#Panpsyche

[csms-jpg]

...with a belief that my subjectivity is the only slice of eternity I am entitled to.

[mbti-notes]

Hi! I came across this post of yours /post/179222467392/you-once-said-that-you-are-not-a-religios-person and i was wondering what the things are in Buddhist philosophy that u dont agree with? And also how did u manage to tap into the oneness belief? I heard ppl often get there thru ego death by using meditation or psychedelic drugs. Lately I have been into this topic and into getting into that oneness belief and you seem to know a great deal about philosophy!

If you're new here, philosophy is one of my majors. I learned religious philosophy as part of my studies in the history of human thought, so people sometimes ask me about these topics.

- To be clear, I am sympathetic to Buddhist beliefs and I think the religion has a lot to offer people. Buddhist philosophy underwent a lot of change over the centuries as the religion spread through very different cultures. When you dive deep into the scriptures, you'll find some truly wild ideas about multiverses and supernatural beings. It's hard to get on board with those ideas if you are a rational and scientifically minded person.

At this point, there are several different branches of Buddhism that sometimes hold very contradictory beliefs, yet they all still call themselves "Buddhist" (contrast this with Abrahamic religions that splintered three ways). Such contradictions are possible because Buddhist beliefs are almost designed to be impervious to critique. On one hand, this allows for great diversity of thought. On the other hand, it can make the whole thing seem nonsensical.

For example, I don't agree with how Buddhists conceptualize and characterize the human ego. However, as soon as I raise those objections to these Buddhists over here, some Buddhists over there will argue that there are different levels of understanding and many different ways of looking at the ego depending on how far you've gotten in your Buddhist practice. They simultaneously accept and dismiss my objections. Thus, if you want to be Buddhist, you basically have to accept this sort of incoherence and perhaps dismiss it as illusory or the result of small-mindedness.

At the end of the day, whether I agree or disagree with the beliefs is inconsequential, because no objection is really real or pointing to anything permanent. But when all your thoughts and feelings and behaviors can easily be dismissed as unreal, what happens to your life? Whether or not your life is objectively real, it still seems real to you and you have to live it, and the suffering you experience feels real. Can you dismiss it as just ephemera? There has always been an internal debate in the religion about whether one should be apart from or a part of the material world, and I don't think this kind of ambiguity helps people who are already struggling psychologically.

- I guess you could say I came to the belief in oneness first through intuition, then through science, then through philosophy. I think I mentioned before that, as a child, I genuinely believed that everything in the universe was imbued with some form of consciousness (aka panpsychism). It's not an uncommon belief in children because the human mind has a tendency toward anthropomorphism. For example, I would wonder whether stepping on the sidewalk was hurting it. People had to reassure me that if the sidewalk had feelings, its feelings worked differently than human feelings, otherwise, the sidewalk would object in the same way I would to getting stepped on.

Most people grow up and forget about these silly notions, but I didn't. Psychologists say that normal infant development starts at oneness and evolves into individuality. I feel like the world tried to convince me that I'm this separate, discrete, individual being, but I just couldn't believe it. Separation has always felt to me like a very wrong way to be. Who is right, the psychologists or me? I don't know. Maybe a Buddhist would say we're both right and we're both wrong and that neither is seeing the bigger picture.

To me, it seems as though I was born believing in panpsychism because I don't remember a time when I didn't believe it, so there is no actual "origin story" or explanation as to how I came to the belief. If I am capable of consciousness, why wouldn't it be possible that everything else is as well? If I am capable of being conscious of others, shouldn't there be something out there conscious of me? And if consciousness exists everywhere in everything, isn't reality fundamentally relational? In order for these beliefs to stand, I had to possess the underlying belief that everything in the universe is somehow interconnected despite superficial appearances.

Then, I studied science in school and learned that all matter in the universe is made up of the same constituent elements. We are all stardust. At the atomic and quantum level, the boundaries we perceive between objects are difficult to define. As an adult, I studied philosophy and was introduced to the full gamut of human thought and learned that oneness was a key concept in many Eastern religions. Actually, several influential thinkers in the West (such as Jung) were heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy. Philosophical training helped me sharpen and refine my spiritual ideas.

