I do hands-on healing, for example, I can feel it coming from my own body (as can others). When I perform a ritual and do an invocation, I can feel it coming from the principles and powers invoked. When I touch a powerful talisman, I can feel it coming from the talisman. This is, of course, what I meant by "generated."

The point is that the power coming from a non-living talisman is perceptibly the same force as the power coming from my body when I do body work. That is how I know that it's not unique to living things.

We can't agree, since you don't agree with the idea of continuity and difference by degree. It doesn't fit into your logical framework, but it makes sense to me as the only way to describe reality and life.

There is a difference in feel to mana derived from one source compared to another source. The source colors the force. I don't know that I'd agree with your assessment about "higher on the evolutionary scale" or "more conscious." I find the mana from an invocation of, say, Jupiter or the Moon to be quite highly conscious, more so than what I sense from a tree, as well as stronger.

You can't evoke these things without your own conscious life powers. A rabbit can't evoke the significance and manna of Jupiter.

But since the source colors the force, yes, naturally there are some minor differences between the mana associated with living things and that associated with the nonliving. The question is whether those minor differences justify classifying it as a wholly different force. I don't see that. It behaves the same way, and it can do exactly the same sorts of things. One might as well say that the light from the sun and from an electric bulb are two different forms of energy. There are differences between them, to be sure, but both are light and have all the properties of light.

As far as I can tell, the only reason why you are so insistent on classifying the mana from living things as a unique force is because of your (rather desperate) desire to believe in something non-physical as a necessity of life. And that's not a good reason.

But you do the same thing, in saying the non-physical is not physical. You evade the distinction by claiming modern science has redefined the physical, and therefore brain chemistry explains life. With that "therefore," you are back to Newton.

Please provide evidence that it does so. Chi has already been dealt with.

chi is the life force. I am satisfied with that explanation. You don't have to be.

So you're saying that a non-medical scientist, say a physicist, couldn't tell the difference between a dead cat on the highway killed by a car and one purring in his lap? That's absurd, Eric.

So you admit there is a difference that anyone can tell. That's what I said before.

No, they're not. Everything of significance incorporated into either one is fully accounted for by my own model of magic.

If you think kaballah and chakras systems can exist without emanation and degrees of difference from spirit to matter, you are barking up the wrong "Tree" so to speak, and you are not discussing these systems at all, but your own version of them that is totally divorced from those systems that every other practitioner or student of kaballah and chakras uses.

No. Mind is still matter, just matter in new forms.

Then you are a classical materialist then. Admit it. And what is "matter"?

It's no more true to say that it has departed from matter than to say that a planet is no longer matter because it is no longer a cloud of gas floating in space. But here we see a clue to where you are making your fundamental mistake, Eric: you have a very limited and limiting concept of what "matter" is. You cannot conceive of matter thinking, feeling, or being conscious, and so the recognition of these properties is, for you, departure from materialism.

But matter is what we observe and experience it to be, and we observe and experience matter to think, feel, and be conscious -- in some manifestations at least. (I believe in all manifestations, at least to a rudimentary degree, although that's hard to prove.) Therefore, an idea of matter that excludes thinking, feeling, and consciousness is observably, demonstrably false. Matter is broader and greater than your limited and, frankly, antiquated concept of it.

And spirit is broader than your limited and antiquated concept of it.

Actually, you do believe in a distinct spiritual world, you just refuse to label it as such. And I do not. I believe in the same properties as you do, including thinking, feeling, and consciousness, but I assign these to matter, not to some alternate reality.

I assign it to spirit. That does not mean I assign it to a distinct spiritual world.

Actually, the idea that the material world has an emerging mind is a scientific question, insofar as we are discussing what can be observed. At least, on a smaller scale, we can observe mind emerging from matter in living organisms, and recognize that the information-processing abilities exhibited by living brains also exist, although in cruder form, in nonliving processes, and from this the idea that the entire universe may be a mind becomes plausible speculation. Finding actual evidence for it is another matter, of course, but it's not inconceivable that someday we might.

when we do, that will be evidence for spirit, soul, life force.

What doesn't work, in my opinion, is to mix the two frameworks, and that, all declarations to the contrary notwithstanding, is what you seem to want to do. You have a concept of "matter" that rejects many of matter's observed properties and characteristics, you assign these instead to a spiritual reality, and you have that spiritual reality impact matter in some supernatural manner. To bring the above two perspectives down into a more easily-understood context, consider the human mind/brain/soul. From the materialist perspective, the brain (which is part of the body) accounts for all mental functioning. From the idealist perspective, the mind (a function of consciousness) manifests the body (including the brain) as part of its experience. In neither view is there any such thing as a soul separate from the body; either we have the body thinking, or we have the mind doing; either there is no soul, or there is no body, and between these two statements there is a difference only of perspective and viewpoint -- not truth or falsehood. Both are true, but only one can be true at a time, because we can take only one of these perspectives at a time.

It's fine for you to explain your views; mine are not the same, and you don't understand them. In my view the materialist perspective is false and the idealist one is true. That may be inconvenient for science, but that does not concern me. Science can and will adapt just fine to a world that has become a world of idealists, if it ever does. If you took your idea of emerging mind from indeterminate matter though, and then included the idea of evolution of consciousness and difference of degree within a continuum, as taught by kaballah, then we would agree.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You can't use logic to force me to abandon my point of view, because logic is not the only basis for them; experience and realization are. Recognizing reality takes one beyond logic alone.

What this says to me is, "I reserve the right to believe this way even if it's irrational and stupid. So there, poopie-head." I really see no other significance to it.

We can't agree, since you don't agree with the idea of continuity and difference by degree.

Of course I do, I just think that our categories should reflect actual degrees of difference. I would insist, for example, that while there is a degree of difference between parrots and chickens, they both belong in the same general category, that of birds. I see the differences between the mana I call from my own body when doing hands-on healing, and the mana I call from Jupiter while doing an invocation, as real, but the similarities as sufficient to consider them the same force.

You can't evoke these things without your own conscious life powers.

I can't evoke these things without a functioning brain and magical talent.

A rabbit can't evoke the significance and manna of Jupiter.

A rabbit is not sufficiently intelligent.

You evade the distinction by claiming modern science has redefined the physical, and therefore brain chemistry explains life. With that "therefore," you are back to Newton.

Newton's error was precisely and only in his limited understanding of the nature of matter and energy. Obviously, I do not repeat those errors.

chi is the life force. I am satisfied with that explanation. You don't have to be.

You have yet to provide any good reason for being satisfied with it, other than that it makes you feel good.

So you admit there is a difference that anyone can tell. That's what I said before.

Oh for Heaven's sake. A difference between a living organism and a dead body? Sure: the living organism moves, it breathes, it generates heat, it eats and shits, etc. All of which can be accounted for without reference to mysterious life forces.

Eric, what are you going to do when biologists managed to create living organisms? Deny that they're really alive?

If you think kaballah and chakras systems can exist without emanation and degrees of difference from spirit to matter, you are barking up the wrong "Tree" so to speak, and you are not discussing these systems at all, but your own version of them that is totally divorced from those systems that every other practitioner or student of kaballah and chakras uses.

Nonsense. The Qaballah is a symbolic model of the universe, and "emanations" is a word that refers to the magical influence ultimately from God, as mediated by the Sephiroth and the Paths. I simply have different terms for all of these. I recognize the phenomena, but disagree with the conceptual theory behind them; the conceptual theory however is wholly severable from the symbolic model itself, just as the techniques a martial artist uses to raise and manifest chi are wholly severable from his ideas about what it is. You are speaking exactly like a fundamentalist Christian who thinks that anyone who doesn't believe every word of the Bible is literally true isn't really a Christian.

In actual fact, I do prefer to use my own Grand Mandala symbolic model of the cosmos rather than the Tree of Life, but that has nothing to do with traditional Qaballistic interpretations of the latter. I like the symbolism of my own version better; I think it's more appropriate to a decentralized, non-authoritarian conception of the universe, more sexually egalitarian, more in-out and less top-down. But the Qaballistic theory of emanations could be applied equally well to my system, and my own theory can apply equally well to the Tree of Life.

Then you are a classical materialist then. Admit it. And what is "matter"?

I am, when I choose to wear that hat, a materialist; I've never denied that. I am not a "classical" materialist because that is impossible without incorporating the classical view of the nature of matter and energy as deterministic and excluding the properties we associate with life. As for your question, the answer depends on the context.

And spirit is broader than your limited and antiquated concept of it.

LOL in what ways, sirrah?

I assign it to spirit. That does not mean I assign it to a distinct spiritual world.

What I mean by "distinct spiritual world" is that you see spirit as behaving according to a distinct set of natural laws, or none. Is that not the case?

when we do, that will be evidence for spirit, soul, life force.

No, it will not, certainly not the last of those, and not for spirit or soul as you mean those words. It will be evidence that the universe processes information in a unified fashion. It might consist of evidence that the mass of indeterminate processes throughout the universe acts as a giant decision-maker which, in the early instants after the Big Bang, decided that natural law would take the form it did out of the many possible forms, and continues to make decisions within the space allowed by indeterminacy. At most, it would show that the universe partakes of some of the qualities you are assigning to soul or spirit, just as we know that the brain partakes of many of those same qualities on a smaller scale. And as this knowledge about the brain removes the need for a concept of the soul as that which thinks, so if we knew this about the universe we would remove the need for a God separate from the universe itself.

