Will Science and Religion ever be Reconciled?

Damage is a vain conception of energetic phenomena and recognizing that is not resigning to fate, it is getting beyond the needless pain of disappointment or disillusionment. Disappointment and disillusionment stem from mistakenly identifying natural forces. All anxiety is caused by the misapprehension of what is so. Real damage equals your verdict and that is all.

It is easy to become confused about your place in the world, to feel out of place in the midst of such superstition.

Yeah, and if you break the law you have the threat of incarceration but no abstract force throws people in jail. I call out your spirit right now and I can guaranty that represents absolutely no threat to me. For you to think a shaman is somehow specially endowed with power is an unbalanced thought.

There are three fundamental forces that are responsible for interaction they are absorption, reflection, and polarity. They appear to us acceptance, resistance, and the will to good. Your struggle is temperate, trying to maintain your degree of warm bloodedness and trying to find balance in the mind between the sensational extremes of pleasant and unpleasant.

Consciousness, the light by which all things are seen, precedes any cultural conditioning.

There is a difference between imagining things and recognizing things. Illumination is recognition.
.

And what consolation does the belief in harm offer, the promise of relief? Our lives are a series of sensations some of which you may call pleasant and some not so and this is true regardless your degree of apprehension but it is not required to maintain a positive/negative sensational perspective. Further if you really understood what makes happy then happy you would be. There is no law against good and if you do well are you not rewarded?

Condemnation coupled with belief in an ideal. The only thing the world suffers from are the verdicts or convictions of men.

Ah yes the good old days. Your record is just scratched and worn out and you don't see with high fidelity anymore, that is with the eyes of a child.

 

I know that this is more a talk for you and Wolf but I felt the need to add some of my own thoughts to your river man. To a certain extent I do agree with you about damage but I think it is more than just a verdict. The word damage stems from mankind's interpretation, therefore it is a description of what we see. When we witness wounds in our reality we dub them to be damage. This is the verdict. Yet the wounds are still there, there is still pain, and anger, and darkness. The thing many don't see is that all of that is an equal part to the Way. These wounds must happen. When an artist looks at a work he or she thought finished and sees that it is not, he or she must tear out what does not need be and create what is seen.

I agree sometimes one's path is dark.

All things are "specially endowed with power". One must simply know when to be and when not to be.

Illumination often comes from imagination.

 

Thanks for joining in!
In summation of what you just said, life yields only to more life.


There is a difference between pain and damage. Pain is not a negative thing it is an out of comfortable boundary thing. Too cold painful, too hot painful as well. Damage is to our conceptual standard of rightness only. On this issue it seems expedient to ask the question would you rather be right or would you rather be happy, would you rather reality be genuinely threatened or would you rather be able to count on something real?

Nothing is special, everything is precious.
There are no idle thoughts and we cannot escape the effects of our own thinking. There is no degree of difficulty in being but there is certainly an authority problem. We cannot but be, to know when to be or not to be is the conceptual error of moralistic judgement and the weight of this perpetual arbitration is debilitating. Love is beyond what can be taught but we can remove the barriers we have erected against it's perception.
I need do nothing, need not tell my right hand what to do apart from my left.
I am constrained by the self organizing principle of life. It is my only prohibition and in that single prohibition, reality cannot harmed, I may find grace. This is peace of god that leaves in it's wake naught but the joy and grateful recognition of being real.

Illumination makes images visible.

 

INDY!! Butting into our conversation! Who started this thread anyway…? ;-)

Just kidding everyone is welcome to join in, and I read every contribution and thank you for it Indy, Tikoo, Anaximenes and anyone else----even if I don’t respond directly (I only have so much time), your input is valued too! I read it, and take it into consideration too, even incorporate it.

While I value this idea, and agree with you, I do so with the caveat that it is a subjective understanding. It is the Eastern concept of Non-Attachment, but it is an understanding found in all spiritual beliefs. I respect that you have that belief.

But I say it is subjective because it is a question of how we experience the world as our own separate ego, or consciousness. And Indy you might agree more with this. Non-attachment was the word I was struggling to come up with late last night when I wrote resignation. On a subjective level this non-attachment is not easy to understand or practice. You understand it, I am currently being reminded by spirit that I should practice it---but for many people, they try and end up repressing the negative, rather than becoming non-attached. The subjective is a question of experience, and growth. To assume that we all can understand and live such a subjective dynamic is turning a subjective into an objective assumption.

