Religion Vs. Philisophy

Well it depends on how you define mind. Personally, I'd say for instance that sensation is not really a mental phenomenon. The mind becomes conscious of it and reacts to it, but it doesn't originate there. I don't think the external world relies on mind for it's existence.

Some Buddhist philosophy seems to me to put mind as the origin of everything. I don't really agree with that view.

I think in the end, this is the thing. To know what the spiritual is, you have to experience it first hand.

Hence various traditions developed means of realization of the spiritual.

 

I for one have faith in that

edit: are you sure you're not an idealist, guerilla? Isn't the wish/craving to see a world without religion for example a sign of idealism?

 

That's good you have faith in my ability to respond.


Philosophical idealist Asmo.. and actually I don't believe I've ever said anything to the effect I crave to see the world without religion. How about let's extend that same clarion call you often have of not grouping everyone who is religious based on the ideas and actions of particular sects or extremists, to non-religious groups as well. That notion in particular seems more like an antitheist ideology which I'm pretty certain I've never identified myself as.

Here is a brief definition of Idealism...

 

Ah thanks for clarifying. I took idealism literally.

About what you stated or not: you did. I am not projecting it on you because i lumped you in some kind of group That would indeed be rather hypocritical.
You made a statement that said something like that according to you all faith based thinking should be exterminated. I recall especially because of the wordchoice (it got verified you did not mean it as extreme as it sounded)

 

If you can pull it up by quote and link, I'd be interested in reading it. I don't recall saying that, I remember discussing antitheist position but I didn't intend to claim it as my own.

 

What's going on... Can you not find it Asmo? Are you going to fess up to being a hypocrite? Is this perhaps an example of wearing your biases on your sleeve more then you think?

 

No i was offline and didn't search yet. I'm not making things up though, maybe you just forgot that post? It could also be that you used the word eradicated instead. But that doesn't change the meaning. Like i said it is certain that you didn't mean eradicating any people or something weird like that And i merely used it as an example of idealistic thinking, which unfortunately happened to not be the kind of idealism that was being discussed in this topic.
Why in earth do you call me a hypocrite? Which biases? Against all atheists? You? I'm sorry if it seems like that to you. ..

 

I'm open to calling any technology for what it is. This entire forum has been waiting with baited breath since early spring for you to produce a single shred of tangible information when it comes to magick. I have even asked you recently for references to a better teacher than you, and you replied "of course", and have not produced that either.

I could bury us both in the mountain of books written about meditation, even just the books written in the last 50 years, most of them by learned scholars and men of science.

As soon as you provide something tangible I will examine it thoroughly and honestly. Until then these little outbursts of yours do not serve you in any way.

Well not quite. Psychology is the scientific study of the mind; using observation, experimentation, and a certain rigour and respect for evidence.

Spirituality is a huge term encompassing some really unscientific things.

You ask "then what is meant by spirit?" That is exactly the problem. I don't think it means anything; I think it's a meat sound that doesn't point to anything. Anything experienced as spirit is really just more mind. Maybe incredibly subtle mind, but that is how mind is.

You have never experienced anything in your life that wasn't mind. You know this because whatever it was, it happened in your mind. Even standing back later and applying the label "not mind" to it is an act of mind. So subtle

But we know, for a fact, medically, and quite accurately, that sensations are produced by the brain, as feedbacks from the brain's environment. I could bore you for hours about the nerve induction pathways traversed by electricity when something hot is touched. Sensations are absolutely produced in the mind, and occur in the mind, and are witnessed by the mind.

The mind is only able to react to what is in the mind. It cannot reach out and touch something. It can only experience thoughts, and sensations are a kind of wordless thought.

 

I have also asked you what Buddhism actually does for you, and how does it actually "work", only for no response from you. There have been numerous occasions, actually, where I bring a point up only to get no response from you.

 

You said it would be hypocritical if you were lumping me in with other's groups or ideas and based on all evidence thus far, that is what you are doing. Don't blame me on this as calling you out because you cannot remember correctly what was said, this is going by the own criteria you laid down a post ago. I find the accusations slightly offensive and going forward, if you are going to be adamant as to what I said on a discussion, particularly one that may have controversial implications, I'd like a quote at the ready. I am sure there are others who would likely appreciate the same if you are going to call them out.

I'm thinking what you are referring to was in the Will Religion Die Thread? and if so, I never made the claim, In fact I make it explicitly obvious. My whole part in that part of discussion was providing an analogy in clarifying what the difference is between eradicating religion and eradicating religious people. If that is not what you are talking about, then I have no clue what you are referring to, but I'm pretty certain you misread it.

 

I can't keep up with the volume of your posts and also I tend to ignore posts that are either repeats of conversations we've already had or that are posted in a petty spirit.

