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[FrankSophia]

If this forum does not satisfy, then there are plenty of others that deal in mysticism. But mystical insights have a place on philosophy forums because philosophy does not have all the answers. I hope you will continue to provide those mystical insights here.

I don't like terminology like mysticism, spirituality, religion, etc... each have connotations I want to avoid.

Henosis is entirely empirical if you engage.

[Lagayascienza]

Sure, I can look up "henosis" and find out what it means. I fact, I think I may have a fair idea already. It's about mystical "oneness", "union" or "unity". Those words are nice sounding deepities. But they're just book stuff. What does henosis actually mean in respect of philosophical or scientific questions. It's hard to see that henosis has anything to do with them at all. It is simply not possibe to "henosis" one's way to answers to philosophical and scientific questions. That's not what mysticism is for. It has to be about more than just that or it would be meaningless.

[FrankSophia]

Sure, I can look up "henosis" and find out what it means. I fact, I think I may have a fair idea already. It's about mystical "oneness", "union" or "unity". Those words are nice sounding deepities. But they're just book stuff. What does henosis actually mean in respect of philosophical or scientific questions. It's hard to see that henosis has anything to do with them at all. It is simply not possibe to "henosis" one's way to answers to philosophical and scientific questions. That's not what mysticism is for. It has to be about more than just that or it would be meaningless.

I would like to generalize and say henosis is the point of every religion and practice.

You have to take it out of the books and apply it to yourself right now, to the world you find yourself in.

What are they actually saying about reality?

Until you realize this is the point you can't hope to understand.

[FrankSophia]

I think this is how you make it non-religious...

You experiment with what they're saying on yourself...

Do not take anyones word for anything, but sincerely engage...

Do not think about atheist vs theist, what are they saying about reality?

Reality isn't a mental position.

[FrankSophia]

I want everyone to explore many traditions so they can get a feel for it on their own terms... you will be attracted to what appeals and thus be more apt to absorb it... I spend time bringing up terms to suggest directions, but something is supposed to happen in you and being convinced by me doesn't accomplish that.

Indeed, it doesn't change your actual ignorance in any way... you still don't actually know, you've just changed opinions.

That isn't useful, so I strive to cause it in you rather than answer empty questions.

[Gee]

I apologize for taking so long to respond, but I am not really well and am very slow. I was also hoping that "Frank" would stop posting so much and trying to raise his post count, but that is not going to happen as he is in love with his own writing. So thank you for your patience.

I still don't understand how the bald assertion that "science pretty much ignores emotion" could be true.

A few years back, I was contemplating the different species and wondering how they could be so different as to their consciousness. Science's standard answer is that the consciousness (awareness) of different species is different because their brains are different. OK, but what about species that do not have brains, like plants? We used to think that plants had no consciousness because they had no language and no thought and no brain, but I have seen trees that will stretch and warp their natural shape in order to reach the life-giving sun, and I have seen trees that will grow extra branches on one side in order to change their point of balance so as to not fall into a river where the bank is eaten away by a fast current. Plants may not have thought, but all life is conscious (aware) of the need to maintain itself and to renew itself so the species will continue.

So I started a thread in another forum and named it "Pure Consciousness?" to investigate whether or not consciousness is pure or if it is made up of components, which would explain many of the differences. The thread ran for 35 pages, has now received more than 127,000 views and taught me that consciousness is made up of six basic components, which can be divided into two different divisions because of their properties. One division has thought, knowledge, and memory, which science accepts as coming from the rational mind (brain). This division is private, internal, and is known only to the individual -- so you can not know my thought, memory, or knowledge, unless I choose to communicate it to you.

The other division is made up of emotion, feeling (not tactile), and awareness, which science also accepts as coming from the brain, but working through the unconscious. The problem arises when one realizes that this division has different properties and is not internal nor is it private, unless we work to hide it. This division is shared and works between things. We know it is shared because our emotion, feeling, and awareness show in our expressions, our body language, even the way we walk and move; it is almost in the air around us. For example, if you got stuck with a really high and unexpected bill, I might be able to tell that you are worried and upset (emotion and feeling) but I would not be able to tell how much the bill was or who you owed it to (thought and knowledge).

This other division is instinctive, reactionary, works through chemistry, and is the consciousness that all life shares. It does not require a brain because it works through every cell in every body of every species that exists. This division works to communicate between cells, between life forms, and between species. Does science know this? Yes. That is where I got the information.