- Yes, some people come to a belief in oneness through psychedelic drugs. Presumably (according to the limited research that has been done so far), these drugs help to "open up the mind" by restructuring it in such a way that expands one's perspective beyond one's narrow everyday ego concerns. Some people call this "ego death", but I don't like that term. As I mentioned above, I don't agree with Buddhist conceptions of the ego, which some secular Buddhists blithely reduce to "ego death = enlightenment". If you read my previous posts on this topic, you'll see why. I don't believe the ego is a bad thing or an enemy to be vanquished. I've seen how aspiring to ego death can go terribly wrong for people. And I've been exposed to different perspectives on ego and believe there are better ideas out there.

[eelhound]

"1. Consciousness is real. (We know that from our own experience.)

2. Everything is physical. (There’s no evidence that immaterial stuff exists.)

3. Therefore, consciousness is physical.

4. There’s no 'radical emergence' in nature. (We don’t get something from nothing.)

5. Consciousness emerging from totally non-conscious stuff would be radical emergence.

6. Therefore, all stuff must have some consciousness baked into it."

- Sigal Samuel, from "What if absolutely everything is conscious?" Vox, 5 July 2024.

[thetempleoftheone]

A friend once said to me, "Nothing is sacred, you are just kind." I laughed and spoke, "I think that 'nothing is sacred' only because everything is sacred. Washing dishes is a sacred act. Cooking food, cleaning the house, all these things that people take for granted, they are holy acts. The profane and the sacred are the same thing. The mind makes distinctions, and the ego chooses sides, but the One remains the One."

- The Nameless

[drondskaath]

Acausal Intrusion | Panpsychism | 2023

American Technical Death Metal

Artwork by Daniele Valeriani

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Sentience

The philosophy of sentience explores the nature of conscious experience, the ability to feel, perceive, and experience subjectively. It is central to debates in ethics, philosophy of mind, and the nature of being. Sentience is often linked to discussions about what entities have moral worth, the nature of consciousness, and the criteria for subjective experience.

1. Definition of Sentience

Sentience refers to the capacity to have subjective experiences or feelings. In contrast to mere information processing or cognition, sentience is characterized by a conscious awareness of sensory and emotional states, such as pain, pleasure, fear, or joy.

It is often distinguished from sapience, which refers to higher-order intellectual faculties like reasoning, wisdom, and problem-solving.

2. Sentience and Consciousness

Sentience is often discussed as a subset of consciousness. While all sentient beings are conscious (in that they experience sensations), not all conscious beings may be considered sentient in the ethical sense (if they do not experience suffering or pleasure in the same way).

Philosophical questions arise about the degree of phenomenal consciousness (the first-person subjective experience) that different beings possess, and whether machines or artificial systems could ever achieve sentience.

3. Sentience and Moral Consideration

Utilitarian Ethics: Philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer argue that sentience is the key criterion for moral consideration. According to this view, any being that can experience pleasure or pain deserves moral concern, regardless of its species or intellectual capabilities.

Peter Singer’s Argument for Animal Rights: Singer's utilitarian perspective advocates for the equal consideration of interests, extending moral concern to non-human animals that can suffer. Singer’s argument has led to the modern animal rights movement and a rethinking of ethical duties to sentient beings beyond humans.

Rights-Based Approaches: Some philosophers argue for rights to be extended to sentient beings, not merely based on their capacity for reason or autonomy, but on their ability to suffer. This leads to discussions of rights for animals and, in more futuristic contexts, artificial intelligence (AI) or sentient robots.

Moral Status of AI: With the advancement of artificial intelligence, the question arises whether machines can ever become sentient, and if so, whether they would deserve moral consideration. This touches on the moral status of artificial systems and how we should treat them if they ever develop subjective experiences.