What buddhism does for me is clues me in to the source of my suffering; attachments. It also clues me in to the source of alleviation of suffering; nonattachment. It also points towards no-self and thus, compassion for all beings, a value which I find appealing, and a truth which I find beautiful and mysterious. This is all being confirmed by science, fMRI scans, etc. If good data showed these teachings to be wrong, then I would follow the data and stop wasting my time. But good data shows them to be right.

More specifically, the practice of vipassana meditation provides me with everything from basic every day stress management to profound existential realizations that usually go beyond language. Repeated practice of this technique show changes in the brain, as does metta meditation, which focuses on practicing the compassion module of the mind. It turns out that just like muscles, when you work your brain a certain way, it gets better at working that way (neuroplasticity). When you practice acute mindfulness, one result is that your ambient mindfulness when not directly practicing increases.

Look at the spirit of your posts. Look at the constant "Nuh uh, YOU ARE", and "no, YOUR ideas don't make sense". The whole spirit of your engagement here is petty and negative, and I wish it were better. There is always the next post to change this. May this be the last time I am able to reference such habits in your posts.

May you show me the money, either by providing good data about magick, or by posting honestly about how you've been mistaken and your ego has not allowed you to admit it.

We are just people on the internet. This can be so much better than what it is.

 

Coming from someone who has insulted and mocked my ideas repeatably, and told me how I don't deserve to even have kids since you disagree with my ideas.

Nice try on putting on that mask but it's not going to work.

It turns out that just like muscles, when you work your brain a certain way, it gets better at working that way (neuroplasticity)

The fundamentals of Hermetics.

..........................

There aren't many, or shall I say ANY Scientific studies done on Hermetics because of a deep-seated un-acknowledgment of its relevance by the modern Scientific community that stems all the way back to the origination of Science. The same goes with the study of Kundalini. There are many people who are pushing for these studies to take place, but the repeated throwing of these concepts into "pseudo-science" stops this from happening.

You could call Buddhism and the Scientific study of Meditation a good first step in the right direction. Buddhism is a bit more known and talked about than Kundalini and Magick. It's a popular brand that represents something Spiritual that isn't Christian for the Western world. But it usually just stops here. I can't post the info that you require until the studies actually take place by Scientists.

 

And so why do you feel that Meditation can have an effect on your brain waves and not Ritual? They both require you to drop the ordinary world and put your Mind in a certain trance of sorts. Certainly Ritual also has an effect on the mind, body, and psyche.

I've never been able to find studies on Magick. But I did find one interesting study regarding healing rituals in relation to placebos. I've maintained that Magick is an 'intentional placebo' of sorts, and this study is seen to have correlations to that.


Taken as a whole, the study of placebos illuminates theory in several concrete ways. Minimally what has been found includes:

• — Rituals have neurobiological correlates. This suggests that patient improvement is not only report bias or desire to please the healer but represents changes in neurobiology. Specific areas of the brain are activated and specific neurotransmitters and immune markers may be released.
• — Biomedical treatment with powerful medications has a ritual component that is clinically significant.
• — As with pharmaceuticals, each type of ritual, for example, fake needles versus fake pills, has a unique outcome.
• — Components of rituals can be disaggregated and incrementally combined in a manner analogous to a dose response. For example, adjusting components of a ritual could make it more or less persuasive.
• — When engaged in a ritual, patients do not abandon practical sensibilities. Hope, openness and positive expectancy are tempered with uncertainty and realistic assessment.
• — Different healers can have different effects on patients even when they perform an identical prospectively defined precise scripted interaction.

At a minimum, healing rituals provide an opportunity to reshape and recalibrate selective attention [71–73]. In a more expanded model, rituals trigger specific neurobiological pathways that specifically modulate bodily sensations, symptoms and emotions. It seems that if the mind can be persuaded, the body can sometimes act accordingly. Placebo studies may be one avenue to connect biology of healing with a social science of ritual. Both placebo and ritual effects are examples of how environmental cues and learning processes activate psychobiological mechanisms of healing.

[SIZE=15.9991px]For biomedicine, the ‘placebo effect’ has been primarily of interest as a non-specific process that needs to be controlled. In contrast, for ritual theory, the placebo effect is the specific effect of a healing ritual. Combining placebo studies with ritual theory can help provide a conceptual shift to counteract the ideological devaluation of ritual in biomedicine. The linkage of ritual theory and placebo studies can expand the discourse of both fields.[/SIZE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130398/

 

This is something I find very interesting. I think this is, to a very large extent, an American pop cultural phenomenon. I certainly don't recall the atheistic interpretation of buddhism back in the 60's and 70's when Eastern Religion was first taking off in the States.

Buddhism was never promoted in Japan, a Buddhist country, as something that would appeal to atheists, or that approaching atheists would raise membership. In fact, over the years, as I was living in Japan, I spoke with many priests of many sects that lamented the decline of religion in an increasingly secular Japan.