After finishing the thread on consciousness, I went to a science forum and started a thread on instincts. I worked with a neurologist, an animal behaviorist, and some other working scientists. In that thread, I learned that the subject of instincts is massive, messy, unorganized, and impossible to understand as there are so many conflicting opinions, theories, and arguments, but there is one thing that is understood. Self preservation instincts are always linked to specific hormones. Most people think of hormones as relating to sex or fear (fight or flight), but they are so much more as they cause every survival instinct that we have from eating to caring for our young to seeking shelter. And every damned one of them works through awareness, feeling and/or emotion, which means that without this division of consciousness, everything would die.

The awareness, and the attraction and repulsion of emotion and feeling, working through hormones, is what causes life to continue. Science will state that it is not emotion, it is DNA that causes these survival instincts. And that is true, but DNA is just directions, or a map if you will, but a map does not a city make. DNA can not make someone want to flee, or want to hide, or want to eat, or mate, or find shelter, etc., that requires feeling and/or emotion, which is part of consciousness. This would be why dead people still have DNA, but they don't do these things if they don't have consciousness.

Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

The TV antenna idea of consciousness is interesting but I'm wondering what evidence there is to support it.

Well, there is lots, but this post is already too long, and it is difficult to decide what to share that will not be disputed and start a side argument. In the early 1960's we discovered pheromones which answered some questions for us. We knew there was communication going on between different species and between the members of a species, but there was no language involved. Then we learned that every species that has hormones within directing its survival instincts also has matching pheromones that work between life forms directing its survival instincts outside of the body (which means every multi-celled species). This means that whenever you walk into a forest, every insect, every animal, every plant, every bird, every fish, etc., is sending out pheromones regularly. I can not even imagine the number of communications that are regularly going on -- the number would be too huge to know. But I can say that if we could hear pheromones, the sound of a forest would be deafening.

There is a whole lot of communication that goes on outside of the body that does not require a brain. Remember, consciousness is not magic, it is just communication.

The assertion that "What science does with emotion is that it mislabels it, so that it can dismiss it", just seems wrong to me. I think it at least requires evidence to support it.

Most people know that hormones cause emotional responses and science supports this information. What people do not seem to know is that emotion also causes the production of hormones -- it is circular. We are talking about emotion causing the production of matter, being causal, which science denies as it sees emotion as being a product of consciousness -- not the mover and shaker that emotion actually is.

When I learned that hormones can cause the production of other hormones and some of those hormones can actually click off and on different aspects of DNA, I wrote another thread in a science forum where we discussed the possibility of a viable path between consciousness and evolution. The science guys did not like or agree with my ideas, but they also could not dispute the facts that were presented. There is a possible viable path between consciousness and evolution through emotion, survival instincts, hormones, and DNA.

Emotion and the unconscious is what religion studies, so no scientist would want to hand religion that kind of win as it would make emotion (God) causal.

In the past there have been certain modes of inquiry such as behaviorism that were somewhat wrong headed in ignoring anything but observable behaviour (such as behaviour that reflected emotional states) and for not examining mental processes. But this approach was demonstrated by further science to be limited and as a result the science of psychology has progressed. Science is very much at the forefront in the study of consciousness and its attendant phenomena.

No. Science is very much at the forefront in the study of the brain. Science studies the physical, it can not take emotion slap it on a lab table and measure it. Emotion is one of the most elusive aspects of consciousness because it is a force, but we do not really understand it. We can interpret it into the supernatural or spiritual, but we can not test it, measure it, or reproduce it. It would be like trying to study gravity without a planet.

Think about it for just a minute. If consciousness comes from the brain and evolution is true, then how did consciousness appear before the brain evolved into what it is today? What caused the brain to evolve in the first place, if there was no consciousness? This nonsense leads to ideas like, "God" did it, aliens did it, time travel, or we came back and created ourselves, or maybe it was magic.

Gee

[Hereandnow]

Lagayscienza wrote

Thank you, hereandnow. This is a really intersecting post. I want to read it more carefully. At first glance, though, it seems I need to read more Kant, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein and some Husserl because whereof I cannot speak, thereof I must remain silent. Heidegger I won't read more of. To me he's just incomprehensible - his writing sounds like nonsense to me. But that may be just an indication of my own limitations.