4. Sentience and Non-Human Animals

The philosophical study of animal sentience is concerned with understanding which animals are sentient and how their sentience compares to human consciousness. This involves both scientific and philosophical inquiry into the nature of animal minds.

Animal Sentience and Consciousness: Research in cognitive science has shown that many non-human animals exhibit complex behaviors and signs of emotional and sensory experiences. Philosophers like Thomas Nagel in his famous essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" explore how sentience might differ across species, suggesting that the subjective experience of being another kind of animal may be inaccessible to humans.

Speciesism: The philosophy of sentience challenges the idea of speciesism, a form of bias that grants higher moral status to humans over animals based solely on species membership. Philosophers like Peter Singer argue that sentience should be the benchmark for moral consideration, not intellectual or species-based distinctions.

5. Sentience in Artificial Intelligence and Machines

Can machines be sentient? This question lies at the intersection of philosophy, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Philosophers and computer scientists debate whether AI can ever develop subjective experiences or whether they merely simulate cognitive functions.

The Chinese Room Argument (John Searle): In his famous thought experiment, Searle argues that even if a machine can simulate understanding of language or cognition, it does not mean that it is sentient. According to Searle, machines might process information but lack the subjective awareness that characterizes sentience.

Functionalism and Sentience: Some functionalist philosophers argue that if a machine or AI system can functionally replicate the processes that give rise to sentience in humans (e.g., neural activity), it may indeed be sentient. However, others contest that functional replication is insufficient to create true subjective experiences.

6. Sentience and Conscious Experience

The hard problem of consciousness, as articulated by David Chalmers, involves explaining why and how sentient experiences (qualia) arise from physical processes. Even if we understand the brain's functions, there remains the mystery of how these functions lead to subjective experiences like the sensation of red or the feeling of pain.

Panpsychism: One solution proposed by some philosophers is panpsychism, the idea that consciousness or sentience is a fundamental property of the universe, present even in basic forms in all matter. This would suggest that all entities, even non-living ones, have some degree of sentience, though perhaps vastly different from human experience.

7. Degrees of Sentience

Sentience is often understood in degrees, where some beings are capable of more complex, nuanced experiences than others. For example, humans may experience a wide range of emotions, reflections, and pleasures, while simpler animals or even AI may only experience basic sensations like pleasure or pain.

Philosophical Issues: Philosophers explore how we determine the degree of sentience in different beings, whether there is a qualitative difference between human and animal sentience, and whether any entities besides biological organisms could possess it.

8. Sentience and Self-Awareness

Some philosophers link sentience to self-awareness, suggesting that to be sentient, one must not only feel but be aware of oneself as the subject of those feelings. This leads to further debates on whether animals or machines could ever achieve self-awareness or whether that is a uniquely human trait.

The philosophy of sentience is concerned with the nature of conscious experience, the capacity to feel and perceive, and the ethical implications of sentience. It raises questions about the moral status of animals, AI, and other beings, as well as the deeper metaphysical question of how subjective experience arises from physical processes. Sentience is central to many debates about what it means to be conscious and what obligations we have to other sentient beings.

[earthling-wolf]

Ni Translocality

Metaphors & Visual Aphorisms

The Ni function compels the individual to live a slowly paced, hands-off life of observation and reflection on the information structures of the world. They are first and foremost data synthesizers that formulate image-encoded schemas from unconsciously woven patterns in reality. The Ni user will be very graphic in their consciousness, thinking in visuals and representing the world through visual metaphors. These dynamic, but geometric, relationships are registered as essential to reality's functioning and are eventually superimposed onto other life domains in a proverbial form. "A tree's branches can only grow as far up as its roots go down", "flowing water never goes stale" or "every light casts a shadow" are examples of the graphical aphorisms that may develop from this information synthesizing process. For the Ni user, the world is not comprehended through words or axioms but through these visual relationships which words help to convey to others. These relations are often symmetrical in nature --as embodied in concepts like the Taoist yin-yang symbol-- due to the abundance of symmetry observed in life itself. An elaborate worldview inescapably develops predicated on these abstracted relationships, aimed to give life predictability and continuity of narrative. The world is never seen straightforwardly by the Ni user, as reality is formed from representative structures --not rational absolutes. Knowledge, to the Ni user, is the net awareness gained by superimposing layers of these representations on reality and mapping its landscape as far and wide as possible.

