Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Harry Baird]

If so, sure, in that case "God" and "Nature" *might* be one and the same, *except* that we would then have to presume that Nature/God created Itself, which would be... logically questionable, to say the least.

OK, OK, so I was on my twenty-third martini when I wrote that. I admit, I may have had *one* too many. After all, my own view is that God is not necessarily the (sole) creator of our universe, which would invalidate that analysis, and, in any case, the typical theist view is that God is uncreated, which would fit with an uncreated God/Nature of the type that you (might be) suggest(ing).

All I would add, then, is the following: the question as to whether or not "Nature" is conscious would then become identical to that as to whether or not a (conscious) God exists. We would have simply switched, through a semantic trick, the focus of the question from the "exterior" divide between God/Nature, to the "interior" divide between "conscious Nature"/"unconscious Nature". We would not have avoided, though, the reality of (distinct) definitions!

[Harry Baird]

And, really, in any case, how can one transcend a desire in which one indulges?

OK, OK, I think I know what you're going to say here, so let me say it first: by indulging in it so much that one purges oneself of the desire; one "drinks until one becomes sick, and thereafter loses the taste for drink". Am I close?

[Felasco]

Hmm, this conversation is becoming... frustrating!

Wouldn't you be disappointed if it wasn't? Would you like to type the same stuff you've already heard a thousand times instead?

I hope you realise that I bear you no ill will,

Oh yes, I do. My ego is quite flattered at your interest, and it's gotten to the point where now I'm wondering if we have indeed found God, and he's me. It's all your fault though, and I'll get you for this.

I don't think you get my point. If we define two words differently, then, necessarily, they refer to two different realities - otherwise, why would we give them different definitions rather than the same?

Because the inherently divisive nature of thought will take anything we feed it and divide it and subdivide it. We can make up any definitions we wish, and whatever we decide it doesn't change the reality at all. I could define you as a tomato, but that wouldn't make you a tomato.

Recall that we are talking about the two concepts "God" and "Nature", with wildly different definitions, *which you don't dispute are different*. How, then, could they refer to the same reality?

I refer you again to the pink sunglasses example, where all of reality looked pink, even though it isn't.

If we look at reality through an inherently divisive medium, then everything looks divided, and we get the conceptual objects "God", "Nature", "Harry", "Felasco", and the scariest one of all, "The Hairy Felasco"!!! OMG!!!

http://tanny.com/video/baba.html

Point being, just because reality looks to us to be divided in to separate objects, doesn't automatically equal it being so in the real world. Reality may be a single unified thing, just as your human body is.

Perhaps here, you suggest that "Nature" might be conscious? If so, sure, in that case "God" and "Nature" *might* be one and the same, *except* that we would then have to presume that Nature/God created Itself, which would be... logically questionable, to say the least.

The notion that we have a clue WTF is going on is logically questionable, to say the least. We are after all the species with thousands of nuclear missiles aimed down our own throat, a fact which largely no longer interests us. Sane?

I would simply ask again: what type of God are you expecting to *find* in "the real world", and, if you don't know, then how will you know if/when you've found that God?

And I tell you again, if we identify and satisfy the need that gives birth to this ancient question, the question is resolved. My thesis is that the attempt to find God is a means to this psychological end. If the need is met, the question of God goes away, as it's no longer needed.

That's the only resolution we can reasonably hope for, as thousands of years of philosophy in every corner of planet Earth have proven conclusively that philosophy is not going to either prove or disprove the existence of God in the real world. We tried it, endlessly, it didn't work, time to move on.

What qualifies that experience as an experience of "God"? Don't you see that your definition of "God" is pivotal to answering that question?

The word "God" presumes, as all words do, that there is a separate thing in the real world to which a definition (ie. a division) can be assigned. What if there are no separate things? What if the apparent separateness is a distortion illusion created by the equipment we're using, such as in the pink sunglasses example?

Definitions are a quality of the symbolic world. The real world outside of our human minds doesn't contain definitions, does it? Outside of our minds, reality just is.

Why do we keep looking for something real in the symbolic world? Wouldn't that be like looking for an eatable ham sandwich in a dictionary???

I'd suggest that this claim and question are particularly presumptuous of you.

I make no claim not to be presumptuous, pretentious, and particularly peculiar.

*Many* people over the years have claimed *direct* experiences of God, which I'm sure would qualify to them, and, no doubt, to us if we had them too, as "proof of God".

I have no argument with them, but speaking of definitions, proof usually means something others can verify for themselves.

Ok, gotta go, time for lunch! Thanks again.

[Harry Baird]

Argh, Felasco. I'm not sure I can keep this going, because we really don't seem to be communicating. Here's (probably) a final rejoinder:

We can make up any definitions we wish, and whatever we decide it doesn't change the reality at all. I could define you as a tomato, but that wouldn't make you a tomato.

Right, right, but you're looking at it the opposite way that I am: you say, the definition doesn't matter, because it doesn't change the reality, and I say, the definition *does* matter, because only when we have a definition do we know whether or not what we perceive in reality corresponds to the (defined) concept in question. So, how do we know whether we have "found God [in the 'real world']"? Only by first having a clear definition of what God is, so as to know whether "whatever" we have found meets that definition!