No, no. I am thanking you! For not being all bah humbug. The reason Heidegger seems so remote is that he is embedded in a tradition that starts with Kant. Can't read Heidegger without Husserl, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant. I was pi**ed when I discovered this. Then I read Rorty's Irony, Contingency and Solidarity. Had to understand what he was talking about when he said truth is not discovered, but made, through his reading of Heidegger and Derrida. But Kant came first.
Cheers!

[Sy Borg]

I don't think I "have a clue about" all this. And it is not clear to me that anyone else does, either.

It's why I'm already on my way out.

Once I stop getting notifications I will not come back.

Yet another who found God and is so clearly filled with love, patience, goodwill and and sense of kinship with his fellow humans ...

No rhetoric is needed to undermine Frank's claims, because his behaviour makes clear that his "spirituality" is superficial.

Now consider, why would anyone want to be "spiritual"? To find peace. To be a better person. To be more in touch with a deeper reality. So if a "spiritualist" is spitting bile and treating non-believers like garbage, what does that tell you about the person's "spirituality"?

I remember going to yoga classes and there'd always be some over-serious types who clearly saw themselves as on the road to enlightenment. Yeah, they were snobbish. In many religious practices there are various attainments, points that one reaches in one's explorations. A common trap at this stage is ego. Often modest mental achievements can lead a believer/meditator into pride, and at that point growth largely stops.

Ego is ultimately a form of armour, a defence against the Earth's non-stop attempts to reabsorb your body. If we wish to experience subtleties, we cannot have our armour on.

[Sculptor1]

I know more than the basic stuff, and nothing you say is correct.

The only mistake I've made is that actually Heraclitus is the first to make Logos supreme, not the Stoics...

Make logos supreme? What do you think you are conveying by this phrase? Heraclitus leaves us only fragments.

Logos was nothing more than a word for word. It was not really until Aristole that the word was employed in the meaing you are suggesting; A by-word for formal recognitions of types of reasoning such as deductive or incuctive.

Never the less the only unique aspect of the Christian narrative is that now it's specific to Jesus alone while prior it was just the nature of all sages... although here we see things like 1 Corinthians 2:12-16 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 that suggest the Christian understanding is just stupid and that actually the texts are conveying the same as Plato to a Jewish audience.

So nothing from John as you claim?
As for the Corinthian quotes they have nothing to do with logos

There is again also John 17:20-26 along with Galatians 3:20 and 3:28-29 that essentially convey henosis.

THis gets increasingly silly. Now you are on to henosis? Frankly I stopped after looking up the John quote. THere is little here to support your claims but a bunch of unphilosophical babble:
Vs 21 being the closest reads
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
Its hardly an argument for anything. Certanly nothing philosophical

Of course every saint across Catholicism and Orthodoxy is basically just applying Plotinus to their doctrines to pretend they're intelligent, all mysticism comes from him along with monastic and ascetic lifestyles that led to the Desert Fathers etc...

The result of ignoring him is Protestantism, no spirituality at all... just hatred of all that disagree.

What an absurd claim.
I suppose you are Catholic?

[Sculptor1]

I think this is how you make it non-religious...

You experiment with what they're saying on yourself...

Do not take anyones word for anything, but sincerely engage...

Do not think about atheist vs theist, what are they saying about reality?

Reality isn't a mental position.

Thanks for at least attempting to cite your ideas.
I do nor think that any of this, including this post is really on topic.
So that concludes our discussion

[Sculptor1]

Despite several digressions, there is not doubt that spirituality is not the preserve of Theism.
One has to wonder what relavance Theism has to spirituality at all?
And the extreme expression of spirituality, namely spiritualism is frankly anathema to Theism, and attracts from the church much scorn.

[Hereandnow]

Gee wrote
Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

Noticed your post and had a couple of thoughts. If I am intruding, just ignore.

Just this one idea: Science cannot talk about ethics or aesthetics because these entail value, and value cannot be observed. Sure, ethical situations can be described, but this mysterious good and bad possesses something ordinary (Moore called it a non natural property) facts do not. For me, I imagine taking my hand and putting in boiling water for a few seconds and then studying the phenomenon as a scientist might, with all eyes on the evidence before me. Here is the idea: after an exhaustive accounting for all the facts, I find there is something left over, a superfluity that transcends the facts, and this is value, the "bad" of the affair, the pain. Why is pain bad? Show me the badness of the pain. Make it observable so science can witness it. Its being bad is there, in the presence of the experience, and it is not reducible to any paradigm of explanation.