The Mind & Panpsychism

And because he views reality as representation, the Ni user will constantly experience life as a perceptual sphere built from the interactions of mind and material. The world appears as a tapestry woven together by higher forces which underpin every object and substance – causing the objects themselves to feel like the outer shells or totems of fundamental forces. And a sense will often exist – as explored in phenomenology – that consciousness is the essential thing. In some form or another, the Ni user will come to embody the philosophy that the psyche has a degree of priority over the material. One way to imagine this is to say the world constellates itself to the Ni user as being built equally of “psyche” and of matter. Still, every Ni user will synthesize this felt sense in slightly different ways, with some believing that consciousness is the prime constituent of reality and others feeling we are co-creators of reality by our active participation in how it appears to us and how we ascribe meaning to the contents within it. This can lead magnetically to a type of panpsychism, where the Ni user views the contents of the mind seriously as entities, forces, energies and contours as perceivable as literal objects are to other people. These psychological images and forces will not only be present, but will also be persistent. To them the psyche has a steady-yet-fluid shape; an image and terrain that is to be explored through vision and internal perception. And while other types may arrive at similar philosophies through rationality, for the Ni user this sensation is not something deduced but instead simply uncovered, as it represents the default state of their experience. This proclivity naturally leads to an interest in meditation, eastern thought and spirituality which emphasizes these same psychic aspects and presents a philosophy of consciousness more natively aligned to their phenomenological experience.

Narrowness & Convergence

Yet for all their openness towards surreal ideas about consciousness, the Ni user is not at all random or unstructured in their views. They are scarcely persuaded of most things and are instead highly cautious of ideas overall. The Ni user will have a keen eye for identifying the improbability of things and will not be prone to jump on board with things unless their inner imagery already maps out an inescapable trajectory in that direction. The Ni user is not an inciter or generator of novel things, nor is his specialty a spontaneous creativity, but is instead the holistic assimilation of trends over time, and a convergence of perspective along the most reinforced trend-lines. They generally see only one or a few trajectories stemming from a given situation and are magnetically drawn to the likeliest interpretations. Thus, the ideas the Ni user arrives at are not things he creates, but things he discovers to already be "the case"; often sourcing from an inside-out evaluation of being but just as well from a panoramic evaluation of society. In this way, the Ni user is a sort of investigator or excavator of the primordial imagery in himself and society. More than any other type, the Ni user receives a linear and direct feed of the imagery of the unconscious, and because of this convergence of focus, many Ni users across time continue to re-discover and re-articulate the same things as they unearth the same territory. As Ni users from all ages inquire into questions of being, their convergent intuition guides them to parallel answers and to convey those understandings in imagery --since image is the primary means by which that information is discovered and encoded. A canonical historical archive therefore has developed over time in the form of symbology; the encrypted patterns and representative structures that underpin reality, as collectively uncovered over time.

Symbology

In this sense, the Ni user may often find camaraderie in the symbology that has been laid down by previous pioneers for its capacity to give a form of articulation to that felt inner content. Strange as it may seem to others to believe or seriously consider such archaic and outdated emblems, the Ni user is drawn to these old images the same way the Si user is drawn to information encoded in the old earth. The Ni user may not wish to be a mystic whatsoever, and when not fully individuated may shrink away from this imagery for fear of academic reprimand. And yet they may feel as though their style of awareness drafts them inescapably into these ideas. They emerge out of themselves when any intense investigation is done or indeed even when no investigation is done. The realm of alchemical symbolism, the Tarot, ayurvedic medicine and Astrology may be studied intently for their capacity to superimpose a representation over life. Shapes also contain a powerful influence over them, and they may be drawn to sacred geometry and mandalas. Numerology may also be investigated. Over time, by studying these emblems with the intention of discovering what their true meanings are, they are slowly transformed into the likeness of those who built them. As they unearth the contents of this domain, they often become affiliated with the taxonomies used by their predecessors to try to express this underworld. However, their dabbling in these ideas may earn them a reputation as a mystic and confuse family and friends who may not understand the significance in such concepts.