It's fine for you to explain your views; mine are not the same, and you don't understand them. In my view the materialist perspective is false and the idealist one is true.

I do understand them. For example, that statement comes as no surprise.

When I say that both are true, I am recognizing that more is necessary to declare something "false" than my own stubborn will and insistence. It must be possible to make a statement on the basis of it that can be shown to be untrue. But there is no statement that can be made on the basis of either of these approaches to reality that can be shown to be untrue. We cannot show that the universe we perceive with the senses either can or cannot exist independently of consciousness. Since both perspectives are completely and perfectly consistent with the data we have, we cannot reasonably declare either one to be false.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What this says to me is, "I reserve the right to believe this way even if it's irrational and stupid. So there, poopie-head." I really see no other significance to it.

The significance is, you can't start a true false game of logic and expect it to lead somewhere with me. My mind is larger than that.

Of course I do, I just think that our categories should reflect actual degrees of difference. I would insist, for example, that while there is a degree of difference between parrots and chickens, they both belong in the same general category, that of birds. I see the differences between the mana I call from my own body when doing hands-on healing, and the mana I call from Jupiter while doing an invocation, as real, but the similarities as sufficient to consider them the same force.

Parrots and chickens are not at a higher or lower level of evolutionary development of consciousness. Jupiter and humans are.

I can't evoke these things without a functioning brain and magical talent.

Touche. Your brain cannot function without the life and soul functioning through it.

A rabbit is not sufficiently intelligent.

It is that intelligence that allows you to evoke the manna from Jupiter; the point is not so much who is intelligent or not, but the fact that this manna is yours more than it is Jupiter's. The hermetic maxim as above, so below; as within, so without, is the principle by which your evocation of Jupiter works. It is correspondence between the manna/life force in you and the archetype and significance represented by Jupiter.

Newton's error was precisely and only in his limited understanding of the nature of matter and energy. Obviously, I do not repeat those errors.

How does your correct view play out in the views of brain chemists today? Can you cite any who employ a modern interpretation of matter? How has it changed brain chemistry?

You have yet to provide any good reason for being satisfied with it, other than that it makes you feel good.

I never said it makes me feel good. It's quite a good explanation. There is no scientific empirical explanation necessary, because it is not a scientific question-- although you claim it is. Psychic ability does not need to be explained by empirical science either; it is simply the activity of psyche or soul. Life is something which yogis and martial artists and many other holistic practitioners observe and use in their work. It is sufficient an explanation for those uses. There is no need to reduce it to chemistry or probability alteration. Elan vital is an aspect of the universe and defines living things. There are those who have studied the interaction between brain and mind in a less reductive way than you do, and much less reductively than classical materialists do. Perhaps I may cite some examples later.

Oh for Heaven's sake. A difference between a living organism and a dead body? Sure: the living organism moves, it breathes, it generates heat, it eats and shits, etc. All of which can be accounted for without reference to mysterious life forces.

No it is not accounted for, and can't be so accounted for. Those are dead processes, if they are explained as biology usually explains them, by mechanical cause and effect. If you are explaining them with indeterminacy, like smoke flowing up in the air going where it will, then I think you are opening the door to increased ability for freedom as life evolves, which is what I am pointing out.

Eric, what are you going to do when biologists manage to create living organisms? Deny that they're really alive?

They will have created a vehicle in which life can function; same with AI. It will have sprouted a soul. More importantly, they will be the offspring totally of living souls, human beings, which no biologist ever created.

Nonsense. The Qaballah is a symbolic model of the universe, and "emanations" is a word that refers to the magical influence ultimately from God, as mediated by the Sephiroth and the Paths. I simply have different terms for all of these. I recognize the phenomena, but disagree with the conceptual theory behind them; the conceptual theory however is wholly severable from the symbolic model itself, just as the techniques a martial artist uses to raise and manifest chi are wholly severable from his ideas about what it is. You are speaking exactly like a fundamentalist Christian who thinks that anyone who doesn't believe every word of the Bible is literally true isn't really a Christian.

In actual fact, I do prefer to use my own Grand Mandala symbolic model of the cosmos rather than the Tree of Life, but that has nothing to do with traditional Qaballistic interpretations of the latter. I like the symbolism of my own version better; I think it's more appropriate to a decentralized, non-authoritarian conception of the universe, more sexually egalitarian, more in-out and less top-down. But the Qaballistic theory of emanations could be applied equally well to my system, and my own theory can apply equally well to the Tree of Life.

Your own interpretation is irrelevant. The point is that the Kaballah, chakras and hermeticism as understood by everyone else recognizes degrees of difference and emanation as the foundation of those models. The mandala too (of which my version is the philosophers wheel, based on the magic circle) contains the same model along the backbone of its up and down axis, along with the left-right or yin-yang axis. Thinking that these are top-down interpretations again represents your outdated view of spirit (as supernatural, as belonging to a distinct realm, as quasi-religious authority to be resisted, and as denying those who experience it by calling it only metaphor, etc.). Too bad, it precludes us from agreement; although if we had agreement, we wouldn't have this interesting discussion. Usually interesting, anyway.

If you or anyone else reading this wants to see the best video on the chakras, click here. Other related videos are suggested at the right.

Here is a great intro to the kaballah with a modern down-to-earth viewpoint.

A great approach to astrology that is similar to the above two approaches

More links at my site: http://philosopherswheel.com/toccatalinks.htm

I am, when I choose to wear that hat, a materialist; I've never denied that. I am not a "classical" materialist because that is impossible without incorporating the classical view of the nature of matter and energy as deterministic and excluding the properties we associate with life. As for your question, the answer depends on the context.

What properties of life are you including?

What I mean by "distinct spiritual world" is that you see spirit as behaving according to a distinct set of natural laws, or none. Is that not the case?

I have said that "natural laws" don't apply to the universe at all; they are man made creations, of which the physical ones are oriented toward taking the apparent stability of certain aspects of the world, and making it useable for technology, or to reduce it to an order that rationalist enlightenment order-seeking minds can deal with. You being a follower of that tradition, are naturally attracted to its concept of natural law.

In any case I don't think that one part of nature, understandable by one set of laws, is a distinct world from another part of nature, understandable by another set of laws. The "laws" again are just human constructions of convenience that enable us to understand and manipulate the world to the best of our ability. It is arrogant hubris and idolatry to think that our human man-made laws actually apply to nature. Nature itself remains one world. In any case, when understood from a spiritual perspective, all the laws of nature are consistent.

No, it will not, certainly not the last of those, and not for spirit or soul as you mean those words. It will be evidence that the universe processes information in a unified fashion. It might consist of evidence that the mass of indeterminate processes throughout the universe acts as a giant decision-maker which, in the early instants after the Big Bang, decided that natural law would take the form it did out of the many possible forms, and continues to make decisions within the space allowed by indeterminacy. At most, it would show that the universe partakes of some of the qualities you are assigning to soul or spirit, just as we know that the brain partakes of many of those same qualities on a smaller scale. And as this knowledge about the brain removes the need for a concept of the soul as that which thinks, so if we knew this about the universe we would remove the need for a God separate from the universe itself.

There was never a need for such a God, so that comment is meaningless. Whatever makes a decision, is by definition, a soul. Souls are not alien from nature, they are what nature consists of, and all are part of the larger soul that is God. I think science will one day be forced to recognize these truths.

When I say that both are true, I am recognizing that more is necessary to declare something "false" than my own stubborn will and insistence. It must be possible to make a statement on the basis of it that can be shown to be untrue. But there is no statement that can be made on the basis of either of these approaches to reality that can be shown to be untrue. We cannot show that the universe we perceive with the senses either can or cannot exist independently of consciousness. Since both perspectives are completely and perfectly consistent with the data we have, we cannot reasonably declare either one to be false.

There is nothing to observe without an observer. There is no observer without a world to observe. Inner and outer are one. So there can't be one discipline that totally explains the observer, and another the observed. We can seek objectivity, and science does this; but it can never be attained. Nor can mysticism explain all the details of the observed world.

Another suggestion: the shift from the perspective from without, to the perspective from within, is in large measure what is happening in the evolution of life. As life evolves, from non-life, to simple and complex organisms up to humans, the ability to look within increases. This is the same thing as the evolution of consciousness. It defines the gradations up and down the Tree of Life. You mentioned in-out as opposed to top-down; what spiritualists point out is that this is an "inside-out" world. The outer flows out from the inner; that's the point, not the authority of the top down.

I am not so paranoid like you that I think the Pope might be sitting at the top of the Tree of Life. As a matter of fact, in my interpretation of tarot correlations to the paths on the Tree, I have reversed the direction that most practitioners use, putting the Pope and the other imperial rulers found in the 22 Major Arcana cards at the bottom of the Tree, along with materialistic "Magicians" like you , and the World and Judgement at the top. The Major Arcana represents the hero's journey to God, the Fool's Journey, from phase 1 to 21, not the emanation from God to human society represented by the Minor Arcana and the sephiroth.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The significance is, you can't start a true false game of logic and expect it to lead somewhere with me. My mind is larger than that.