[Felasco]

Harry, you seem to be concerned with having the ability to apply the proper label to an experience. You want to know whether an experience should be called God, or something else.

I'm concerned with actually having an experience, and I don't care what we call it. As example, I like talking with you, and don't care if Harry is your real name.

Hope that's a fair summary, and thank you again for the dialog!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello Harry.

As for "There cannot really exist a Story which can represent Reality", well, you already know what I think of *that* as far as a denial of objective truth goes, and if you don't, then sheesh, man, you really *haven't* been paying attention.

In order to have an 'objective truth' that would really be objective, it seems simply intuitively obvious that you would have to have a superhuman mind. In simple terms you'd have to have a mind far superior to the mind---limited, biological, infinitesimal in the capacity to understand and also 'afflicted' with so many defects---that we actually have. So, in my case, I am stopped right there and don't even bother with Objective or Absolute Truths. Objective and Absolute truths, one might say, could be a bad medicine for what is essentially a Monkey Brain. And we have recently seen what alcohol, a mere terrestrial alkaloid, does to a monkey brain, so much more then Grandiose Absolutes!

I think those sort of truths tend to incline people toward grandiosity. So it is really in this sense that I would say it is important to understand that any Story we might have (about ultimate truths) as only a partial truth, and from a limited perspective. But I do not think that confronting one's limitations, understanding them, and in a sense outsmarting them, will diminish understanding, not really. It actually seems to work in the opposite sense. Because *understanding* in its best sense is just getting some understanding to get through things somewhat decently. 'Small things can be done, great things cannot be done' says Chinese wisdom.

Now, there are some possible caveats but they are the exceptions that prove the point. There is such a thing, in my book, as a 'divine experience' and possibly 'an encounter with God'. There are some schools of yoga---the Kundalini Yoga school---which offer exercises that very definitely can produce quite powerful 'mystical' experiences. There is also the traditional helps: fasting and prayer. I am convinced that prayer is very definitely a way to begin to have 'divine encounter' experiences. There is also the old entheogen route which I would not invalidate. But still, even with those experiences, one is still in a local context and (usually) the messages that come through are local and particular to that person, though they may have a universal aspect.

What you seem to be talking about has more to do, at least it seems so to me, with your mental and conceptual world. A 'philosophical' or conceptual ordering. In this sense you are a 'mathematical thinker' but not because mathematical thinking is bad---it is very good in its field, a tool as it were good for certain things---but because it cannot function in 'the other' realm, and that is a realm of powerful experience.

You are right in a sense that I haven't been paying attention. I don't feel I really need to. I have already gone through those processes of thinking, and I have to compare them with whole other orders of experience, you see, and in that light they look shallow, incomplete.

But, and also in my personal view, though some of this points to experience and mystical experience (how else would one have an experience of God if it were not in another order of consciousness and distinct from everyday thinking and being?), I think that one has to retreat away from mysticism and down into sound theology, because it is such theology that is the main tool or the group of tools for actually conducting life. A man is stronger, if sometimes rigid, with a complete and meaningful theology, than he is with an ungrounded, unrefined mysticism no matter how dramatic and compelling. This is one of the reasons I defend 'our traditions' and quite especially the various theologies we have access to.

I used an example earlier that was perhaps a little crude: a man living in a prehistoric setting in a jungle in which he had a visionary and also ethical relationship with an 'Anaconda Spirit'. His relationship to *that*, in my view, is exactly what any man is essentially faced with as he confronts himself in Reality (the Other, the impossible to define exactly). It is himself, the self that he has, knows and employs, in a 'world' of being that is, no matter how you look at it, simply inconceivable. What I mean is: That there is being, that we exist, that we perceive. The basic, first and core mystery is there, in that. In my personal view there is all manner of trickery, sophistry and even stupidity when it comes to attempts to 'define God' (or define 'God' away) since, also in my view, 'God' is part-and-parcel of the way a person IS in reality; in the perceptive experience itself. There is really no way to point this out to a person who just cannot understand that rather simple mystery. God obviously has to be immediate.

And I am also of the opinion that 'God' is really too abstract for the human mind. Personally, I tend to think that if we make contact---and we can in my view---with Higher Consciousness, that we are really making contact within immediate layers of hierarchy rather close to us and to our condition. The first order of contact, if you will, is with a guiding spirit, or a group of guiding spirits, who are of the same tribe or order as we are. What this means is curious: they suffered from exactly the same group of ills that we did and they also overcame. Since they were helped to overcome, it becomes a duty to help those with whom they are connected to 'below' if you will. That is in my understanding the 'key' to the mystery of 'the traveler passing through'. This ties in to the idea, quite a potent idea in fact, that 'the only way out is through'.

We sit and we are trapped in myriad ways---different but also non-different---within our own limitations and yet it is the last thing we seem willing to admit. A main one, from a 'spiritual perspective', is our lack of capacity to understand just 'where we are' and 'why we are here'. The first order of grace, if you will, is getting one or two of the smallest drops of 'understanding' about these basic things which is usually an overwhelming experience. But when you get it it knocks you on your as---for years. In the face of certain higher forces, certain personalities with whom we have connections, real connections that are beyond time and space, we become just exactly like children, willful children lost in their various mazes who confront a parent, embarrassing though it is. What a tough lesson this especially for those who link their sense of power with their will-to-know and their desire to at least pretend that they understand anything at all (in these overarching senses). In my personal view I don't think that we really CAN know so much, and anyway there is nothing at all complex to those truths that actually move one away from bondage and, in that sense, sustained and debilitating pain.