In fact-----this is the problem with religion in general. Taking the subjective and pushing it into an objectivism. This is why dharma is just another word for dogma. This is why Hinduism is one of the most powerful political, racist, and male chauvinistic systems to come into being. And come to think of it----this is why Kant had to separate religion and philosophy from science, in order that either pursuit could continue to progress!

SO----what does this mean? It means that we can understand and believe this on a subjective level---we can say that damage is an illusion, or accept that negative forces move alongside positive forces (and it is only our existential understanding that even judges them to be negative). Yes I agree!

But on an objective level, this does not do anything for the people. (This is why Hinduism has continued so long while oppressing people by race, sex, skin color, since its very beginnings---this adherence to non-attachment coupled with the concept of karma). At an objective level there is pain and suffering. (And this is why Buddhism rose out of Hinduism---yet the cultural precedent, despite the illumination of Siddhartha (his change of mind if you will) created the same trappings of Hinduism. Buddhism puts more focus, and empowers the subjective significantly more than Hinduism, it still pushes the subjective into objectivism). At an objective level, people suffer, and they suffer subjectively.

We are coming into the Thanksgiving holidays. Few people understand the dark history of Thanksgiving in America’s history. Originally Thanksgiving was an outright and blatant ceremonial tradition of Manifest Destiny. After every Indian massacre, a thanksgiving was held, thanking God for clearing new farmlands and the like of the heathen savages. There were certainly people who knew how wrong this was. After the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, Kit Carson came out and publicly declared how disgusted he was with the inhumanity committed there. What if we all just accepted that such forces are part of life, and on an objective level, remained unattached? Then most certainly, just as the caste system, and the ritual of sati (co-cremation) still exist in India, despite both being illegal, we would be sitting down to the table and thanking god for killing off those heathen savages. What about the lynchings of black people up into the 1960’s. On an objective level, should we simply state that there is no damage to them and their families? That such perception of damage is, as you stated, “…a vain conception of energetic phenomena and recognizing that is not resigning to fate, it is getting beyond the needless pain of disappointment or disillusionment.”

I objectively disagree. On a subjective level, I can understand that, and live in such a manner. On a universal level I also agree, and have stated that there are no universal ethics (again an existentialist understanding). But on a human objectivist level---I believe we have to work to lessen the suffering of others. To stand up to injustice.

Both Manifest Destiny and racism are still there today. But now they are even more insidious because they are buried in the shadows of both the collective unconscious and the subconscious of individuals----a nasty place, because there they continue to act out and repress others---but from there, few people recognize it!

Finally, let me add that it is this objectivistic concept of non-attachment that is represented in the dark side of Hegel’s philosophy of historicism. It is the reason that Hegel’s philosophy was twisted into the fascism of Europe, and gave credence to the evils of World War II. It implies that such negative forces must play out through the course of history---because they have their purpose in bringing us to a higher level of being. This is where I disagree with historicism. Yes---such forces had their purpose through out history, but by no means does that give us the right to give into them, or even promote them for the greater good.

You may respond that such is not the intention of this understanding of the world. But that was never Hegel’s intention either.

 

No, you are making this into something that it is not. On the one hand, coming back from a vacation is hard to do. I naively thought that once I stop working, it would be easy to come back from a vacation. But I soon discovered that even though I woke up the next day and did not have to have a schedule ‘I had to keep,’ I still missed the vacation just as much.

But on a deeper level, I originally brought this up to demonstrate the strong bonds that develop in ceremony---as I recall a good example of a cultural tradition that unites people. But there is also a transition phase---of getting back into daily life after the spiritual power and high of a ceremony. It doesn’t mean your confused of your place in the world---it is just a transition back into a place where such power does not exist in such a blatant manner. It is a state of confusion---but not about where one should be.

The shaman has no special endowment of power. Just like a kid playing with an Ouija Board has no special power. But there is danger in doing things that one should not, or one is not prepared for. Spirit does have power. This is why people die in new age sweat lodges, but not in Native ones. I can tell a few stories. And I have told some in these forums. Anyone who walks the Red Road should be able to tell you stories, but more importantly, to warn you that one should not play with things they have no business doing.