Like I said: "I can believe it if I want to, no matter how stupid and irrational it is, so there, poopie-head!" All right, I guess I won't convince you, unless you get an attack of intellectual integrity from somewhere. Perhaps this is all for the benefit of others reading this thread.

Parrots and chickens are not at a higher or lower level of evolutionary development of consciousness. Jupiter and humans are.

Your original claim was that the human body's psi is at a higher level of evolutionary development than Jupiter's.

It is that intelligence that allows you to evoke the manna from Jupiter; the point is not so much who is intelligent or not, but the fact that this manna is yours more than it is Jupiter's.

That's one view -- that it all comes from inside oneself. I used to believe that myself, but I came to realize that this is an essentially solipsistic view of magic, and if one rejects the larger form of solipsism any more restricted versions cease to make sense. The mana comes from everything, and what my mind does is to concentrate it and shape it. I note in passing that this is also more congruent with the Qaballistic idea of where the divine power comes from; ultimately from the One (God) emanating through the Many.

The hermetic maxim as above, so below; as within, so without, is the principle by which your evocation of Jupiter works. It is correspondence between the manna/life force in you and the archetype and significance represented by Jupiter.

Close. I would say that it is because mana moves in the frame of reference defined by association, and as my mind is adept at manipulating associations, it can manipulate the flows of mana. I create an association between myself and Jupiter, and mana flows between us. "As above, so below" is another (and less precise) way of saying that.

How does your correct view play out in the views of brain chemists today? Can you cite any who employ a modern interpretation of matter? How has it changed brain chemistry?

There is no conflict for purposes of brain chemistry (yet) between Newtonian physics and modern physics. I expect there will be eventually as neurologists come to grips with the indeterminacy of mental processes and the implications of this for free will.

I never said it makes me feel good.

You didn't have to. There's no other reason to cling so firmly to an idea, when there is so much evidence against it and none for it.

It's quite a good explanation. There is no scientific empirical explanation necessary, because it is not a scientific question-- although you claim it is.

Yes, I do claim it is. Once more: a scientific question is any question that can be answered in the form "A has the properties B, C, D" or "A does B" or "B results in A." It is any question about what we observe to happen. As I said before, the territory of science is a set of questions, not a set of subjects. The subject of magic/psi/chi is every bit as much a scientific subject as any other; that is, any questions involving what we observe to happen in that subject are scientific questions. And the question "is chi a separate force of life or a more universal force in association with life?" is definitely a question about what we observe to happen -- and hence, a scientific question.

As always, there are questions in magic/psi/chi which are not questions about what we observe to happen, and hence are not scientific questions; for example, the aesthetic and moral question of whether the Tree of Life or my own Grand Mandala system is preferable. But these non-scientific questions are identified by the nature of the question itself -- NOT by the subject matter.

If you say otherwise, then you are improperly trying to define an entire subject as off-limits to science, just as you have done when it comes to the mind and life.

No it is not accounted for, and can't be so accounted for. Those are dead processes

On the contrary, they are living processes. And if they have a completely materalistic explanation (which they do), what that means is that matter itself is alive, not dead at all.

Your own interpretation is irrelevant. The point is that the Kaballah, chakras and hermeticism as understood by everyone else recognizes degrees of difference and emanation as the foundation of those models.

So what? Ancient Greco-Roman astronomers understood the motion of the planets in terms of crystalline spheres within spheres. They also observed, recorded, and constructed models to predict that planetery motion quite admirably. But their idea of what was behind it all was still wrong. Similarly, I can admire the Qaballistic and Hermetic magical constructs and symbolic models, and make use of them, without agreeing with their ideas about it. The construct of ideas is not all of a part, not inseverable. The fact is, Eric, NONE of the ancient sources of magical thought had a good model of what they were working with. Not one. That didn't stop them from having good methods and techniques, which I am happy to borrow from them. But I will not take their crude, poorly-thought-out, and utterly inadequate quasi-scientific ideas into the bargain. I'll take the good stuff and jettison the rest. I have that right.

The mandala too (of which my version is the philosophers wheel, based on the magic circle) contains the same model along the backbone of its up and down axis, along with the left-right or yin-yang axis. Thinking that these are top-down interpretations again represents your outdated view of spirit

No, it's merely a recognition that the Tree of Life contains authoritarian ideas. Which it does. (By the way, just to let you know, we're now dealing with a non-scientific question and I'm changing hats here.) I wanted a system that would be as comprehensive and elegant as the Tree of Life but more appropriate to my own Neopagan religious views, not so rooted in Judeo-Christian thought.

What I'm talking about is not "the mandala" but "the Grand Mandala," which is a proper name, is my own system that I designed, and which I don't believe you've ever studied. You do not have a version of it. The only people who might, are former students of mine, who could have taken the Mandala and adapted it. I don't know if that's been done or not. On the other hand, I have spent years studying the Qaballah and Hermetic thought, so while I'm sure your links will be of value to others, I will not need to take the time to study them before continuing.

The Grand Mandala is based on a progression of numbers: zero, then two, then three, then four (and in concept it could be taken further). Zero is unrepresented but always present. Two is the creative pair: the Void and the Serpent. The Void is the infinite reach of possibility, and the Serpent is Consciousness or Will or Time/Sequence, which turns potential into actuality. The Dynamics are Three: Creation, Preservation, Assimilation. And the Four are the Elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Each of these Spheres is linked to each other Sphere by a Bridge. I can incorporate in this system the planets and signs of astrology, and also most of the deities of various religions.

If this is of interest to you and you want to learn more about it, let me know. I only brought it up in passing.

One thing I said in my last post needs to be clarified, I feel. I said that both materialism and idealism are "true," but on reflection I don't think that's the right word to use. Both fit the data we have. Neither one can be shown to be false. Both are permissible, and I suppose what I'm doing is suggesting a new epistemological category: there are true statements, false statements, unverifiable statements, and permissible statement. A true statement is one that can be proven correct; a false statement is one that can be proven incorrect; an unverifiable statement is one that is of a nature that can be proven but for which as yet we lack confirming or disproving data; and a permissible statement is one that:

1) Fits all data present;
2) Adds something of significance to philosophical understanding; and
3) By its nature can never be proven true or false.

Both materialism and idealism meet these three tests. Each recognizes an interaction between consciousness and observed/experienced reality. Idealism starts with consciousness and treats observed/experienced reality as an illusion. Materialism starts with observed/experience reality and treats consciousness as a function thereof. These are very different takes on reality, but neither can be proven false -- ever -- and so both are permissible.

What is not permissible is the claim that either of them is false. As that is a claim not only without proof but without any possibility of proof ever, it is a nonsensical claim. Materialism is not false, it is permissible. And the same is true of idealism, of course.

Now, another sort of claim that is not permissible is, on the basis of materialism or idealism, to deny the truth of things that can be and have been proven. For example, with regard to the brain being that which thinks, feels, imagines, and chooses, the only claim that can be made on the basis of idealism is that the brain is an illusion. It remains the case that the illusory brain is observed to operate in a certain way, and within the illusion of material reality it appears that the brain is that which thinks, feels, imagines, and chooses. What we observe remains what we observe, whether it is literal objective reality or an illusion that, due to its own internal rules, behaves in a consistent way which we may observe.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Like I said: "I can believe it if I want to, no matter how stupid and irrational it is, so there, poopie-head!" All right, I guess I won't convince you, unless you get an attack of intellectual integrity from somewhere. Perhaps this is all for the benefit of others reading this thread.

Logic is not the mark of intellectual integrity, silly. It's a very limited approach to things. It is important for the consistency of one's statements, so that they make sense. Logic is primarily a tool of communication in words.

That's one view -- that it all comes from inside oneself.

It's not very "logical" to exaggerate what your debate partner says.

Close. I would say that it is because mana moves in the frame of reference defined by association, and as my mind is adept at manipulating associations, it can manipulate the flows of mana. I create an association between myself and Jupiter, and mana flows between us. "As above, so below" is another (and less precise) way of saying that.

As above so below is more precise.

There is no conflict for purposes of brain chemistry (yet) between Newtonian physics and modern physics. I expect there will be eventually as neurologists come to grips with the indeterminacy of mental processes and the implications of this for free will.

See, there's my complaint.

You didn't have to. There's no other reason to cling so firmly to an idea, when there is so much evidence against it and none for it.

There's plenty of reason. Evidence from science is irrelevant on this topic of the life force, since it can't test for it very well if at all. Life is too fluid and changeable for its methods to understand. But every time I look at a leaf or a squirrel I can see that it is much more supple and interconnected with itself than a rock or a table. I can easily observe life and so can you. That has nothing to do with feeling good. Your psychoanalysis of me fails every time.

Yes, I do claim it is. Once more: a scientific question is any question that can be answered in the form "A has the properties B, C, D" or "A does B" or "B results in A." It is any question about what we observe to happen. As I said before, the territory of science is a set of questions, not a set of subjects.