Archetypes & Stereotypes

As the Ni user matures into a personal worldview, a vast archive of typicalities form by these observations. Each pattern of life is epitmoized in the psyche as an general rule or process. This leads quite inescapably to the formation of stereotypes at the local level and archetypes at the universal level --both of which are used to map reality by providing a sense of predictability. In the positive sense, this stereotyping tendency allows for life to be an iconic series of interactions between previously indexed forces and entities. The Ni user will overlay their schema onto the world and see iterations of the same substances everywhere. From this vantage point, certain social or political interactions will appear to them as clockwork; a series of eventualities stemming from two or more colliding forces. The interactions in a neighborhood may be seen through the same light, as categories are applied to each class of person and their collisions cause transformations through a sort of necessary chemistry. But as often captured by the negative sense of the word stereotype, this can lead to errors in perception where a pattern or schema is superimposed over a situation too prematurely. A person is anticipated to be a given way, due to the symbol they represent, while turning out to be quite different. And at the archetypal level, the same simplification may occur where the Ni user reduces the global situation as something emergent from a conflict between the light and dark, the masculine and feminine, an interaction of four or five elements or some other schema which neglects certain subtleties and details. This may be infuriating to those who live with the Ni user as they may feel the Ni user is oversimplifying them, or worse that they are pigeonholing people into their categories --whether of culture, class, race or gender. Many may scoff at the Ni user for depending on what they feel are outdated prejudices and not seeing things at the individual level. But the Ni user cannot ignore what larger pattern someone or something generally belongs to and will tend to incidentally synthesize life from that lens even without any actual investment or commitment to any dogma or belief system.

Synchronicity & Parapsychology

Another effect that often emerges from the Ni function is a belief in synchronicity. Because of how Ni registers life through a delicate tracking of "significance" --not by the rigidity of causal chains-- the Ni user will instinctively see the value in data associations that converge in theme and motif, even when the cause is yet unknown. As is often the case for both intuitive processes, the pattern is recognized first without needing to have the sensory points explicitly traced and neither does the absence of a sequential explanation make the information alignments vanish. And when Ni is especially strong, seemingly disconnected layers of existence are woven together through an entangled point; compelling many Ni users to contend with the possible existence of the acausal. Certain events or datasets may be felt as crossing different planes of reality and being inexorably related even when a surface examination would see no trace between them. They may be struck by compelling evidence for the existence of extra-sensory perception or remote viewing which allows us to see through the eyes of others or predict their thoughts. For some, relationships may be intuited to exist between oneself and previous lives. Areas of the body may be associated with certain psychic energies through emotional tapping, chakras, iridology or palmistry. Certain recurring numbers may be felt as omens of blessings or catastrophes. If these intimations persist, they can become highly suspicious and feel that certain events will come about in the near future when a given number, detail or sign suggests a karmic force is strongly at play.

-Behaviors Under Stress

Conspiracy Theories

When the Ni user falls out of mental health, their suspicions degrade further into superstitions, death omens and a persistent state of anxiety. Life becomes chaotic and unpredictable. The world will feel utterly uncertain to them and they will not be able to clearly see the cause of their own suffering or that of society. As they struggle to intuit their situation through perceptual projection, the misfortunes they experience are not interpreted as localized occurrences but are instead epitomized as emerging from some extra-personal force looming over all things. They will start to perceive a woven network of intentions behind everything, pulling the strings of society at large. It's here that we see the Ni user fabricate conspiracy theories; extraterrestrial hypotheses, occult government sects, the imminent rise of a new world order and the like. A sense exists that something unseen is making all this happen, and for once the Ni user loses their non-committal nature and becomes utterly fixated on certain interpretations of life. This will cause them great difficulty in their daily lives as the Ni user may be quickly ostracized from society for their bizarre premonitions. More than a few distressed Ni users throughout history have been branded the local lunatics; eventually growing morose and resentful for what they feel is the lack of foresight and idiocy of the common man.