No argument here---except that what is good is very subjective (see the answer I just posted earlier today---before this one).

I would like to believe that is true---but through all my own searching and examination of history and philosophy, I would have to say that I don’t see how this statement could be true at a conscious level. Subconsciously yes---but we speak a different language and wield a different understanding at the subconscious level. Consciously we have our ego to contend with---and it is shaped by the physical world around us, including culture. Anything that does not fit with the ego understanding gets filtered to the subconscious. And even then, the subconscious that most easily connects to the conscious mind is that which is influenced by the collective subconscious---again---culture. In the end, what we consciously perceive, is heavily tainted by cultural precedent and conditioning.

For this I refer you back to my previous comments in the post I posted earlier today. But I will add: feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are---but they are real. What consolation is the concept of non-attachment to someone who is attached to their loss? Such a concept offers no relief, it offers nothing to them, if they are not ready to understand that, nor ready to accept it. It will actually make people mad that you even suggest such a thing to them (i.e. it will make the situation worse). It is a subjective issue, and cannot be pushed as an objective one.

Ok---here’s a different example----when Psycho came out, along with other movies of those days---they were pretty scary and shocking. My son cannot understand that. Today the violence portrayed in the movies is more raw, the reality portrayed is more real---special effects are way beyond mimicking reality than they were when you and I were a kid, or a teenager, or what have you. My son is exposed to far more graphic violence than we were as kids. (I’m not giving credence to violence today or whatever---my kid is a very good kid----I’m just giving an example). There is sensationalism and media induced hysteria that makes today look so bad and horrible, or more so than 10 years ago. I am not making that argument----but over a longer run, we are growing in nihilism and crime, and drug and alcohol abuse, and so forth------statistics paint that picture.

 

Mountain Valley Wolf QUOTE:

"But now they are even more insidious because they are buried in the shadows of both the collective unconscious and the subconscious of individuals----a nasty place, because there they continue to act out and repress others---but from there, few people recognize it!"

I disagree with this. Collective Unconscious is exactly the Causation of the Thou aspect of common observing and unveiling of the natural meta-physcal truth of the transcendental Ego being understood in the values we exchange for knowledge. And the causation in turn is the memory of as much feelings as what the impression of the transcendental necessity of Past objects were. Remembering an occasion is and should be (realized by Word for how memory for Knowledge really Is) commonly for the human essence.

The human essence of memory usually is first for the most rigorous experiences a feeling for how people encountered each other, had animosities, had psychic misunderstandings for their common intellectual problem OR had stressful ambition to (yes in pain) to control. Take it for instance to ME, what is truly an empirical appearance is the necessary character of a meaningful convention for completing the task at hand. All appearances correspond to unique tasks; that composes the nature of the inward for the Impression and directs causality for an explanation of Phenomenon.

That is the meaning of empirical Sciences, at least the noble ones, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. These sciences ultimately commit the actions (whether they be in China, the U.S., Israel, or Iran) of acculturated people to universally justified similar activity of shopping, travelling on local transportation, wearing clothes, etc. ... living ways. How the national boundaries are overcome is possibly a revolt of the Masses. But I'd rather be optimistic about the tolerance and racial integrity of the broadly based scientific socializing. The problem is the communication of and the lack of communication of the impersonal life and standards. Feuerbach and Marx called this the narrow focus of day to day particular experience instead of the already spoken of Universal concrete content of Form.

People are not aware of that until their religious lessons cross that in real life.

 

Will science and religion ever be reconciled?

Not until people learn to speak (write) from the heart well knowing the importance of the occasion. oh dear, now we don't want progress.:willy_nilly:

 

It is reconciled by a lot of people. It is reconciled inside me. I think most smart people that matter are not making a problem of this nonissue. Only simpletons feel the need to oppose and/or divide contradictions in their own head when they don't have to cause any problem.