I have already said I agree with your last sentence. I have said often that science can study any subject. It is not true though that "any question about what we observe to happen" is a scientific question. Most of what we see and experience is not amenable to a scientific investigation; it is too fluid and changeable and unmeasurable. That doesn't mean science can't study it; it's a question of interpreting the results. If you say "I have understood through empirical science the nature of life", you have overstepped the bounds of what science can say.

On the contrary, they are living processes. And if they have a completely materalistic explanation (which they do), what that means is that matter itself is alive, not dead at all.

But I don't think we agree on what the nature of life is. And even if we do, then if matter is "alive," then it can't have a "materialistic" explanation as defined by most scientists. Although you might be able to use the words matter and life as equivalent, most scientists do not (just as you admitted above about chemists). Biology today consists mostly of mechanical Newtonian explanations for living processes. It is classical materialism. Therefore it does not study life.

What properties of life are you including in your view of matter and energy?

So what? Ancient Greco-Roman astronomers understood the motion of the planets in terms of crystalline spheres within spheres. They also observed, recorded, and constructed models to predict that planetery motion quite admirably. But their idea of what was behind it all was still wrong. Similarly, I can admire the Qaballistic and Hermetic magical constructs and symbolic models, and make use of them, without agreeing with their ideas about it. The construct of ideas is not all of a part, not inseverable. The fact is, Eric, NONE of the ancient sources of magical thought had a good model of what they were working with. Not one. That didn't stop them from having good methods and techniques, which I am happy to borrow from them. But I will not take their crude, poorly-thought-out, and utterly inadequate quasi-scientific ideas into the bargain. I'll take the good stuff and jettison the rest. I have that right.

All of that is completely irrelevant. The kaballah and chakras and hermeticism are still excellent, viable models of consciousness and its relationship of the cosmos. Outdated details concerning astronomy can be corrected and it doesn't change the subjects much. You have jettisoned the heart of them, without which they are meaningless jibberish.

No, it's merely a recognition that the Tree of Life contains authoritarian ideas. Which it does. (By the way, just to let you know, we're now dealing with a non-scientific question and I'm changing hats here.) I wanted a system that would be as comprehensive and elegant as the Tree of Life but more appropriate to my own Neopagan religious views, not so rooted in Judeo-Christian thought.

Those are details which I have also corrected without taking out the heart of the system. In fact though the kaballah and Tree of Life are quite egalitarian to begin with, unless one thinks that ideas such as spirit, soul or God are necessarily authoritarian, which they are not at all. We mostly agree politically, so I don't know why you would be concerned that I have an authoritarian or sexist philosophy. You know I wouldn't accept such a thing.

What I'm talking about is not "the mandala" but "the Grand Mandala," which is a proper name, is my own system that I designed, and which I don't believe you've ever studied. You do not have a version of it. The only people who might, are former students of mine, who could have taken the Mandala and adapted it. I don't know if that's been done or not. On the other hand, I have spent years studying the Qaballah and Hermetic thought, so while I'm sure your links will be of value to others, I will not need to take the time to study them before continuing.

The Grand Mandala is based on a progression of numbers: zero, then two, then three, then four (and in concept it could be taken further). Zero is unrepresented but always present. Two is the creative pair: the Void and the Serpent. The Void is the infinite reach of possibility, and the Serpent is Consciousness or Will or Time/Sequence, which turns potential into actuality. The Dynamics are Three: Creation, Preservation, Assimilation. And the Four are the Elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Each of these Spheres is linked to each other Sphere by a Bridge. I can incorporate in this system the planets and signs of astrology, and also most of the deities of various religions.

If this is of interest to you and you want to learn more about it, let me know. I only brought it up in passing.

If you study mine, I'll study yours.
A mandala is a mandala; they are all pretty similar, and yours is similar to mine. Not identical in all details to be sure.

Now, another sort of claim that is not permissible is, on the basis of materialism or idealism, to deny the truth of things that can be and have been proven. For example, with regard to the brain being that which thinks, feels, imagines, and chooses, the only claim that can be made on the basis of idealism is that the brain is an illusion. It remains the case that the illusory brain is observed to operate in a certain way, and within the illusion of material reality it appears that the brain is that which thinks, feels, imagines, and chooses. What we observe remains what we observe, whether it is literal objective reality or an illusion that, due to its own internal rules, behaves in a consistent way which we may observe.

What is false is to claim that if one knows something about the brain's functions through materialist science, that therefore one understands a living, conscious brain. What we observe, remains so, as you said; how we interpret is a matter of philosophy.

I'm still here and will participate in this neverending metaphysical discussion sometime in the near future.

I just have lots of work to do.

And just for the record, I know absolutely nothing about magic, so my ability to contribute to that aspect of the discussion will be approximately zero.

The "life hypothesis" could be tested by attempting to build a functioning, living bacterial cell directly from dead matter, using no formerly created bacterial cells as the source of any material.

Can we all agree that would be an appropriate experiment that would prove or disprove whether cells can be created directly from dead matter?

I want to take things back to this exchange:

Brian:
I can claim otherwise because, unlike you, I actually believe there is only one world and one substance, and this one world is as readily described as spiritual as material. Unlike you, I don't see matter as dead, or spirit as non-material. Unlike you, I don't retain a dualistic conception of reality and paste a label of monism on top of it which anyone can see it does not merit.

Eric:
"Anyone" is far from true. There are many intelligent folks who "retain" the conception of the continuity. Everyone whose views are similar to Teilhard's for example. They are legion; he is very influential. Anyone who finds the views of the kaballah or the chakras useful. The list is endless. Your view of the one substance is a materialist view, as is any such view that says that Western empirical science can adequately describe the world "as readily described as material." That's why you yourself have described yourself as a "materialist." I am not such.

Brian diverted this issue into a discussion of his views on kaballah, since he "finds it useful," but I was showing that anyone can NOT see that the idea of continuity doesn't have merit, since kaballists and chakra students and other philosophers clearly think it does have merit. Many people do; that can't be disputed. This idea is that there is a continuum of degrees of difference or levels of consciousness from the non-living to the living up to humans and beyond. This idea is not dualist, and those who accept these ideas say so clearly. Nor is it reductively monist as materialism is. Anyone can clearly see this, not noone.

I notice that Brian believes strongly in progress in the human sphere, as I do. I agree with Hegel that history is the progress of human freedom. There is every reason to extend this view to the progressive evolution of life out of which humans arose, and that human progress continues the progress in the animal world that came before. Why would you not accept this then, Brian? And this progress in the entire evolution of life including human history consists of the increase of freedom and higher consciousness. This is reflected outwardly in the increased size and complexity of brains and nervous systems as animals and humans have evolved. But brain chemists of today, especially those who go public with their studies, have not developed the willingness or the interest in seeing how this inner freedom and higher consciousness applies to their study which reduces the mind to mechanical Newtonian cause and effect processes and the behavior of objects. They are therefore missing what is going on.

A post-modern view might seek to reject all comparisons and judgements that anything is higher or better than anything else. It might be seen as hierarchical, authoritarian, or promoting dominance. Maybe that is Brian's view too. But that would be the opposite of an evolution of freedom. It is true that certain animals have achieved a certain dominance throughout the stages of evolution. Dinosaurs did at one point, and then the lion was the king of the beasts. Now clearly humans dominate the planet; not just because of a Bible verse, but because we have the ability. But the leading track of evolution has not proceeded from the dominant species before. Shrews lived alongside dinosaurs, and it was their descendants who became dominant later, for example. And lions did not evolve into humans. And those who dominate society today are clearly not the leading edge of human evolution. It is those on the fringes of society, the artists, intellectuals, cultural creatives and such, who are the leading edge of evolution today, not the CEOs of the major corporations, whom are often called "dinosaurs" today, and rightly so.

The idea of improvement or progress toward higher consciousness or greater ability to look within and exercize greater free will does not equate to the idea of top-down authority. The crown at the top of the Tree of Life is not an authority figure. It is the Lady who shines white light at the top of the stairway to heaven. That's the point here. So kaballah and similar models that show a difference and a graded continuity from matter to spirit are not out of date at all, but were far ahead of their time. And clearly human progress today will not happen by greater domination and authority, but the achievement of greater freedom and the ability to coexist with nature, and the ability to raise our consciousness and identify ourselves with greater wholes.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I was showing that anyone can NOT see that the idea of continuity doesn't have merit

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Unlike you, I don't retain a dualistic conception of reality and paste a label of monism on top of it which anyone can see it does not merit.

Please note that what I was saying anyone can see does not have merit was not "the idea of continuity" but rather the "label of monism" which you inappropriately paste onto your own dualistic views.

Essentially, you believe in spiritual entities, which are distinct in nature and governing principles from material entities. The spiritual entities you put over here, and the material entities you put over there. Then you fill in all the space between the two with pretty pictures, rather than empty space, and you say, "See? I believe in one world, too!"

But you don't. That's not what "one world" mean.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Please note that what I was saying anyone can see does not have merit was not "the idea of continuity" but rather the "label of monism" which you inappropriately paste onto your own dualistic views.