And I also tend to think---I think it is obvious---that humankind is on a strange but meaningful and powerful cusp where knowledge confronts ignorance, consciousness unconsciousness. Really, it has to be understood that it is 'spiritual knowledge' that brings man into knowledge of material reality, and knowledge of material reality, in the sense of 'life in fuller measure', is exactly what we are all offered, and in tremendous abundance to be quite truthful. What I also note is that we squander opportunities that had never been available, at almost any time in history, and we don't take advantage of what has been secured. This links back to my idea that for the first time we can actually live fully within these bodies. And so we are here finding out what that means. And of course: 'The only way out is through'.

[Felasco]

A 'philosophical' or conceptual ordering. In this sense you are a 'mathematical thinker' but not because mathematical thinking is bad---it is very good in its field, a tool as it were good for certain things---but because it cannot function in 'the other' realm, and that is a realm of powerful experience.

The philosophic, conceptual, mathematical are symbolic, and powerful experiences are powerful because they are real.

If one wishes to talk about such experience, conceptual ordering can be helpful. If one wishes to have such experience, conceptual ordering is a key obstacle.

I have already gone through those processes of thinking, and I have to compare them with whole other orders of experience, you see, and in that light they look shallow, incomplete.

A photograph of a person (symbolic) is never going to be as interesting as the actual person (real).

I think that one has to retreat away from mysticism and down into sound theology, because it is such theology that is the main tool or the group of tools for actually conducting life. A man is stronger, if sometimes rigid, with a complete and meaningful theology, than he is with an ungrounded, unrefined mysticism no matter how dramatic and compelling. This is one of the reasons I defend 'our traditions' and quite especially the various theologies we have access to.

I find this quite interesting, and challenging to my own point of view. Challenging, because thousands of years of experience would seem to have proven the usefulness of theologies.

And yet, theology can also be a key obstacle to the experience it attempts to point to, as it encourages users to focus on symbols, instead of what the symbols point to. It starts off as a well intentioned attempt to use symbols to reach the real, but usually quickly deteriorates in to symbols being an end in themselves.

The problem here is that symbols obtain their value and meaning from the real. As example, while photos of friends can be very meaningful, photos of strangers is much less likely to provide the same experience. Photos of strangers don't reference anything real for us, but only the abstraction "people".

When theological symbols are divorced from experience of what they point to, the symbols lose their meaning, and become like photos of strangers.

In the end, I suppose a contest between theology and mysticism is just another product of the inherently divisive nature of thought. Some folks need theology, while others need mysticism, and each to their own seems a good plan.

We sit and we are trapped in myriad ways---different but also non-different---within our own limitations and yet it is the last thing we seem willing to admit.

Theology attempts to sell us the illusion of knowing, while mysticism embraces and celebrates the reality of our ignorance, seeing it as a gift and not a problem. For many, it's only when they finally realize there is no way of knowing (symbolic) that they will turn their attention and intelligence to experience (real).

The symbolic can be intoxicating, because we are building a conceptual structure in our heads that we rule over like petty gods. Ego will usually hijack the symbols for it's own purposes, and the focus then tends to shift to a stimulating social competition, further reinforcing the illusion of "me", and the personal and social pain that arises from that illusion.

The real requires surrendering all of this, if only for a time. We used to be petty gods, but now we are nothing, only observers. We are not driving the boat now, but only riding along as a passenger. Oh, and our most precious "me" has to go over the side of the boat too, a psychological death. It's hardly surprising that we so often resist this apparent demotion, which may sound scary in the abstract, from a distance.

But, Jesus said "die to be reborn" for a good reason. The real world is so much more interesting and rewarding than the symbolic world, just as a real friend is so much more than a photo of that friend.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there Felasco. I have been thinking of various ways to answer what I understand of your position vis. symbol-making man and the problem of abstraction from direct experience. In the meantime I thought to include a quote from Ortega y Gasset's essay "Love in Stendhal' where he touches on the notion of 'theology vs. mysticism'.

From Ortega y Gasset ('Estudios sobre el amor', 1957):

• "Professional noisemakers of every class will always prefer the anarchy of intoxication of the mystics to the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church. I regret at not being able to join them in this preference either. I am prevented by a matter of truthfulness. It is this: I think that any theology transmits to us much more of God, greater insights and ideas about divinity, than the combined ecstasies of all the mystics; because, instead of approaching the ecstatic skeptically, we must take the mystic at his word, accept what he brings us from his transcendental immersions, and then see if what he offers us is worth while. The truth is that, after we accompany him on his sublime voyage, what he succeeds in communicating to us is a thing of little consequence. I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought. Theology---not ecstasy!"

In my case, coming across this interesting essay some time back, I was forced again to reconsider the sense of what I have called 'abandoning our traditions' which as I understand it has numerous root causes. I am particularly interested in the new wave of 'virulent atheism' and the psychology (state of the psyche) of those who come charging on the scene with a few rather crude notions and blunt arguments to attack and to defeat those who, badly or well, hold to the notion of 'God'.