 

can't rep you again, so...:2thumbsup:

 

Disappointment comes from incorrect appointment or incorrect anointing of authority. The perception of injustice is caused by the misapprehension of what is so. What does standing up to injustice have to do with lessening the suffering of others? What does being contentious have to do with lessening the suffering of others? You are speaking from the apparent terrain of a split mind, what you call subjectively/objectively, or spiritual/physical. All this contending for is like playing cowboys and indians only this time we want the indians to win and is the extension of grandiose beliefs in heroic natures or higher and lower levels of being, some shinier more deserving than others. This argument is the defensive foundation for a priestly class. Don't mess with the juju, you haven't been properly trained or blessed by the proper ritual, your value hasn't been converted into legal tender of the temple. We say on the one hand objectively things are cool but subjectively we need to fight this battle. We neither enter in ourselves, find ourselves in fact cool, nor let anyone else enter because we are busy harassing them.

All things are lawful but not all things are helpful, helpful being a matter of timing. Eat when you are hungry, rest when you are tired. What do you contend for, what is the prize? There is nothing subconscious about this argument, it's terms are quite plain. Proper function is related to the question what is it for and on this basis we can discern whether a thing is helpful or not.

 

It is not a fact of nature that our carefree days should seem so few and forever distant. That perception represents the fact that we have been taught to care more or less rather than allowed to be free with our care.

 

I don't think I am making this into something it is not.
As I said to Anaximines, this storm you describe is caused by uneven heating, caring more or less, a split mind about the value of the things you see and your moment to moment level of attention as a result. What you call subconscious is not at all unconscious and subconscious motivations are derived from conscious decisions or sponsoring thoughts that administer subsequent seeming habitual responses. Conscious decisions sublimated are what you call, what came before.

I agree, it is confusion about where one is. Limited power is a contradiction in terms.

Eeeck spooky! Follow the yellow brick road to the land oz if you want. Obviously it has nothing to do with kansas and we know the wizard is all smoke and mirrors. I look into the ruby red slipper slide of my heart and see there is no place like home.

come back to earth for what it's worth for you are dreaming of ceiling not a home

.
In order to access the rich mans stores you must first bind the strong man!
Defenselessness then is invulnerability.
Subconscious motivations are quite conscious decisions committed to memory. Taming the animal is not necessary, learning of it is.

Precisely such a concept is a conceptual seed but the ray of creation proceeds thus thought, word, and deed. We first dream, then dream of peace, then awaken to peace. You cannot offer relief save to feed and clothe just as no one else can move your diaphragm, but you can consistently look for comprehension. We can and do share our thoughts.
An unhealed healer is a contradiction in terms. A peaceful mind demonstrates examples of peace. A conflicted mind fights for causes. First do no harm to the peaceful fabric of our mind or why worry about the speck in someone else's eye, first remove the log from your own.

 

It seems to me that your disagreement is based on Jung’s literal definition of the collective unconscious. But I think that this definition was what Jung offered up in an attempt to explain a metaphysical thing in physical terms---in a way that would not make him a laughing stock that would get him kicked out of the empirically minded academia of the day. Therefore it was nothing more than inherited memories buried in the physical structure of the brain. But in reality, I think Jung understood the collective unconscious to be more of a collective soul than he let on---something along the lines of Dr. Sheldrake’s biomorphic field.

Regardless, that is how I see it---that collectively there is a psyche of sorts that is manifested within our culture, community, Nation, and so forth. Movies, art, literature, and so forth, represent the product of this collective unconscious, much as dreams are a product of our own individual unconscious. And just as dreams are important to us as individuals, and contain lessons from the unconscious in the language of the unconscious, so are the arts and literature, and so forth to the culture and nation as a whole. Therefore, in my view, modern phenomenology more often than not is studying the dynamic of the collective unconscious.

When you study Jung, I think you begin to see (and I think it is amazing and so obvious) that there is a collective shadow, and that we as a culture, community, or even nation, do all the things that a lone individual does---we act out the contents of the shadow, we project the contents of the shadow, and collectively we are very emotional when faced with our own shadow elements-----just as an individual is in dealing with his/her own shadow.

A simple but obvious example is the Republican Party and their harping on big government, government controls, protecting the constitution, and freedom, and how Obama is a socialist and on and on. They see themselves as the protector of freedom, and their ego-ideal of a strong Christian country (that they see as constitutional and free) is undeniable. Yet which party is doing its best to stomp on the rights of minorities, women, gays, and Americans in general. Which party introduced the Patriot Act, and went way too far spying on Americans, and taking away rights. Clearly they are projecting their shadow onto the democrats. Consciously they are all about freedom, but their own shadow is a repressive, and acts to take away freedoms. The Democrats have their own shadow projection. Or consider the Cold War, and the shadow projection between the US and the Soviets.