Essentially, you believe in spiritual entities, which are distinct in nature and governing principles from material entities. The spiritual entities you put over here, and the material entities you put over there. Then you fill in all the space between the two with pretty pictures, rather than empty space, and you say, "See? I believe in one world, too!"

But you don't. That's not what "one world" mean.

Well, as our nemesis once said, "THERE YOU GO AGIN' "

Your statements of what I believe, are always wrong. It is better to quote me and deal with what I say than to re-write my opinions for me.

I understand your point about pasting the label of monism on dualism. But you ignored the fact I pointed out that a continuum is continuous. If I really believed in distinct entities, then I would be incorrect. There are no such things. I have not said that such distinct entities exist; quite the opposite. There are no distinct material things, and no distinct spirits either. It would be better to say I am being inconsistent to say there is a difference and that individuals exist, and at the same time insist that all is one. You could complain that my views are contradictory. I of course have no choice. Paradox is at the heart of life. Individual atoms, cells and selves exist, and yet they are totally interdependent and one with their environment. The poles of spirit and matter, or within/without, exist, but they are interdependent on each other even to exist at all, even if one is prior to the other, as I hold to be true. The problem is that your logical either/or Virgo mind can't comprehend this kind of paradox.

Your critique of me as a dualist misses the point again. It doesn't matter much if I am a dualist or not. The question is whether you and others recognize that life is inherently more miraculous and mysterious, than our paltry attempts to pin it down into something our puny logical minds can comprehend can render. There is more going on than brain chemistry, and that more is the evolutionary drama of life as it expands its freedom, consciousness and ability to create a heaven in the world. Do you agree or not?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Logic is not the mark of intellectual integrity, silly. It's a very limited approach to things. It is important for the consistency of one's statements, so that they make sense. Logic is primarily a tool of communication in words.

I'm sorry, but logic IS a mark of intellectual integrity. Granted that there are circumstances in which logic is an inappropriate tool. But what you are using this truth to do is to endow yourself with an escape hatch so that you can go on believing whatever you want to believe in the face of disproof. There are also circumstances in which logic IS an appropriate tool, and those circumstances include everything we are discussing at the moment. It is not anything goes, and it is not a formless goo that can let you get away with anything you please. Treating it as if it were, is practically the definition of a lack of intellectual integrity.

As above so below is more precise.

Actually, you're right, in the same sense that Keppler's laws of planetary motion are more precise than Newton's law of gravitation, because they apply to a smaller subject matter. What I should have said is that as above/so below is less elegant: it explains less, encompasses less in terms of how magic behaves. It is a smaller, specific case of the law of association.

There's plenty of reason. . . . every time I look at a leaf or a squirrel I can see that it is much more supple and interconnected with itself than a rock or a table.

All of this can be explained perfectly well without reference to a "life force." A leaf or a squirrel is more supple than a rock because a rock is hard and the leaf or squirrel is flexible; these organisms are not more supple than water. A leaf or squirrel is more "interconnected with itself" than a rock because it is more complex and composed of more parts to be interconnected; it is not more interconnected than the solar system.

There is in fact nothing about living organisms that we can observe and that requires a hypothetical life force to explain. Yet you continue to believe in it. Why? Because it suggests a distinction between the living and the nonliving that you want to continue believing in; because you believe that matter is "lifeless" and "soulless" (completely without any supporting evidence of this) and so you do not want to believe that living things (ultimately, that you) are "nothing but lifeless, soulless matter."

I see no reason to reconsider my "psychoanalysis" of you; here, it looks spot-on.

I have already said I agree with your last sentence. I have said often that science can study any subject.

Yeah, you SAY this, but then you turn around and want to exclude science from legitimate subjects for its investigation. I judge what you believe by what you do, not by what you say you believe.

Although you might be able to use the words matter and life as equivalent, most scientists do not

Excuse me. I was not saying that "the words matter and life are equivalent." I was saying that there are no characteristics of life that are not contained, at least in potential, in matter (or, more precisely, in matter and/or energy -- in natural law as it applies to the inorganic). Obviously matter is a word of broader application than life, and so they cannot be identical in meaning.

What properties of life are you including in your view of matter and energy?

Within the bounds of what can be studied by science (objective reality), I am including: a counter-entropic tendency (also visible in stars); the ability to grow (as in crystals); the ability to move under its own force (as in the ocean as a whole system); the ability to process information (as in many natural nonliving systems); and the ability to reproduce (as in the capacity of a crystalline structure to grow copies of itself in an appropriate chemical medium).

Outside those bounds I must speak with less objective assurance, but I would also include consciousness, subjective experience, and (at least in potential) feeling.

All of that is completely irrelevant.

Certainly not. The point I'm making here is that these ancient systems of magic include views of the subject that are, at best, partial and quite useless for understanding magic as a whole. I'm saying that each system of magic is not a purely self-contained entity; that magic is magic no matter what system is used to practice it and there is a set of natural laws which govern it regardless of whether we are engaged in ceremonial spirit-summoning, Wiccan organic craft, alchemy, Santeria god-possession, shamanic drug-induced spirit journeys, or whatever. And we cannot find those principles within any of these systems because their creators did not know how to look for them.

Those are details which I have also corrected without taking out the heart of the system.

Whatever. I found it worthwhile to create a new system, and don't particularly care whether you want to study it or not. I do care that you can arrogantly claim to understand it completely, or reduce it to an equivalence with other "mandala" systems merely because both can be represented as circles. If you don't want to study it, that's fine, no reason you should have to, but in that case quit claiming you understand it when that's obvious balderdash.

A mandala is a mandala; they are all pretty similar, and yours is similar to mine.

This is such horseshit. You have no clue what you're talking about here. No clue at all. If you want to talk about my system, study it first, please. If you don't want to study it, shut the fuck up about it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Your statements of what I believe, are always wrong. It is better to quote me and deal with what I say than to re-write my opinions for me.

Sorry, can't comply. The reason I can't, is because you will say you believe A, but then go on to assert B, which is logically incompatible with A. And so it becomes obvious that you don't believe A at all, you just like the sound of A or think you SHOULD believe A, and so completely forget that you believe B and B makes A false.

I understand your point about pasting the label of monism on dualism. But you ignored the fact I pointed out that a continuum is continuous.
If I really believed in distinct entities, then I would be incorrect. There are no such things. I have not said that such distinct entities exist; quite the opposite. There are no distinct material things, and no distinct spirits either.

This is a perfect example. Here you are, saying A. But you also say B: that a materialistic model of life is incomplete, that it needs to include spiritual entities as well. If you did not believe there was any distinction to be drawn between material and spiritual entities, you would NOT hold that opinion, because there would be no spiritual entities that a materialistic model was excluding.

Do you see what I mean?

The question is whether you and others recognize that life is inherently more miraculous and mysterious, than our paltry attempts to pin it down into something our puny logical minds can comprehend can render. There is more going on than brain chemistry, and that more is the evolutionary drama of life as it expands its freedom, consciousness and ability to create a heaven in the world. Do you agree or not?

I would need all the terms defined and the context stated before I can answer.

"life is inherently more miraculous and mysterious, than our paltry attempts to pin it down into something our puny logical minds can comprehend can render" -- I would answer that judgments as to the miraculousness and mysteriousness of life have absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to create models of how life functions, and so the statement is meaningless.

"There is more going on than brain chemistry, and that more is the evolutionary drama of life as it expands its freedom, consciousness and ability to create a heaven in the world." I would answer that brain chemistry fully accounts for that evolutionary drama, without encompassing the subjective experience of it. But that subjective experience itself does not constitute "more going on than brain chemistry" -- it IS brain chemistry, as experienced from within rather than as observed from without.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I'm sorry, but logic IS a mark of intellectual integrity. Granted that there are circumstances in which logic is an inappropriate tool. But what you are using this truth to do is to endow yourself with an escape hatch so that you can go on believing whatever you want to believe in the face of disproof. There are also circumstances in which logic IS an appropriate tool, and those circumstances include everything we are discussing at the moment. It is not anything goes, and it is not a formless goo that can let you get away with anything you please. Treating it as if it were, is practically the definition of a lack of intellectual integrity.

There has been no disproof. Logic is not sufficient to deal with this subject.

Actually, you're right, in the same sense that Keppler's laws of planetary motion are more precise than Newton's law of gravitation, because they apply to a smaller subject matter. What I should have said is that as above/so below is less elegant: it explains less, encompasses less in terms of how magic behaves. It is a smaller, specific case of the law of association.

It encompasses quite a bit, and the companion phrase "as within, so without" adds more. But association or as I call it correspondence might encompass a lot more it is true.

All of this can be explained perfectly well without reference to a "life force." A leaf or a squirrel is more supple than a rock because a rock is hard and the leaf or squirrel is flexible; these organisms are not more supple than water. A leaf or squirrel is more "interconnected with itself" than a rock because it is more complex and composed of more parts to be interconnected; it is not more interconnected than the solar system.