Taking the notion of theology, in a wide sense, as a container for a whole range of ideas and also ethics, I would propose a more fluid theology, perhaps, but a no less potent one. I also think that such a 'theology' can be empowered by a great deal that is not formally included in traditional religious theologies. The way I see it, it all leads to a man who carries with him a far larger 'world' than that of a 'diminished man' and one no longer connected with a 'living tradition'. This is something I note: diminishment of men's 'interior world' because the content that feeds it and them is so reduced. But with this we come upon what I think would separate your view from mine, and that is that we are in the light of the above essentially containers of 'symbolic' material, a virtual world of the self. What you seem to propose, unless I read you wrong, is an evacuation of content and a Zen-like union with the Real which, as you say, is essentially Nature. Yet our inner world and 'everything we call man' is precisely in an 'imagined world': a world of content which is held in the imagination. Traditionally, we understood the most worthy and developed men as having the widest and most sophisticated content. Seen in a certain way it (our imagined world) looks indeed like a problem insofar as it looks false and unreal. It is easy perhaps to propose that we should or that we could pull the plug out of the bathtub of imagination and let it drain away and thereby be left with The Real (exclusively). Isn't this in a sense where Materialistic Science leads us? I would suggest that what we need is more the capacity to understand how we engage with *imagined worlds* and also how we live and swim within symbolic content. Not the least would be our 'mythological unconscious'.

Also, I would place emphasis on a theology that is also dogmatic (in the original sense of the world and not merely as a sign for 'rigid'). When we become separated from the general theologies that have indeed informed us, our institutions and our moralities, we tend to jettison everything associated with those tossed-out theologies. I don't see how any of this could have been avoided, myself. Our history has been about challenging institutions and those who uphold rigid structures that are also outmoded. But yet if we can't sift through things and if we don't have the presence and the sobriety to recognize and to select out of 'all that' the material of tremendous value, there is the danger of abandoning it all or, worse, exchanging it for something of apparent value which in reality is not so valuable.

I am very curious about and interested in the idea of selling birthright for a mess of pottage. If indeed we are really interested in 'true nourishment' we are duty bound to find out what true nourishment really is and to distinguish what is dross, or empty nourishment. But that is essentially the problem since we often do not know how to determine value without reference to authority, which means sagesse. It is quite easy to dismiss things (now) which (later) are seen in a different light. In a revolutionary upheaval it is very easy to disestablish one authority and replace it with another, or none, and I see us as being the 'outcomes' of such revolutionary processes. How then do we sift through it all and (re)determine value?

The problem here is that symbols obtain their value and meaning from the real.

I have been puzzling over this. I am not sure if we can really say where exactly 'symbols' come from or even perhaps what they are. From an Aristotelian point of view, I imagine, a 'symbol' would be some sort of portrayal of elements found in the natural world, and hence derived from the Real in that sense. But whereas the shell, if you will, of a Symbol must have a root in that Real I am not completely sure about the Content, nor the *meaning* that inhabits it. It would seem to me that *meaning* is a mysterious something that moves within imagined worlds, and perhaps between them. It could be the joining link between people separated by impossible space and time.

Has anyone seen Harry?

[Felasco]

Professional noisemakers of every class....

Ha, ha! I like this quote already. It should perhaps be said here that it is those of us with particularly noisy minds that are likely to develop the most interest in silence, he said while typing feverishly at 200wpm.

....will always prefer the anarchy of intoxication of the mystics to the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church.

Well, human beings come in many flavors. Some of us thrive on order, while others thrive on disorder.

It is this: I think that any theology transmits to us much more of God, greater insights and ideas about divinity,

Well yes, this is what theologies do, transmit insights and ideas, ie. symbols.

we must take the mystic at his word,

Um, no we don't. The mystic may be a saint or a fool, or both. Who cares? That's his or her business. There is no requirement to listen to mystics at all, or believe anything they say. And anyway, a good mystic will tell us to leave them out of it, and go do one's own homework.

The truth is that, after we accompany him on his sublime voyage, what he succeeds in communicating to us is a thing of little consequence.

I heartily agree that what the mystic says is of little consequence. Let us not confuse mystics with theologians. The goal of a theologian is to construct an ideological structure (philosophy). The goal of the mystic is to take the structure down, so that all that's left is the direct experience (aphilosophy).

An understandable confusion arises because some mystics are frantic typoholic madmen. And so it may appear to the casual observer that they too are trying to build yet another ideological structure. But their real mission is, or at least should be, only to demonstrate the bankruptcy of ideology, including their own.

I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought. Theology---not ecstasy!"

Yes, this is the endless quest for the final perfect ideology, an enterprise which 10,000 years of human experience has shown to be folly. If these theologians wish to declare themselves skilled philosophers, they might take a break from their ideological barn raising, and actually look at the evidence.

They will create yet another ideology. It will almost immediately begin to divide internally, leading to yet another endless round of acrimonious controversy and debate. Then the glorious new ideology will divide from other ideologies in a declaration of triumphant superiority. Then followers will attach their egos to the new ideology, and thus begin to worship the ideology itself, instead of what it points to, which is now largely forgotten and given only lip service.
It's a pattern that's been repeated a million times in every corner of the world.