In other words, I do not see the collective unconscious as individual memories buried within each individual’s subconscious----but instead is a dynamic collective psyche that acts just like the psyche of individuals. It is still an unconscious or subconscious entity because it cannot be ‘conscious.’ It is not a single mind.

In addition to memory, the individual psyche manifests intention, and exercises free will. We make choices, we make deductions, and so forth. Memory (and culture) shapes how we act and make such decisions. This aspect of the psyche is based on the conscious mind, but the subconscious does much to influence that---and it is not just memories----there is far more to it than that---and that same dynamic plays out in the collective unconscious---the difference is that it is individuals who play the part of the conscious mind.

The fact that racism and even the concept of manifest destiny have been repressed into the collective shadow, means that we are making steps in this issue. We know that it is wrong so we have repressed it, and at a conscious level say, ‘this is wrong.’ The bad thing is that as a shadow element, it is masked, and consciously we believe it no longer exists. Therefore it is almost hidden as it continues to play out. The recent issue of the New York stop & frisk policy (or whatever it was called) is a case in point. Minorities are unfairly targeted, and are very vocal about it. White people could not even see an issue, and the New York government clearly saw it as a fair and well-intentioned crime deterrent, and had a hard time accepting that it was just another unfair policy based on racial profiling.

In Jungian psychology the biggest key to healing is facing that shadow element and accepting it. This is where we are at today---facing and accepting that this exists and then working to understand why (it is a matter of understanding the source of such shadow elements that eventually defuses them, and they are no longer an issue).

In this way I see change towards breaking down borders and growing closer together as a human race as an evolutionary process (I favor Kropotkin over Marx). This is the side of Hegel’s historicism that I agree with.

 

I would say that what you are seeing is a transition to a new age---like the transition from the feudal age into the industrial age.

But to see it as a non-issue is to misunderstand the problem---this is connected to the problem of mankind destroying itself and the planet we live on. It is a problem that involves the potential downfall of modern culture. It relates to the nihilism that is masked under the mass consumerism of today. I could go on, but I would be just repeating what has already been said.

Just because it is resolved in the minds of individuals does not yet do away with it as an issue.

 

i see no logic in people trying to make science and religion enimies of each other.
there is no conflict because they are each about entirely different things.
it is only people who want an excuse to have something to fight over, who try to claim religion is talking about science or science is talking about religion.
there is just no overlap at all. even when they might sound like they are talking about the same things they are not.

 

Oh I am pretty sure you are completely wrong and will see the best proof they are the same thing by easter next year...but who knows? I could be wrong? Guess we will see that before this discussion gets over! Ahahaha!

 

That is a post-planter culture group ethic perspective that you are once again speaking from. Why should the one be shinier than the other? Why should standing up for injustice mean that now the underdog has to win? Does this mean that if I stand up for women’s rights, that I think that men should be paid less, and be forced to stay at home and take care of the children, and lose their right to vote? No, it doesn’t.

If I speak out against Christian missionaries proselytizing indigenous people, does that mean that I think that Christians should be forced to pick up indigenous ways? No it doesn’t. It simply means that Christians should leave the indigenous alone.

To speak of subjective/objective, or spiritual/physical as products of the terrain of a split mind is to downplay the significance of physical reality and to ignore why we are here—to experience. Personally, I enjoy the experience of physical reality.

This perspective that all is mind, and everything is interconnected as a giant singular unity, comes from a belief system that deems the physical world as trapped in a never-ending karmic chain of suffering, and the only way to escape it is to seek non-attachment and to work towards enlightenment so that upon one’s death, one may break free from this karmic chain, or at least, move one step closer to achieving such in the next life.

So I ask you, what does non-attachment have to do with the relieving the suffering of others? You ask what standing up for injustice has to do with it? I answer, everything. Again----take the case of India. Do you think the struggle to raise the level of women in India or the darker skinned castes have anything to do with the efforts of Hinduism to ease the suffering of others? No, it is entirely based on influence from the West.