I thought you might mention water. But water is not an interconnected being interacting with its environment and growing. If a rock had more parts it would just be a more complicated rock with different ores or something, and in need of processing to make it useful to us. Life force is a good word to describe what we see in life. Life is too miraculous and mysterious ever to be encompassed in today's empirical science. The arts are better just as you admit that they are for some other things. There is no difference here just because trees and squirrels are something we can see that appear to be "outside" of us. Your "dualism" is showing again. They are NOT outside of us. And they are not separate from us.

There is in fact nothing about living organisms that we can observe and that requires a hypothetical life force to explain. Yet you continue to believe in it. Why? Because it suggests a distinction between the living and the nonliving that you want to continue believing in; because you believe that matter is "lifeless" and "soulless" (completely without any supporting evidence of this) and so you do not want to believe that living things (ultimately, that you) are "nothing but lifeless, soulless matter."

Well I certainly don't want to believe that, and I don't observe that about myself or anyone or anything else, so why should I believe it? Again, it is a matter of degree. But you ignore that because it does not fit your either/or mind.

Yeah, you SAY this, but then you turn around and want to exclude science from legitimate subjects for its investigation. I judge what you believe by what you do, not by what you say you believe.

No matter how many times I say it, you don't get it. I only question the conclusions and interpretations science makes such as that it claims to understand "life." And I disagree with you if you say they don't make these claims. That's where our difference is, not in any desire or attempt by me to exclude science from investigating anything. Not that I could ever hope to do so anyway, even if I wanted to. Was there a prayer about accepting things I can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference?

Within the bounds of what can be studied by science (objective reality), I am including: a counter-entropic tendency (also visible in stars); the ability to grow (as in crystals); the ability to move under its own force (as in the ocean as a whole system); the ability to process information (as in many natural nonliving systems); and the ability to reproduce (as in the capacity of a crystalline structure to grow copies of itself in an appropriate chemical medium).

Outside those bounds I must speak with less objective assurance, but I would also include consciousness, subjective experience, and (at least in potential) feeling.

I agree, and I think that's a good summary. But I think living things show a decidedly-observable greater ability to do these things. Crystals grow mainly because of the change of state from liquid to solid. Whole systems have nowhere to move; rocks cannot move under their own force; living things do. With someone who said there was no life in "objects" or "objective reality," I would be taking your position. With you, I need to point out the differences.

Certainly not. The point I'm making here is that these ancient systems of magic include views of the subject that are, at best, partial and quite useless for understanding magic as a whole. I'm saying that each system of magic is not a purely self-contained entity; that magic is magic no matter what system is used to practice it and there is a set of natural laws which govern it regardless of whether we are engaged in ceremonial spirit-summoning, Wiccan organic craft, alchemy, Santeria god-possession, shamanic drug-induced spirit journeys, or whatever. And we cannot find those principles within any of these systems because their creators did not know how to look for them.

The subject of esoteric thought and practice has common features across different cultures that were separated in ancient times. If that's part of what you are saying, I very much agree. Of course the natural laws you claim, I probably don't agree with. That is your theoretical project and that's fine.

Whatever. I found it worthwhile to create a new system, and don't particularly care whether you want to study it or not. I do care that you can arrogantly claim to understand it completely, or reduce it to an equivalence with other "mandala" systems merely because both can be represented as circles. If you don't want to study it, that's fine, no reason you should have to, but in that case quit claiming you understand it when that's obvious balderdash.

I'll study yours if you study mine. Mine deals with some of your objections to ancient systems; that was my point. I did not claim to understand your Grand Mandala "completely"; remember I said there are differences in detail, and I expect there won't be any kind of up and down hierarchy. But the other elements you described in your post are found in mine and other systems. I'm sure your mandala is interesting, complex and original and organized differently. I would like to study it sometime. No need to get huffy. There are lots of differences among models of reality. I can see links between some of them, but it is useless for me to claim they are all the same; they aren't.

Is your mandala in a form that I can see it online or be sent to me in a jpg?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Sorry, can't comply. The reason I can't, is because you will say you believe A, but then go on to assert B, which is logically incompatible with A. And so it becomes obvious that you don't believe A at all, you just like the sound of A or think you SHOULD believe A, and so completely forget that you believe B and B makes A false.

OK, so you said my statements have contradictions.

This is a perfect example. Here you are, saying A. But you also say B: that a materialistic model of life is incomplete, that it needs to include spiritual entities as well. If you did not believe there was any distinction to be drawn between material and spiritual entities, you would NOT hold that opinion, because there would be no spiritual entities that a materialistic model was excluding.

Do you see what I mean?

No, when aspects of reality that are not included, need to be included in my opinion, I am saying so. You clearly exclude or are not open to aspects of reality that I would not exclude. That's a difference in experience and world view between us. I do not use the word entities; that is your word.

"life is inherently more miraculous and mysterious, than our paltry attempts to pin it down into something our puny logical minds can comprehend can render" -- I would answer that judgments as to the miraculousness and mysteriousness of life have absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to create models of how life functions, and so the statement is meaningless.

"There is more going on than brain chemistry, and that more is the evolutionary drama of life as it expands its freedom, consciousness and ability to create a heaven in the world." I would answer that brain chemistry fully accounts for that evolutionary drama, without encompassing the subjective experience of it. But that subjective experience itself does not constitute "more going on than brain chemistry" -- it IS brain chemistry, as experienced from within rather than as observed from without.

The problem being that we can clearly experience and observe from without, the same things we observe from within. There is no separation. Brain chemistry is not the subjective experience of life as observed from without. It is a science pursuing investigations within a method that limits what it can tell us about what we "observe from without."

I think the problem is the conceptualizations behind the terms "spirit" and "matter" and their use in describing reality. Because of Western Culture's heritage of ontological Dualism the two terms have highly charged meanings infused with cultural biases. IMO using the two terms when trying to hash out the nature of reality leads to merely confirming preconceived conceptualizations.

One should start with our perceptions and thoughts themselves and go from there without applying arbitrary labels of "matter" and "spirit" on them.

Possibly Odin. I obviously still like the word spirit, but I take your point that it is loaded for some people.

I think that the observed increase in the size and sophistication of nervous systems from older to younger species, using Brian's idea that they are intelligence viewed from without, is reasonable grounds to conclude that intelligence, freedom and consciousness have increased, and that this is progress that extends from the evolution of life and continues in human history.

I disagree that "brain chemistry fully accounts for that evolutionary drama" or that "subjective experience itself does not constitute "more going on than brain chemistry" -- it IS brain chemistry, as experienced from within rather than as observed from without." because brain chemistry is reductive, classical materialism as now practiced, seeking to explain life, which is free, conscious and intelligent, as a non-living process of mechanical cause and effect. That in turn means that these sciences do not fully explain "non-living" systems either, since these systems and beings are in a rudimentary sense "alive," as part of the larger whole at least. It is not folks like me who see the "non-living" world as "dead;" this is an idea that is imposed on life and the world only by the conceptions of mechanistic science. Earlier approaches to studying the world saw it as organic, and these earlier approaches were correct in that regard; so are more modern approaches to the extent that they do this.

Brian describes "life" as "a counter-entropic tendency (also visible in stars); the ability to grow (as in crystals); the ability to move under its own force (as in the ocean as a whole system); the ability to process information (as in many natural nonliving systems); and the ability to reproduce (as in the capacity of a crystalline structure to grow copies of itself in an appropriate chemical medium)...with less objective assurance,...I would also include consciousness, subjective experience, and (at least in potential) feeling."

These abilities, even in non-living systems, but especially in living ones, cannot be fully grasped by mechanical methods, nor by reducing them to chaotic concepts of probability and random chance, or to natural laws which still don't really explain anything, like gravity or force. This does not mean that I think chemistry and biology as practiced today should not be studied and researched, nor that they can't gain valuable information; only that to understand life, other methods must be used as well that are more philosophical, artistic or mystical, or these in combination with science. Objective precision is a great goal, but can only be approached while studying objects that are very stable and boxed in to be seen as if apparently not alive and lacking some of the abilities of life Brian mentioned, or studied in large groups where free decisions average out so that statistical trends can be determined.

"judgments as to the miraculousness and mysteriousness of life have absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to create models of how life functions, and so the statement is meaningless."

Humility when approaching knowledge is not meaningless. The wisest person in Western history, Socrates, is among those who would agree with me that it is not meaningless. No model should ever be assumed to be anything other than extremely approximate. Any model proposed as otherwise is false on its face. Maps are not territories. All such models need to be constantly expanded, which can only happen when we are aware of how much we don't know, and indeed can't know. They must make allowances for such, as the kaballah does. All knowledge is circumscribed by its own methods and language; as Godel proved about mathematics, the most rigorous of sciences.

Life is indeed a miracle. That will never be disproved; it can only be acknowledged; even if we wondrously create the conditions someday from which it can spring forth again as our offspring, instead of doing it the old fashioned and more-fun way. Life can only be appreciated and understood as a miracle and a mystery. Any other conception of it is false on its face. We need to restore that wonder and enchantment, not reduce it or think we can explain it away. That is not emotionalism; it is grounds for wonder, which IS itself a synonym for "life." We can wonder at how much we have come to know, and yet at how much we don't know, and at how much we will never know. And that wonder is the real source of all knowledge to begin with.

http://youtu.be/Lzm1mN4gN7E

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

There has been no disproof. Logic is not sufficient to deal with this subject.