I also think that such a 'theology' can be empowered by a great deal that is not formally included in traditional religious theologies.

Apologies, but you are committing the classic mistake of religion. You think the problem lies with the content of thought, and thus you reason you can fix things by changing that content to something new and improved.

But the problem arises not from the content of this or that thought, but from the nature of thought.

The experience of division that is at the heart of the human condition ("me" vs. "everything else") is not created by incorrect thoughts, thus it can't be fixed with correct thoughts. The experience of division is created by thought itself.

What you seem to propose, unless I read you wrong, is an evacuation of content and a Zen-like union with the Real which, as you say, is essentially Nature.

Yes, well put. Not as some permanent state of perfection etc, a goal I see as silliness. I suggest only a healthy balance between the real and the symbolic.

As I see it, the symbolic is essential in meeting the needs of the body, thought is to us what wings are to a bird, the way we make our living.

The mistake is in assuming that the symbolic is also the path to meeting the needs of the mind. But the mind is drowning in the symbolic already, the last thing it needs is even more.

Yet our inner world and 'everything we call man' is precisely in an 'imagined world': a world of content which is held in the imagination.

Yes, for the man who knows nothing but the symbolic, this is true. It's not the unchangeable fate of all men, it's the current state of affairs for many men.

Traditionally, we understood the most worthy and developed men as having the widest and most sophisticated content.

They have developed their pile of symbols to a high degree of refinement, yes. Their elegant symbols are still symbols though. They are focused on eating the word apple, instead of eating the actual apple.

It is easy perhaps to propose that we should or that we could pull the plug out of the bathtub of imagination and let it drain away and thereby be left with The Real (exclusively).

That would be neat and tidy indeed, but we need thought to physically survive. So the remedy won't be as simple as, thought is bad, think no more.

I would suggest that what we need is more the capacity to understand how we engage with *imagined worlds* and also how we live and swim within symbolic content.

This is probably best explored in a thread of it's own, because it's such an important topic. Briefly, it's my view that technology is beginning to empower our internal imagined symbolic worlds to a point that is becoming increasingly dangerous. As example, you and me both spend too much time on this forum, I'll bet it's not entirely by choice, as the symbolic realm can indeed be compelling.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I suggest only a healthy balance between the real and the symbolic.

I would say something very similar so we have a basis of agreement.

Well, human beings come in many flavors. Some of us thrive on order, while others thrive on disorder.

Said in relation to: '...the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church' [Ortega y Gasset]. I note a problem here and it is not a small one, in my view. I don't know if disorder should have the same valuation as order. Nor destruction as construction. Nor disassembly as assembly. When he speak of 'the Church' he is speaking of the fabric of a society which includes too much to be named. Religious rites stand at a center but so much else moves around that center and has a relationship with it. I am attempting to speak objectively and not only as an apologist or European Christianity's champion. The Rites that are devised are an expression of certain core notions, a way that human activity is sublimated into Divinity as an offering, in some sort of 'holy ritual'. The Rite may now, to us, be devoid of sense and empty of spirit, but the Idea is still very much there. Perhaps one has only contempt and even hatred of those Rites and perhaps all that is connected with it, but at least, from some distance back, one should be able to recognize it (culture, society) as something created through painstaking work.

If it happens that a man or some men, for whatever reason, do not have and do not wish to have enough good sense to recognize what is valuable (in this but also in anything) then lack of care, carelessness, thoughtless dismissal, if not outright destructive impulse, can---and does---result. This is for me a rather large point: we live in post-revolutionary times when, for a whole generation, 'tearing down' was a necessary activity. True, there was also and very strongly a 'building up' but not out of any really new material but out of the old material: the moral capital that had been stored up before.

In my view, and without definite constraints, one has to be very careful 'unleashing' those forces which tear down. In any case it has to be done carefully. While a given person may 'thrive' in disorder I don't think that one could say that, say, of the education of a child, or for the stability of a household.

Well yes, this is what theologies do, transmit insights and ideas, ie. symbols.

While they do that, certainly, I think they also allow, as copper wire does for electricity, the flow of *meaning* and also *value*. And it is also true that a symbol, such as one that appears in a dream, itself is a container of force. Psychic force, meaning force, value force. So, a symbol is also more than just its exterior or its form.

The mystic may be a saint or a fool, or both. Who cares? That's his or her business.

If you mean that the content of the mystic's revelation is not qualified by whether or not that person is a fool or a saint, I would agree. But if you mean that the content of his vision or message is not also important, then I disagree. When he says 'we must take the mystic at his word' I think he means it in comparison to a reasoned theological our dogmatic position. We can't really 'argue' with a mystical vision of reality because there is little structure or ethic connected to it. Only when the ethic has been related to it do we have some means to analyze it, consider its value.

I heartily agree that what the mystic says is of little consequence. Let us not confuse mystics with theologians. The goal of a theologian is to construct an ideological structure (philosophy). The goal of the mystic is to take the structure down, so that all that's left is the direct experience (aphilosophy).

I would describe a mystic as one inclined to direct experience. I would not be able to say that he is attempting to 'take the structure down'. How do you arrive at that? It is certainly true that in the history of religiosity one sect or school might arise that takes a rebellious stance against another, staid tradition and creates all sorts of havoc (the Zen Buddhist traditions of China often seem like adolescent rebellion trips!), and in this way they are 'taking something down' and knocking certain people and attitudes off their pedestals. And also, if Zen is considered, I think they think they are arriving at direct experience but it may not, in fact be either 'true' nor really attainable.