You are accusing me of falling into the Noble Savage prejudice. That is not the case. Yes---I do think it is time to discard the dualistic group ethic, and replace it with a multiplistic and individualistic ethic---which would represent a return to a cosmological understanding much like our hunter-gatherer ancestors, I am not saying that everyone should believe in the spirits as they did---I have said over and over in these forums that everyone has their own trip on this earth. An indigenous person doesn’t give a crap about how someone else believes. If we do away with the divisive ethics and cosmological understandings that no longer fit in the diverse global Modern culture of today, then who cares whether you are a Christian or a Hindu or an atheist----that’s your trip----it is all good. No one is shinier than another-----that is what I am talking about.

Yes----it is a foundation for a priestly class----in the post-planter culture group ethic. When you understand the world in terms of in-group and out-group then this leads to a privileged class.

On the other hand, would you want an auto mechanic to perform surgery on you? Or would you prefer that your surgeon spend years in medical school and devote his time to keeping up with the latest medical advances all the while keeping in practice of healing people. I am sure you would prefer the latter case. But guess what, you would have no problem with such a surgeon being highly paid, and well respected, and part of an elite group. But guess what else---a medicine man is not paid---except in a bit of tobacco. If you try to praise a good medicine man, he rejects it. If you give him credit, he will tell you he did nothing. There is no privilege to being a medicine man. They will stop everything to pray for you. They will even quit their regular jobs to pray for you, or perform ceremony for you, and what will they get in return? Some tobacco, and exhaustion----is that a privilege?

In your next post (below) you say an unhealed healer is a contradiction in terms. That is exactly right. And almost everyone in today’s world is unhealed in some form or another. This is why we should not mess with the juju. Plastic shamans and the like, think they can make money playing the part. Worse are people who learn a little of the Red Road who think they can achieve selfish ends or solve peoples problems with the ways---that is where the real danger is.

Clearly you have never had experience with the ways of the Red Road. There are no games there. There is no strange coincidence that we make things into. And the last thing anyone, who walks the Red Road, would want to be is a medicine man. In fact, there is a problem in the Lakota communities with the next generation of medicine men---suicide. A good friend of mine that I talk about from time to time----struggled so hard with his calling to be a medicine man---fought against it---that he tried to commit suicide numerous times, until he finally accepted it. It is not a privilege.

Now having said that, am I saying that the Red Road is better than any religion? Let me put it this way---it should not be. Not for the spiritual core that exists in Christianity and every other religion. But after the enlightenment, and industrialization----religion, Western religion in particular, no longer believes in such things---religion has become, as Jung said, nothing more than a creed. But I would say that if people search for it hard enough, they will find the same thing in any religion. But not where there is greed and ego (which includes the greed and elitism of the priestly class). They have to look deeper than that.

Yes you are, because we are not really connecting here---and this is the thing about subjective experience---if you have not experienced it, you cannot really understand it. You can make assumptions, but in the end, you are describing something to me about my experience that does not fit.

I disagree also with your subconscious vs conscious. (Let me point out that unconscious and subconscious really represent the same thing---Jung tended to use unconscious as it was an older term). The conscious mind is shaped by the physical environment, our experiences, and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind influences and shapes areas of the subconscious. But the subconscious has many aspects to it that are a priori. In other words, they are innate, and we were born with them, or they come from a different reality. The subconscious influences the conscious mind far more than the other way around----that is science.

In its most literal sense, yes----but what is really limited is language’s ability to describe such things. Certainly the same hidden spiritual power exists in daily life that exists on the hill where I sat and did hanblechiya (Vision Quest). But on that hill, the veil of reality was lifted such that I could see a different reality---a reality where regular nature acted with clear intent to directly teach me. Back in the regular world, that does not happen, because the veil of physical reality covers it up. In the yuwipi ceremony, spirits come and dance and heal and change things. Back in the regular world the spirits are there, but they do not make their presence known. Limited power was probably not the best choice of words---but that is the limit of language.

I have already answered this response. But I will add that there is no smoke and mirrors. I am not dreaming of a ceiling, nor am I flying in the sky. Have you ever experienced the supernatural? Here you speak of non-attachment and a single mind, and non-judgment, and removing the log from one’s eye----and I seem to remember that you stated how being positive and all creates your own positive reality, yet if someone speaks of experiencing spiritual power doing things for us, you seem to reject it as superstition. Do you really believe what you preach, or is it all just an ego-ideal?