Wrong, and wrong, and you are still constructing an escape hatch, and that is still a sign of a lack of intellectual integrity.

It encompasses quite a bit, and the companion phrase "as within, so without" adds more. But association or as I call it correspondence might encompass a lot more it is true.

Well, and that's why I prefer it, of course. Not that I am abandoning the older phrases; they still hold true. I just see them as special cases of a larger law, just as Keppler's laws of planetary motion are a special case of Newton's laws of motion generally.

I thought you might mention water. But water is not an interconnected being interacting with its environment and growing

[The molecules of water connect with one another through the rules of fluid dynamics, and certainly water interacts with its environment; as for "growing," I would say that under these global-warming conditions the oceans do grow, unfortunately. However, I wasn't saying that water shares all of the characteristics of living things, only that it is more flexible than the organisms you mentioned, so that their flexibility doesn't set them apart from all inorganic matter (although it does set them apart from a rock).

Life force is a good word to describe what we see in life. Life is too miraculous and mysterious ever to be encompassed in today's empirical science. The arts are better just as you admit that they are for some other things.

What language game are you playing? If you are playing the language game of science (i.e., trying to understand the workings of the observed world), then you are wrong; if you are playing the language game of art (i.e., immersing yourself in reality on an aesthetic level and bringing creations to existence from the experience), then you are making a meaningless statement because science isn't in play.

Look, I'm not trying to grind art, wonder, and magic out of existence here, I'm just trying to avoid pseudo-science and superstition, which is exactly what the "life force" is. Unless you are speaking metaphorically in an artistic context, in which case you have no criticism to make of science because science doesn't even play that language-game.

They are NOT outside of us. And they are not separate from us.

That depends on which "us" you're talking about. They are certainly outside my body, and separate from the eyes that are looking at them.

Well I certainly don't want to believe that, and I don't observe that about myself or anyone or anything else, so why should I believe it?

Since there is no such thing as "lifeless, soulless matter" -- since matter isn't lifeless and soulless -- I see no reason why you should. However, I do see reasons to believe that you are just matter (and energy). It's just that that doesn't make you "lifeless and soulless."

No matter how many times I say it, you don't get it. I only question the conclusions and interpretations science makes such as that it claims to understand "life."

Again, what language-game are you playing? If you're playing the language-game of science, then understanding how living organisms function, individually, collectively, and on a cellular level, IS "understanding life." If you're playing the language-game of art, then there is a different kind of understanding to be gained through aesthetic experience which detached study cannot provide. But that doesn't seem to me to be what you're saying, or not all of what you're saying. The concept of a "life force" was originally a scientific concept, present in early biological theories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalis...mental_biology

The idea has its roots in pre-scientific times, but early biologists and physicians continued to use it in their conceptions of living organisms. So this is not something aesthetic or mystical which science by its inherent limits cannot understand; this is simply a bad, discredited scientific theory.

I agree, and I think that's a good summary. But I think living things show a decidedly-observable greater ability to do these things.

I agree with that. But where I don't agree is that this sets them apart from nonliving matter/energy in any fundamental way. Living organisms possess characteristics that all emerge from the nonliving world and that operate according to the same laws of nature. The distinction we draw between life and non-life is artificial; the difference is only one of degree, not of kind. Life emerges from non-life; as do all emergent forms, it has characteristics or at least degrees or combinations of characteristics that are not found in its predecessors, but there is nothing completely new about it.

Now here's a key that can help your understanding (in a non-scientific sense): all such removal of barriers works both ways. If it means that life can be explained as a function of or emergence from non-life, then that also means that so-called "dead matter" is alive: it partakes, at least in potential of the properties of life, not only the ones we can study objectively, but also all those aesthetic and mystical aspects that we can't study objectively and that you fear are in danger of being lost. If we cannot cordon life off and say, "these exist only here," that doesn't mean they don't exist, it means they exist out there, too.

The subject of esoteric thought and practice has common features across different cultures that were separated in ancient times. If that's part of what you are saying, I very much agree. Of course the natural laws you claim, I probably don't agree with.

Well, then you agree with the concept, at least -- that we can create universal laws of magic that will apply to all such schools. Whether I've done a good job of creating them is a separate question.

I'll study yours if you study mine.

I'm not asking you to study mine. I'm asking you to stop pretending you know all about it until you do.

Is your mandala in a form that I can see it online or be sent to me in a jpg?

Er -- yes but I don't have access to the computer hard drive that it's on. I should by the end of October and will put it together.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

OK, so you said my statements have contradictions.

What I'm saying is that "belief" needs to go deeper than a mere verbal affirmation for me to think it's real. Your belief that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit I see as a real belief, because you act on it. Your belief that spirit and matter are one is logically contradictory to the belief that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit; one cannot simultaneously believe both. Which one do you really believe, then? Well, I would say you really believe the one you act on, which is that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit. Which means you don't really believe the other.

And yet it's the belief you don't act on that's true, in my opinion, and the one you do act on that's false. Spirit and matter are one; they are two perspectives on the same reality, one subjective and from within, the other objective and from without. And so a scientific understanding of life does not exclude spirit because that's impossible: there is nothing else to study.

You clearly exclude or are not open to aspects of reality that I would not exclude.

That is not correct. We have a disagreement about the nature of those aspects of reality and how that impacts science. We don't disagree about their existence.

The problem being that we can clearly experience and observe from without, the same things we observe from within. There is no separation. Brain chemistry is not the subjective experience of life as observed from without.

No, not precisely. Brain chemistry is, rather, the means by which we experience life.

We do not experience from within and observe from without the same things. Consider a tree. I can use my senses (from without) to tell me things about the tree's color, size, shape, mobility, texture; I can study further and discover things about the tree's molecular and chemical structure, the chemical process of photosynthesis and other processes within the tree's biosystem; I can use my magical senses and share the tree's unfocused, placid awareness; but all of these are from without. I cannot experience the tree from within. Only the tree can do that. And it may experience something as radically different from what we do when we use any of these ways to observe the tree, as our own subjective experiences differ from brain chemistry and neurology.

Studying the brain is a special case. There, we are studying the instrument by which we think, feel, and experience the world, the instrument of memory and hence of personality, the processor of sensory information, the fount of the imagination. It's as different in particulars as automobile mechanics is from driving. That the universe can give rise to an instrument like this is astonishing, but if it could not we would be unable to feel astonishment anyway.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Studying the brain is a special case. There, we are studying the instrument by which we think, feel, and experience the world, the instrument of memory and hence of personality, the processor of sensory information, the fount of the imagination. It's as different in particulars as automobile mechanics is from driving. That the universe can give rise to an instrument like this is astonishing, but if it could not we would be unable to feel astonishment anyway.

We still need to do scientific tests to find out whether brain is mostly a filter/processing unit - mostly I need wires and test subjects.

And if you gave me different memories, I would still have the same personality, so it appears that we have different definitions of the word "personality".

Originally Posted by JonLaw

And if you gave me different memories, I would still have the same personality, so it appears that we have different definitions of the word "personality".

Your personality is built of memories on a foundation of genetic tendencies. Everything in your personality that is not genetically programmed is learned behavior from prior experiences.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What I'm saying is that "belief" needs to go deeper than a mere verbal affirmation for me to think it's real. Your belief that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit I see as a real belief, because you act on it. Your belief that spirit and matter are one is logically contradictory to the belief that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit; one cannot simultaneously believe both. Which one do you really believe, then? Well, I would say you really believe the one you act on, which is that a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit. Which means you don't really believe the other.

How am I "acting" on this "belief"? It is not as you said before that I want to exclude science from anything. So what are you speaking of?

What is the meaning of your phrase "a scientific understanding of life excludes spirit."? Yes, I think objective science as currently practiced might exclude spirit, and tends to do so. You believe the same in a way, since you say it can't study subjective matters like ethics and aesthetics and the purpose of life and such. So how is this contradictory to my "belief" that spirit and matter are one? These terms have nothing in common. Science does not correspond to "matter," or to "the view of reality from without." It is a method of inquiry with certain abilities and limits. I have said this repeatedly but you don't get it.

And yet it's the belief you don't act on that's true, in my opinion, and the one you do act on that's false. Spirit and matter are one; they are two perspectives on the same reality, one subjective and from within, the other objective and from without. And so a scientific understanding of life does not exclude spirit because that's impossible: there is nothing else to study.

Science as often practiced excludes spirit and postulates matter as somehow existing. It is materialistic. Whether spirit and matter are two perspectives on the same thing, is entirely irrelevant to the question of how science views things.

That is not correct. We have a disagreement about the nature of those aspects of reality and how that impacts science. We don't disagree about their existence.

No. You have stated that references to these things are merely metaphors. I am open to them existing as realities, which could be described using metaphors or in any other way. If on the other hand you do agree on their existence, then these are areas to explore with an open mind, and I trust you will.

No, not precisely. Brain chemistry is, rather, the means by which we experience life.

The means through which we experience a more dense world.