Apocalyptic Visions

A different effect we often see in a distressed Ni user is a series of apocalyptic visions. They may experience nightmares, either when asleep or awake, vividly depicting scenes of war, destroyed buildings, massacres and the end of a civilization. And the Ni user may experience these sudden flashes with the same level of physicality with which they experience their waking life --making it difficult to discredit them as illusions. Here we see an unconscious projection and intrusion of their polar sensory function into their mind, causing literal sensations to trigger their nervous system without an actual cause. The relationship between intuition and sensation is a two-way street, where one can seep into the other unbidden when an excessive repression is at its breaking point --allowing their intuitions to unconsciously fabricate sensory experiences that are patterned after their thematic convergence. These unsettling images may cause them to feel that their visions are in fact pending actualities. A memento mori will settle over them. Society is on the brink of collapse; everything is headed in the worst direction and anything short of immediate correction will lead to an irreparable catastrophe.

[sillymickel]

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[mumblelard]

finnie came over after work last night and we sat at my kitchen table, drinking tequila with tooth cracking cold bottles of grape pop and talking about the abandoned house behind the old school, rabid beavers, strawberry soju, the loose lioness, interstate latex fires, locket cats, and last days. it was a nice night

[constructbreakdown]

R.I.P. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 - 1673)

If I had a time machine, I would take Margaret Cavendish to Comic-Con.

Song is Panpsychism by Kat Wilson.

[afrosatanist]

The astrological philosophical perspective I hold is one that combines several different philosophies at its foundations. It is a polytheistic, cosmobiological, panenthiestic, panpsychic, phenomenological approach. It blends understanding through the application of mathematical-spiritual techniques & interpretations to help querents and astrologers alike come to a deeper reverence, purpose, clarity, and awakenings while engaging with and interpreting the chart.

The polytheistic cosmobiological portion helps us render truth from the power-obsessed and Imperial-minded monotheistic conception of spiritually, and the cosmos itself. This philosophical portion combats the notion that Divinity is a singular entity creating and destroying as it sees fit based on some ancient religion and it's particular precepts, or some other temporal religious/mystical/cultural instantiation of orientation of the divine in it's regional-historical scope.

The polytheistic-cosmobiologal portion discussed how in the multiplicity of Divinity's manifestations truth is everything but singular. Truth, if I must make an axiom, is multiplicity itself. This thus means there are now an expansive, yet finite relevant logics that can offer us a spiritual clarity as we remove the impetus to find a hill to war and die in with our individual conception of the Divine Mystery. It speaks it's truths in ways that create, deeper, and resolve dualities, dichotomies, and tensions through a logic that is alive, conscious, and in inextricable relationship to Time. The celestial bodies of our solar system become a relevant discussion for our understand of the methodology of his astrology is capable of functioning as a diviner's tool, but also as a spiritual/cosmically intelligent arithmetic that provides a language and logic for the material and metaphysical events that happen in our human lives on our own celestial planetary home.

In Western Astrology, we liken the planets unto mythic deities, with desires, tendencies, domains, and intentions and then track what those may manifest as when interpret placements, aspects and other patterns in the slew of different charts we have for our different analyses. If in our practices, both now as a divination tradition passed down historically with it's particular philosophical schools, and as a functional language when applying said philosophical schools notions for interpretations, it's smooth and consistently accurate when we give (divine) consciousness to multiple celestial bodies, we reinforce the logical proof of the next portions of my philosophical foundation, Panpsychism and Panenthiesm.