Oh yes, and here it is again:

You have your subjective understanding of how a peaceful mind should be. It is an understanding that seems to me to be clearly influenced by the Eastern philosophy of non-attachment. And even if you want to argue that it isn’t, it comes to the same conclusions. (And once again, this is an understanding that has created one of the most powerful, and longest living institutions in the history of mankind). And through this subjective understanding, you cannot understand how I would fight for a cause, unless I have a conflicted mind.

You say a peaceful mind demonstrates examples of peace---but have I demonstrated anything here that is not peaceful? I do not advocate violence. In fact, I advocate getting rid of those age-old ethics that lead to division and violence, privileged classes, and elitism----the post-planter culture group ethic and dualism.

Is Mahatma Gandhi an example of a conflicted mind? (Actually yes, he did have an issue with sex---his own shadow element, feeling guilt over choosing sex with his wife over his dying father. But other than that?). But from your own subjective understanding, how can you make the objectivistic observation that I have a log in my eye. You cannot understand my subjective understanding. (Here again is that problem with religion of pushing the subjective into an objective).

I have had conflicts in my life, I have recently felt anger over another person (I have dealt with that). I have dealt with the past conflicts in my life. I have faced my shadow. But all through my life, I have generally been a happy person. Why do I stand up for injustice? Not because I am conflicted, but because I feel the need to help others who do not have as good of a life as I do.

Now---if you start to get upset---then I am touching a shadow element. You have talked about the privileged priestly class, and being judgmental and that disappointment comes from an incorrect anointing of authority, and so forth. You thought that I was saying one way, or spirituality, is better than another. Yet you objectively pass judgment upon me that I have a log in my eye and that I have a conflicted mind. Is this not perhaps shadow projection?

You are determining from a reductionist standpoint that your way of non-attachment is the only way, or a superior way. It is as if you represent that elite priestly class, because you and I both know that non-attachment is not an easy path, and that you have to achieve your own level of anointment---to become special. Those who have achieved such a state of non-attachment are your in-group of elitists. Because your subjective understanding is pushed to objectively apply to everyone. But you cannot understand my subjective reality, because I have different life experiences and it is uniquely mine. Even if you understand me subjectively—it is your subjective understanding, not mine. I am still an object to you, because I am outside of your subjective experience. And that is a duality of judgment you make.

I respect that you can achieve a state of peace, and shape your own reality into peaceful surroundings and events. I do not judge you for that. But as I said, what has non-attachment done for India all these many centuries? I want to help those who suffer. And I do not ask for anything in return. I believe we all have a purpose, and we are each driven to follow our own path----and that is a multiplistic understanding.

THIS IS WHY I SAY THAT IN ORDER FOR THERE TO BE A RESOLUTION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION, WE HAVE TO DO AWAY WITH THE POST-PLANTER CULTURE GROUP ETHIC AND DUALITY THAT RESULTS IN REDUCTIONIST DOGMA. BECAUSE BOTH SIDES ARE BOTH EXTREMELY REDUCTIONIST AND DOGMATIC.

 

So what happens next Easter?

 

Examples if you please themnax?

 

On the other hand----this could also be the result of a negative dynamic at work. Modern man, the child of the enlightenment, and the Age of Rationalism, has become significantly alienated from his own subconscious mind---from the irrational.

In my last post I reiterated how Carl Jung sees religion today as having devolved into nothing more than a creed (See Jung's, The Undiscovered Self). Religion is far more cerebral today than prior to the Enlightenment. In other words, it is conscious-mind focused, and therefore trapped in a physical understanding.

Our subconscious mind is the door to the numinous---the spiritual. Religion, especially Western religion, downplays the role of the subconscious mind. Spirituality though, including that buried within religion, opens one up to the numinous sides of the subconscious.

This would mean that religion does not conflict with science because it offers nothing supernatural---nothing that questions our Newtonian understanding of the empirical world. It is simply a leap of faith that can not be proved or disproved so we leave it at that because we are programmed to believe that it is 'good.'

The question we should ask then is----if you see no problem between religion and science----do you still experience religion such that it 'demands' a new scientific understanding of the universe and man's place in it that we have yet to discover, or do you simply see them as two non-conflicting sets of beliefs?