Just as we are pestered with Mormon missionaries and Jehovah Witnesses, in Japan, it was the Soka Gakkai missionaries that would pester you. In my first wife's family, every morning and every evening they would burn incense at a Buddhist altar for their ancestors, and a priest would come over every so many years to perform a ceremony, in which scriptures were read, for her grandfather. There was a Buddhist heaven and a Buddhist hell, and Amida Buddha, or other Buddhist entities would be prayed to when a person was in need.

Even those who were not religious would pray for help or good luck at buddhist temples, just as they would at Shinto shrines.

If there is nothing but a great void outside of our physical existence, then what is the purpose of praying? In fact, I have a hard time reconciling a materialist/anti-essentialist understanding of the universe with zen Buddhism, and its buddha mind, or great void. To do so would make zen blatantly antithetical to its Buddhist and Taoist roots. Maybe someone can explain to me how that works...

 

Materialism is what is in opposition to Buddha Mind. Spiritual Awakening has to do with Oneness. Materialism is dealing with Separation.

 

I'm pretty sure that an atheist reading your last statement would say that since it is a great void, that there is no purpose of praying. And therefore, Atheism and Zen can go hand in hand.

But the fact is that Ritual and Ceremony do have an effect on you just as Meditation does. Praying is a certain type of Ritual, which can even induce a meditative state of mind. Writer himself even said that he doesn't think there is a difference between the inner and outer, so who knows what effects that praying to a certain god can have on your outer life, since it can be known to heal your inner life.

 

"Using a comparative analysis of Navajo healing ceremonials, acupuncture and biomedical treatment, this essay examines placebo studies and ritual theory as mutually interpenetrating disciplines. Healing rituals create a receptive person susceptible to the influences of authoritative culturally sanctioned ‘powers’. The healer provides the sufferer with imaginative, emotional, sensory, moral and aesthetic input derived from the palpable symbols and procedures of the ritual process—in the process fusing the sufferer's idiosyncratic narrative unto a universal cultural mythos. Healing rituals involve a drama of evocation, enactment, embodiment and evaluation in a charged atmosphere of hope and uncertainty..."

This is literally what Shamanism is. And if you need an explanation of the close relationship between Shamanism and Magick just let me know.

..."Experimental research into placebo effects demonstrates that routine biomedical pharmacological and procedural interventions contain significant ritual dimensions. This research also suggests that ritual healing not only represents changes in affect, self-awareness and self-appraisal of behavioural capacities, but involves modulations of symptoms through neurobiological mechanisms. Recent scientific investigations into placebo acupuncture suggest several ways that observations from ritual studies can be verified experimentally. Placebo effects are often described as ‘non-specific’; the analysis presented here suggests that placebo effects are the ‘specific’ effects of healing rituals."

[SIZE=15.9991px]More from the study...[/SIZE]

Yet, patients frequently report relief in the placebo arms of RCTs. This creates a challenge to the centrality of proximal causality in biomedicine [7]. While some of the amelioration observed in placebo groups in RCTs is related to the natural course of an illness and regression to the mean, recent sophisticated laboratory studies of placebo treatment point to a genuine placebo effect beyond natural processes. Experiments reveal that changes in symptoms owing to placebo treatment are accompanied by objective changes in neurobiology [8]. Such findings have led to an explosive expansion of placebo studies in biomedicine [9].

Curiously, with noteworthy exceptions [10–13], the discussion of placebo in biomedicine has not benefited from an examination of healing ceremonies. This essay seeks to mutually expand placebo studies and ritual theory. It treats the placebo effect component of biomedical treatment as one form of a socio-cultural healing ritual and finds placebo experiments to be making valuable contribution to ritual theory.

Rituals are repetitive ‘prescribed formal behaviours’ [14] and ‘more or less invariant sequences of … acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performer’ [15]; cf. [16]. They usually share ‘an ordering or procedure that structures them, a sense of … the purposive (devoted to the achievement of a particular objective), and an awareness that they are different from ‘ordinary, everyday events’ [17]. Symbols are the smallest component unit of ritual that still retain specific properties of the ritual, and symbols invariably repeat the message of the entire ritual [14]. The ritual is embedded in an authoritative cultural truth or mythos with an ‘overarching narrative structure’ [18]. Healing rituals take participants ‘to the heart of a society's cultural concepts of power and potency, their sources and modes of manifestation, and [to] the persons … who have potency’ [19]. In a post-enlightenment and post-Newtonian world, the dominant mythos can be thought of as an absence of unifying myths and its replacement with components of secular narratives of reason, humanism, nationalism or scientific causality.

This is probably as close as you can get in this day and age to finding a study on either Magick and/or Shamanism. This study did everything but use the term Shamanism most likely because of the Scientific bias against such a term.

 

Materialism suggests the universe is fundamentally physical, how is that not a form of Oneness?

 

Materialism is implying that everything is essentially separate from everything else. Oneness would include the notion that everything in the universe is essentially Mental as well. This doesn't fit in with Materialism.