This becomes logically overlapping and expansive with ideas above. If it makes sense, spiritually through meditative practice or enhanced perception, if it makes sense linguistically and practically through interpretations that lend clarity and healing, and it makes sense logically and atithmetically through the mathematical techniques applied that gave us the interpretative clarity, we run into territory of Panenthiesm's logical forms. Panenthiesm asserts that Divinity is in all things, and all things are within Divinity. There's is nothing that exists that doesn't contain or isn't made up of the same celestial-conscious materials of the very deified cosmos themselves. This also becomes an important backdrop by which can show that no matter the occurrence, it's form, it's energetic presences, it exists and belongs within the cosmos. All things have a significance and purpose under this understanding, taking us to our explanation of Panpsychism. The Deified Consciousness of the cosmos is itself the ground floor of all of materiality, Panpsychism's philosophy asserts. That all things are conscious in varying degrees, but still built of the very same Divine Intelligence that allows our astrological (or any divination tradition/tool/technique) to be capable of provide any worthwhile, meaningful application and answer.

The mathematical, the biophysical, the cosmic/astronomical, the spiritual, the psychic/emotional all become interconnected and layered over each other multidimensionally in this perspective. It becomes the logical tracks that Divinity can communicate to itself, i.e. whether through humans practicing divination or plants growing in predetermined (and also dynamic) shapes and forms.

Next becomes a very important philosophical portion for those practicing and receiving astrological divination. The phenomenological approach of the utmost importance when it comes to both a diviner and a querent. The phenomenological approach asserts that this is matter of cross-paradigmatic navigation every time we communicate anything, let alone what are supposed to be Divined Communiques from Cosmic Deific Forces themselves. The Phenomenological portion reminds us that in the multiplicity of truth, power is humility, grace, an open heart and mind, because in the lack of understanding language, our bodies are attuned to respond to feelings/energetic resonances. What may not make sense in my worldview, individually or culturally, is still capable of being received, heard, and felt (again, even if nonsensically), meaning that spiritual practice and one's personal worldview is inevitably and inextricably linked to the ability to divine, interpret, or receive the fullness of any understanding or awareness. We speak through semiotic veils at all moments, and the more complex of a topic or logic we get to the more paradigmaric curtains must be acknowledged, and to the best of our ability, pulled back. This keeps us from an arrogant assumption of a singular divine truth needing to break through another's world for value and integration, no psycho-colonialism needed, just an open hand and clarified awareness of the moment and the information for the sake of healing, evolution, and further awakenings.

[tides-of-truth]

David Bohm theoretical physicist and philosopher said "That which we experience as mind... will, in a natural way, ultimately reach the level of the wave function and of the 'dance' of the particles. There is no unbridgeable gap or barrier between any of these levels.,.... in some sense, a rudimentary consciousness is present even at the level of particle physics"

from

quantumawareness.net

To this day we do not understand where or how consciousness arises and the role the brain plays in its formation if it plays a role at all. It could be just a receiver or radio, receiving information on several channels of perception that we would call our senses.

Panpsychism skips this need to discover the relationship between the brain and the rise of conscious awareness completely, its simplicity is simply pro-found. No matter how shocking or strange panpsy-chism sounds I am reminded at what Sherlock Holmes said, that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Can science accept this deduction and if not how do we prove that which we have not been able to prove, other than keep trying even though the truth is already in front of us?

from:

quantumawareness.net

[thetempleoftheone]

Our truest self, being unborn,  is both all and none of the Universe’s fleeting forms simultaneously. You imagine yourself as human, as if you have not been the violent light of stars, as if you are not the dust of countless dead worlds. You, yourself, are but one iteration of an entity so vast it cannot be rightly named.  - The Nameless

[mbti-notes]

This is unrelated to MBTI but do you believe in eternity? Is there anything in this life that y believe lasts forever? I have a Christian friend who believes in this concept, hearing her talk about eternal life after death frequently makes me actually curious whether to believe whether anything could last forever. Thanks for reading;)

As a general rule of thumb, I'm open to discussing but not debating matters of faith. Discussion is a process of exploring ideas and concepts, whereas debate is about critically examining ideas and concepts with the goal of arriving at truth. Matters of faith are, by definition, beliefs that are presumed true and thus do not require any explanation or justification. Trying to debate them usually just takes you round and round in circles. If you enjoy that, more power to you, but I personally don't.