Yes, this is the endless quest for the final perfect ideology, an enterprise which 10,000 years of human experience has shown to be folly.

While it is true that there can not be an Ultimate Theology, and also true that there are many who suppose there is, I myself have the sense that there are some areas where we can mine for material (as it were) with greater chance of finding things of value. But that obviously becomes a question of valuation. It should be obvious by now that I evaluate 'our own traditions' very highly and have some means to evaluate others, and when I do I find notable stark differences. I think 'our traditions' have so much in their favor that it should almost be obvious that they are in many senses 'superior' though that is a problematic word. And though there is no 'perfect ideology' there are analytical tools of a superior order to come to understandings about what a superior ideology might be, and therein lies the core difference. Differences do exist and they are not unreal.

They will create yet another ideology. It will almost immediately begin to divide internally, leading to yet another endless round of acrimonious controversy and debate.

If the 'alternative', for you, is simply self-consciousness and 'the healthy balance' you spoke of earlier, who could argue? But I suggest that the conversation we are having, the conversation that 'our traditions allow', is actually something extraordinarily valuable in itself, and is more than just 'another ideology'. It is a whole process of thinking and feeling and reasoning and evaluating. It may be ideologically driven but this is, as I see it, unavoidable. No one really abandons the (ideological) field anyway! Even those Zen Naughties!

Apologies, but you are committing the classic mistake of religion. You think the problem lies with the content of thought, and thus you reason you can fix things by changing that content to something new and improved.

No need to apologize since I don't see myself as committing an error. I do understand that (if my sense of your implication is correct) that you imagine that *thought* could somehow be done away with? You say: 'But the problem arises not from the content of this or that thought, but from the nature of thought'. But this implies some alternative. I would disagree. I think we can stand back from thinking. I think we can test our thinking. I think we can meditate deeply and seem to arrive at states where we don't (appear to) think. But I do not think there is a human alternative to thought. If you know of one perhaps you can speak about it.

And it is not a 'mistake of religion' I am making, if I am making it, but rather a mistake about how I understand our being in this world.

The mistake is in assuming that the symbolic is also the path to meeting the needs of the mind. But the mind is drowning in the symbolic already, the last thing it needs is even more.

This implies 'purification' and other things too and I could not disagree. And while it may be true that 'addiction to mental processes' will maintain a revved-up and unsatisfiable mental state, and hence tension and discomfort and many other things, I am not convinced that 'peace' is the desired goal (as you have stated a couple of times). I think that we are here to struggle. I sense in your writing a backdrop of praxis though you have not mentioned anything specifically. Perhaps you feel that it is possible and desirable to 'empty the mind' and 'not-do'. I see those things as taking a necessary break. It is true that people can live quite well without the sort of thinking we are engaged in here so I can't judge them negatively.

[Harry Baird]

Hello Gustav,

That's quite alright, no need for hangover cures, I was just fine, but thank you anyway.

I see where you're coming from with the statement, "In order to have an 'objective truth' that would really be objective, it seems simply intuitively obvious that you would have to have a superhuman mind", but I'd phrase it a little differently: in order to know with absolute certainty that what a person proposes as objective truth really and truly is objectively true, other than for the self-evident objective truths ("I exist", "I am having the experience of typing on a computer keyboard", etc) one would have to be omniscient. There's a subtle, but, I think, important difference here: it is not so much "objective truth" that is unattainable, as certainty. This is important because there are various ways in which we can be more or less certain - for example, if we discover the same potential truths through different means, we can be more certain in them. Sure, we might never have "absolute" certainty, but why should this discourage us from getting as close as we humanly can?

What I mean is: That there is being, that we exist, that we perceive. The basic, first and core mystery is there, in that.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

[A]lso in my view, 'God' is part-and-parcel of the way a person IS in reality; in the perceptive experience itself.

This sounds like more of an Eastern-inspired view than a Western one, but you do like your Eastern concepts (in moderation).

And I am also of the opinion that 'God' is really too abstract for the human mind. Personally, I tend to think that if we make contact---and we can in my view---with Higher Consciousness, that we are really making contact within immediate layers of hierarchy rather close to us and to our condition. The first order of contact, if you will, is with a guiding spirit, or a group of guiding spirits, who are of the same tribe or order as we are. What this means is curious: they suffered from exactly the same group of ills that we did and they also overcame.

This is where you confuse me utterly, Gustav. We have had conversations, both public and private, where you have essentially expressed the view that everything spiritual is produced by a man's mind, and has no external reality, and, in that, denied that the experiences I have had with (negative) spirits could be anything other than projections of my own mind. Above, though, you seem to suggest the existence of *independent* spirits - at least, that's the impression I get from that quote: I can't imagine spirits purely of your own mind "suffering from a group of ills [within your mind] and overcoming them". This is only compounded by your later statement, "In the face of certain higher forces, certain personalities with whom we have connections, real connections that are beyond time and space, we become just exactly like children" - here, again, you seem to be referring to forces *beyond* the mind (for the mind itself would seem to be bound *within* time and space).