We do not experience from within and observe from without the same things. Consider a tree. I can use my senses (from without) to tell me things about the tree's color, size, shape, mobility, texture; I can study further and discover things about the tree's molecular and chemical structure, the chemical process of photosynthesis and other processes within the tree's biosystem; I can use my magical senses and share the tree's unfocused, placid awareness; but all of these are from without. I cannot experience the tree from within. Only the tree can do that. And it may experience something as radically different from what we do when we use any of these ways to observe the tree, as our own subjective experiences differ from brain chemistry and neurology.

We remain in disagreement in this fundamental way. This is your kind of dualism. I disagree. We can experience the tree, other people, or anything else, just as it experiences itself. As Buddhism and mysticism show, there is no gap between knower and known; they are one. Your world view locks you into an isolated realm, one that I don't exist in. I was encouraged earlier when you mentioned your empathy connecting you to others. We are in fact connected to others; there is no separation, only a difference in perspective as you have also stated. But that difference is bridgeable.

Studying the brain is a special case. There, we are studying the instrument by which we think, feel, and experience the world, the instrument of memory and hence of personality, the processor of sensory information, the fount of the imagination. It's as different in particulars as automobile mechanics is from driving. That the universe can give rise to an instrument like this is astonishing, but if it could not we would be unable to feel astonishment anyway.

We do not think, feel and experience by means of the brain. It is not the fount of imagination nor the source of memory. It is a switchboard for functioning on this level of reality, that is all. It is indeed astonishing; that's the point. It is beyond our capacity ever to explain. We really do only have recourse to the divine, and always will.

Matter does not exist. I turn your point of view on its head, Brian. I am the Hegel to your Marx, going in reverse. You say the "life force" is an added idea not necessary to explain life. I say matter or objective observation are added ideas not necessary to explain life or anything else. Matter does not exist; noone has or ever could observe it. It is an idea only, one added on by mechanistic scientists for the purpose of reducing reality to stable objects that it can easily comprehend, with the result of technology that manipulates the world and makes us "masters of matter" as Bergson said. It does not otherwise exist. It is measurement and sense experience, made into an idea only. As Bergson said, "there are no things, only actions." What exists are actions, the elan vital, the life force. That is what there is. That is what creates and moves the universe and all life. What we erroneously call "matter" is a falling off from the stream generated by the life force. It is like wood left over from a living tree.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Wrong, and wrong, and you are still constructing an escape hatch, and that is still a sign of a lack of intellectual integrity.

Wrong. Are you an empiricist, as you claim, or a rationalist?

[The molecules of water connect with one another through the rules of fluid dynamics, and certainly water interacts with its environment; as for "growing," I would say that under these global-warming conditions the oceans do grow, unfortunately. However, I wasn't saying that water shares all of the characteristics of living things, only that it is more flexible than the organisms you mentioned, so that their flexibility doesn't set them apart from all inorganic matter (although it does set them apart from a rock).

Water is not interconnected with itself. It is not all of a piece. It does not grow (your example is only expanding size due to external causes). It does not change as a result of "interacting" with its environment. But if we agree below maybe we can end this part of the exchange. Water is necessary for life.

If you are playing the language game of science (i.e., trying to understand the workings of the observed world),

Science does not understand the workings of the observed world. It only tries to do so, in its limited but more-precise way, seeking to eliminate our hopes and wishes from an impartial view of reality.

That depends on which "us" you're talking about. They are certainly outside my body, and separate from the eyes that are looking at them.

No they aren't. There is no definable boundary between you and your environment. Your skin joins as much as it separates.

Since there is no such thing as "lifeless, soulless matter" -- since matter isn't lifeless and soulless -- I see no reason why you should. However, I do see reasons to believe that you are just matter (and energy). It's just that that doesn't make you "lifeless and soulless."

Matter doesn't exist; there is only soul. Our life is experienced only subjectively; that's all there is. That's what there is. Life force is what there is. If science doesn't or can't understand it, it can't or doesn't understand life. It's quite that simple.

I agree with that. But where I don't agree is that this sets them apart from nonliving matter/energy in any fundamental way.

But there is a difference; that's all I'm saying. There is no fundamental separation or separate realm. All is spirit; just different degrees. But that also means our "laws of nature" are wrong because they are drawn up mostly according to a mechanistic or random conception added on by the scientist.

If we cannot cordon life off and say, "these exist only here," that doesn't mean they don't exist, it means they exist out there, too.

I'm with you there, I think.

Well, then you agree with the concept, at least -- that we can create universal laws of magic that will apply to all such schools. Whether I've done a good job of creating them is a separate question.

I don't know if I'm ready to call them "laws." But there is a commonality that underlies all the schools, the one reality they all seek to access.

I'm not asking you to study mine. I'm asking you to stop pretending you know all about it until you do.

I don't and never did. It looks like there are some similarities to my wheel from the little you described; that's all. The universal element you mentioned above.

NDEs are one field where evidence for mind beyond the brain is being found. Brain activity ends, but the patient returns and describes what happened in the room. Such evidence is not absolute proof, but there is also not absolute proof that the brain creates the mind or is identical to it. We also not only are affected psychologically by what happens in the brain, but the reverse is true too. In meditation and mind control, the brain is changed by what the mind does. An article I found reports some of this evidence, but it is too long and is secured, so I can't copy parts of it and post here.
entire article: http://www.enlightennext.org/magazin...InYourHead.pdf

Eric, I'll respond in detail later (can't do it at this moment), but I want to say one thing.

Repeatedly in the above, you stated, "matter doesn't exist." You do not believe this. In fact, I come closer to believing it than you do. It is absolutely incompatible with the positions you take regarding science, spirituality, and their relationship and interaction. If you really, truly believed that matter did not exist, that it was all illusion, you would have no problem with science developing rules from observation for this nonexistent thing, and seeing it yourself as rules that describe how the illusion behaves. (Which, from an idealist perspective, is exactly the case.) And if science claimed that everything follows these rules, you would have no problem with that, because they are rules for how the illusion behaves, and it's all illusion.

No. You believe that matter does exist, that spirit does exist, that they are not the same thing, and that science, in explaining everything in terms of matter, is denying the existence of spirit. That is what you believe, because that is the only thing that is consistent with your attitudes towards the things you are talking about.

I disagree with you on this. I think that reality can be described as all material, or as all mind, and either of these is consistent with what we observe and experience. But it cannot be described as part matter, part mind, and although you will deny it, that is what you believe it to be.

BR & EtR:

It's fascinating to watch you two go at it. I've noticed that as you go back and forth, back and forth, eventually all the meanings of the key words that you are using become fuzzy and elusive. And your arguments tend to bog down in semantics at last. "Spirit" ... "material" ... "personality" ... Once one leaves the arena of ordinary definition of ideas and moves to the totally idiosyncratic, individually defined notions of these ideas, it looks to me that it's been over-intellectualized it to death.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Eric, I'll respond in detail later (can't do it at this moment), but I want to say one thing.

Repeatedly in the above, you stated, "matter doesn't exist." You do not believe this. In fact, I come closer to believing it than you do. It is absolutely incompatible with the positions you take regarding science, spirituality, and their relationship and interaction. If you really, truly believed that matter did not exist, that it was all illusion, you would have no problem with science developing rules from observation for this nonexistent thing, and seeing it yourself as rules that describe how the illusion behaves. (Which, from an idealist perspective, is exactly the case.) And if science claimed that everything follows these rules, you would have no problem with that, because they are rules for how the illusion behaves, and it's all illusion.

No. You believe that matter does exist, that spirit does exist, that they are not the same thing, and that science, in explaining everything in terms of matter, is denying the existence of spirit. That is what you believe, because that is the only thing that is consistent with your attitudes towards the things you are talking about.

I disagree with you on this. I think that reality can be described as all material, or as all mind, and either of these is consistent with what we observe and experience. But it cannot be described as part matter, part mind, and although you will deny it, that is what you believe it to be.

THERE YOU GO AGIN' !!!

Try quoting what I say, not writing my opinions for me. If you think they are contradictory, it makes sense to say that, not to rewrite them and put my name on them.

I think that if you say science is talking about illusion, and that then I'd have no problem with science, I'd probably go along with that, at least if science admitted it was talking about illusion. My problem is as you should know by now, is that they claim to be talking about reality, about life. They are in fact only talking about what can be described with their methods. When they stick to that, I have no problem.

Science, in explaining everything in terms of matter, is inserting illusion into their study.

Matter is just mind in a state of sloth or deficient in aliveness. I think I've been clear on that. I don't know why you keeping wanting to change what I say. If we agree there are differences in aliveness, then we agree on that basic ground. From there, you can see, if you choose to, that science cannot succeed in describing life and reality in scientific terms, because science is oriented to describing it as if it were not alive. But science is wrong. What it describes is alive, and science can't see it, because it substitutes and inserts the notion of dead matter where none exists anywhere. What exists instead, is life.

I don't know how many times and ways I can say this. You still don't get it. I don't expect you to agree, but you could at least seek to understand what I'm saying.

I disagree that reality can be described as all material. Matter does not exist. It can, however, be described as all spiritual.