There is a more formal way to put this, but I like the rather down and dirty simplicity of this radical example of horrible suffering. Many things I can see and quantify and compare, but badness qua badness is not among them. It has a very mysterious presence that science cannot reckon with, so therefore ignores and treats it as if it didn't exist, reducing the horrible pain to the status of a shoe lace being untied, a simple fact.

Value-in-the-world is nonsense as a term, says Wittgenstein, because it IS the world, that is, it is a concept of pure presence entirely outside categorical designation. It is a fascinating thing to analyze, this good IN my love of Hagen Dazs, this bad IN my scorched hand. I look closely, examine all that is there, the injured flesh, the ruptured arteries, the taboo on doing this, and everything else, but the "bad" is nowhere to be found.

And yet, this bad is unquestionably the most salient feature of the whole affair. Value is the most salient feature of our existence. Yet science cannot touch it.

[Sculptor1]

Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

You could not be more wrong.
The sciences of psychology, neurology and psychiatry are all concerned with such things. One could argue that with the excption of neurology that are wholly concerned with such things. Science does not ignore emotion and probabl has more and meaningful things to say about it - things that you can trust as being verifyable - than any other discipline. Perhaps you have a suggestion for an area of serious study that has more to say about those characteristics of the human experience?

All of these things do in fact require a brain. There is no life without a brain and all evidence points to this as the primary organ for all conscious experience, though the heart and digestive tract also play a minor role in this process. Hormones play a significant role as to neurotransmitters - all because of receptors in the brain where they act to alter "Awareness, feeling, and emotion".
ALL examples, without excption of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion." are found in step with a worling brain, and the cessation of the healthy activity of the brain always lead to disruptions of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion". Brain damage leads to changes in feeling and emotion, and can tragically change your awareness; drugs that are shown to act on the brain also support this line of reasoning.

[chewybrian]

I don't think I "have a clue about" all this. And it is not clear to me that anyone else does, either.

It's why I'm already on my way out.

Once I stop getting notifications I will not come back.

Yet another who found God and is so clearly filled with love, patience, goodwill and and sense of kinship with his fellow humans ...

No rhetoric is needed to undermine Frank's claims, because his behaviour makes clear that his "spirituality" is superficial.

Now consider, why would anyone want to be "spiritual"? To find peace. To be a better person. To be more in touch with a deeper reality. So if a "spiritualist" is spitting bile and treating non-believers like garbage, what does that tell you about the person's "spirituality"?

Sometimes I wish we had a "like" button here. Someone claims to be a sage. How could I tell if they are correct? A sage must be wise, a wise man must be humble, and a humble man would be kind. If someone is neither kind nor humble, then they must not be wise. The fact that someone claims to be a sage is sufficient cause to say they are not, and if they say it with contempt for others, then the evidence is overwhelming.

I remember going to yoga classes and there'd always be some over-serious types who clearly saw themselves as on the road to enlightenment. Yeah, they were snobbish. In many religious practices there are various attainments, points that one reaches in one's explorations. A common trap at this stage is ego. Often modest mental achievements can lead a believer/meditator into pride, and at that point growth largely stops.

Ego is ultimately a form of armour, a defence against the Earth's non-stop attempts to reabsorb your body. If we wish to experience subtleties, we cannot have our armour on.

I don't think I've had the kind of experiences you seem to have had. However, I think that I did not begin to really live until I accepted that I will die, with no denial and no attempt to put the thought out of my mind. Accepting your own mortality need not be depressing, and it had the opposite effect for me. It's actually much harder trying to jam reality into the box of your model than it is to accept and deal with what presents as best you can.

The universe does not require that you fear things out of your control. This is something I was taught, intentionally or not, and had to work hard to overcome. Perhaps friends and family taught me their fears with the best intentions. However, I suspect that many political and religious leaders or would-be leaders simply use the fear as a means to gain control over people. Either way, it was a long journey back to where I might have been years earlier if I had simply been presented with the truth up front.

[Lagayascienza]

Despite several digressions, there is not doubt that spirituality is not the preserve of Theism.
One has to wonder what relavance Theism has to spirituality at all?
And the extreme expression of spirituality, namely spiritualism is frankly anathema to Theism, and attracts from the church much scorn.

Yes, spiritually, theism seems to be hopelessly weighed down and disabled by centuries and millennia of accreted doctrine and dogma. Theism's doctrine and dogma are the bricks and mortar used to build power structures in which to confine and control people’s minds and, in return for submission, it promises them the impossible.