What's up with all this?

You repeat again "The only way out is through", but what do you *mean* by this? That we have to keep on evolving as a species, including technologically, until we [fill in the blanks] and have made it "through" to [fill in the second set of blanks]? Or do you mean it on an individual level? Or what?

With respect to the conversation you and Felasco are having, I'll simply say that there is mutual agreement between all three of us on Felasco's suggestion that we need "a healthy balance between the real and the symbolic", even though I am currently hopelessly tipped in favour of the symbolic (aside from writing a lot, I am a computer programmer by trade, and spend the vast majority of my waking hours at the keyboard).

I have never been quite sure exactly what it is that Felasco proposes, and why. I know it has something to do with direct experience and the eschewing (if only temporarily, during the direct experience) of thought, but what it is that he wishes to experience, and what he hopes to gain from the experience, and whether or not he has already had this experience, and if so what he *did* gain from it, is beyond me.

[Felasco]

Gustav,

Now that I am digging deeper in to your posts, I find much of common interest, and many reflections of yours which resonate here.

I'm arguing the mystic case because I think it needs to be heard, and because it is of particular interest to me personally. But I am willing to follow the evidence, and the evidence clearly indicates a need for religion, or it would have vanished long long ago.

I would say something very similar so we have a basis of agreement.

What differences we have may be mostly a matter of emphasis. Not sure, we shall see.

When he speak of 'the Church' he is speaking of the fabric of a society which includes too much to be named. Religious rites stand at a center but so much else moves around that center and has a relationship with it.

Fair enough. My concern is that this thing you call "the Church" not become a lifeless empty shell, which it seems to me it inevitably does when it wanders too far away from it's mystical foundations. However, I would agree that this does not automatically equal everyone being a mystic.

The Rite may now, to us, be devoid of sense and empty of spirit, but the Idea is still very much there.

Yes, we're on the same track. The idea is still here, but as I keep saying the idea, the symbolic, is a dead thing. It's a relentless focus on the symbolic at the expense of the real that brings us to a place where the idea is devoid of sense and empty of spirit. As I see it, the symbolic gets it's "life force" from the real, much in the same way a photo is only meaningful to us if we have real world experience with the person in the photo. So much of religion so quickly becomes a photo of strangers.

Perhaps one has only contempt and even hatred of those Rites and perhaps all that is connected with it, but at least, from some distance back, one should be able to recognize it (culture, society) as something created through painstaking work.

Ok, fair enough.

True, there was also and very strongly a 'building up' but not out of any really new material but out of the old material: the moral capital that had been stored up before.

Ok, yes, there isn't really any new material anyway, but only a continual recycling-retranslating process.

In my view, and without definite constraints, one has to be very careful 'unleashing' those forces which tear down. In any case it has to be done carefully. While a given person may 'thrive' in disorder I don't think that one could say that, say, of the education of a child, or for the stability of a household.

The safety feature here is that few have a serious enough interest in these topics to really fuel any kind of radical tearing down.

But if you mean that the content of his vision or message is not also important, then I disagree.

Ok, it's back to debating then!

I would argue that mysticism is about experience, not message. At the moment we attempt to translate experience (real) in to a message (symbolic) it stops being mysticism. My posts honking the mystics horn are not mysticism, they are blowharding.

A concrete example on a familiar topic may help some readers here.

From the mystic point of view, I would argue that Christianity has no need of ideological beliefs, for it has the experience of love. I see Christian beliefs as a statement that love is not enough, which I would argue is not really true. Imho, the genius of Christianity is that the experience of love is enough. A thousand little opportunities a day to surrender the illusion of "me", isn't that enough, who has time for anything more?

We can't really 'argue' with a mystical vision of reality because there is little structure or ethic connected to it.

Yes, this might be seen as a very useful clue. We can't argue with the mystical vision. A kind of spirituality free of arguing has something to recommend it, does it not?

Only when the ethic has been related to it do we have some means to analyze it, consider its value.

Again, I disagree. The value is in the actual experience, not in what we say about it. This sounds esoteric, but really it's very simple. An apple in our stomach is worth far more than a thousand photos of apples in a book. The mystic would say, for crying out loud, put the book down already, and taste the damn apple!

I would describe a mystic as one inclined to direct experience.

Agreed.

I would not be able to say that he is attempting to 'take the structure down'. How do you arrive at that?

When a mystic slides out of experience in to ideology, thus defiling his own position, he is likely to argue against the deadening structure of theology.

But I suggest that the conversation we are having, the conversation that 'our traditions allow', is actually something extraordinarily valuable in itself, and is more than just 'another ideology'. It is a whole process of thinking and feeling and reasoning and evaluating.

Fair enough, point taken. I don't dispute the value of our culture. I think we're both trying to protect it, each in our own way. I would agree I am guilty of overstatement, but there is a real need that the culture you speak of not become too divorced from it's source. The symbolic can not remain healthy on it's own, it's dependent upon the real, much as our human brain is dependent on the external environment.

No one really abandons the (ideological) field anyway! Even those Zen Naughties!

The real zensters are those who are utterly uninterested in the nerd dance we are doing here, zen or otherwise.

I do understand that (if my sense of your implication is correct) that you imagine that *thought* could somehow be done away with?