What motivates people to hold beliefs based only on faith? Sometimes, it's because you don't know enough but you still need to proceed as though you do. Sometimes, it's because there's no better option. Do YOU want to believe in an eternal afterlife? Why would you? Most likely because you fear the unknown and/or you fear loss. Both fears stem from a deep-seated fear of death that is present in every human who understands their own mortality. Anyone who claims they don't fear death is either lying or hasn't properly acknowledged it yet. People can certainly face death bravely, but it doesn't mean they feel no fear.

Perhaps I'm wrong to assume, but the impression I get from believers in the afterlife is that they believe mainly because they are afraid. Very few people want to believe that death is the absolute end. It's quite painful to confront the possibility that you and everything you've experienced, accomplished, and loved just disappears. And then the world just continues chugging along as though your time meant nothing. Being unable to cope with meaninglessness is an easy way to trip into nihilism. From the perspective of your emotional health and well-being, faith seems like a better option than nihilism, doesn't it?

For the most part, I am a rational person, which means that I strongly prefer my beliefs to be well-supported by facts and reason. However, I will readily acknowledge that what humans know about the universe is infinitesimal. Being trained in philosophy, I'm more than happy to face up to all the things I don't know and, most importantly, I am relatively comfortable existing in ambiguity and uncertainty. Therefore, I don't have much use for faith, on the assumption that people use faith for the purpose of soothing existential fears. I accept and embrace my existential fears.

If I were to seriously consider the question of "eternity", I wouldn't do it from the perspective of death and religion but from physics and metaphysics. Whether there exists anything eternal is a question of what the universe really is at its most fundamental level.

The concept of eternity as it relates to religious afterlife is based on a particular view of physics. For example, it assumes that our conventional human conception of time is objective and real, as in, there is actually a past, present, and future. It also assumes that the true source of what we call human consciousness isn't the physical human body. Given what we currently know about physics and biology, both of these assumptions are difficult to defend.

I don't believe in an afterlife in any religious sense of heaven, hell, purgatory, or reincarnation, though I flirted with these ideas when I was younger and confused by the many religions around me. However, I do tend to believe that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, a view that some theorists call panpsychism. If I was forced to hold a faith-based belief, this is what I would choose.

The "consciousness" that panpsychism refers to is not the same as ego consciousness or whatever you include in your definition of who/what you are. It refers more to whatever animates the fundamental building blocks of the universe and produces the will to move and evolve. In this view, for reasons not yet fully understood, consciousness is neither created nor destroyed but just is, and it's always changing form. I suppose you could call that "eternal". Some people don't like the word consciousness and prefer "energy" or something like that.

Perhaps consciousness doesn't disappear at death but rather dissipates and reconstitutes as something else. Does this count as an "eternal afterlife"? I don't think it does, since there is no meaningful continuation of my personal ego consciousness. But the idea does grant me the tiniest speck of solace nonetheless.

[mentagenesis]

Soul Abilities Rediscovered.

by Daniel Wolfert. For a long time I’ve been convinced that materialistic rationalism has robbed us of abilities that are innate and quite natural to us as humans. During the 18th and 19th centuries cultures that had adopted materialistic and rationalistic thinking came into contact with what they considered to be primitive cultures and dismissed their beliefs as mere superstition. Ironically,…

[thebardostate]

The Word of God

Lyrics and melody © 1994 by Catherine Faber

From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,

Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline

We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,

And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.

Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;

Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.

The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.

Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.

There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,

Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.

Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,

Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.

High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,

The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.

We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,

Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.

By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,

How the living things that are descend from things that were.

The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,

These tiny, humble, wordless things - how shall they tell us lies?

We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.

The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.

Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,

Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.

And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,

Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,

Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.

The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.

Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,

The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.

So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.

Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.