No, thought is how we make our living. The needs of the body clearly require thought.

You say: 'But the problem arises not from the content of this or that thought, but from the nature of thought'.

Yes, this is my key point.

But this implies some alternative. I would disagree. I think we can stand back from thinking. I think we can test our thinking. I think we can meditate deeply and seem to arrive at states where we don't (appear to) think. But I do not think there is a human alternative to thought. If you know of one perhaps you can speak about it.

The alternative happens naturally a thousand times a day. The mystic simply tries to harness this natural phenomena.

If someone were to unexpectedly walk in to your office right now, you'd turn to look. And in that moment of looking, thought would be silent. And then you'd begin thinking about the new visitor. The transition in and out of thought happens so fast, and is so utterly normal, that we rarely recognize it.

We don't recognize it, and so very many other things, because we are so distracted by the symbolic world. All the mystic does is turn down the volume of this distraction, and upon doing so the unnoticed starts becoming noticed, and the miracle of reality becomes more evident. The experience of miracle is always there, we just aren't paying attention to it most of the time.

The mystic simply pays more attention. It's no more complicated or esoteric than turning down the volume of a blaring TV so we can hear a conversation with a friend.

This implies 'purification' and other things too and I could not disagree. And while it may be true that 'addiction to mental processes' will maintain a revved-up and unsatisfiable mental state, and hence tension and discomfort and many other things, I am not convinced that 'peace' is the desired goal (as you have stated a couple of times).

Peace is the desired goal for most human beings most of the time. And the lack of peace arises directly from the inherently divisive nature of thought.

Perhaps you feel that it is possible and desirable to 'empty the mind' and 'not-do'. I see those things as taking a necessary break.

I agree, but....

The mystic who has temporarily fallen from his mysticism would argue that it is the easy doing, doing, doing which is taking a break from the real work of not doing.

Thanks Gustav, you are an interesting and articulate fellow, enjoying it.

[Felasco]

(aside from writing a lot, I am a computer programmer by trade, and spend the vast majority of my waking hours at the keyboard).

Aha! Coder here as well. Nerd is my name, and perl is my game!

I have never been quite sure exactly what it is that Felasco proposes, and why.

1) Felasco is an amateur wannabe writer with limited ability.

2) Felasco has a teaching degree, and feels the best teachers don't simply hand out answers to memorize, but rather create an environment that invites a reader to do their own homework, and find their own answer. This is especially relevant to mysticism, which by it's nature can not be converted in to words, ie. symbols.

3) Felasco wonders why he is talking about himself in the third person???

but what it is that he wishes to experience,

Nothing.

and what he hopes to gain from the experience,

Sanity.

and whether or not he has already had this experience, and if so what he *did* gain from it, is beyond me.

Harry, when I'm not here blowharding up a storm on a forum, I spend as much time as possible, all day everyday during much of the winter, in a glorious state park only 4 miles from our house. It's my own personal garden of eden where I explore the real.

Like you, I've spent years in front of a computer monitor for work, twenty years and counting at this point. My life has boiled down to an endlessly repeating journey back and forth between the net and nature, the symbolic and the real, thus my passion for the topic. Other than my marriage, I really have no other life. If I didn't have the real, the symbolic would have driven me insane by now for sure. As you can see, I'm no stranger to typoholic thought....

What I get from all this is a tricky question as it is the "me" and the "getting" that must be let go of to open up the doors of the real. "Me" is symbolic, and so is "getting", a future trip.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello Harry!

I had written: "And I am also of the opinion that 'God' is really too abstract for the human mind. Personally, I tend to think that if we make contact---and we can in my view---with Higher Consciousness, that we are really making contact within immediate layers of hierarchy rather close to us and to our condition. The first order of contact, if you will, is with a guiding spirit, or a group of guiding spirits, who are of the same tribe or order as we are. What this means is curious: they suffered from exactly the same group of ills that we did and they also overcame."

You responded: "This is where you confuse me utterly, Gustav. We have had conversations, both public and private, where you have essentially expressed the view that everything spiritual is produced by a man's mind, and has no external reality, and, in that, denied that the experiences I have had with (negative) spirits could be anything other than projections of my own mind. Above, though, you seem to suggest the existence of *independent* spirits - at least, that's the impression I get from that quote: I can't imagine spirits purely of your own mind "suffering from a group of ills [within your mind] and overcoming them". This is only compounded by your later statement, "In the face of certain higher forces, certain personalities with whom we have connections, real connections that are beyond time and space, we become just exactly like children" - here, again, you seem to be referring to forces *beyond* the mind (for the mind itself would seem to be bound *within* time and space). What's up with all this?"

First, it is necessary to understand the statement I made as the use of speech for 'sermonic purposes'. Once we discussed Richard Weaver and the title of his book 'All Speech Is Sermonic'. This is my view, that all speech is a borrowing from sermonic intentions. 'Utterance' in this sense, because the nature of communication at its higher level is related to divinity that pervades all levels of reality, and this means 'word' and 'meaning' (and yet is related through all possible senses, sight, sound, touch), 'utterance' is a reaching out, and up, or down, or across, or through, to conscious receptors, to conciousnesses. It is my understanding that if we are to refer to something as giant and abstract as 'God' that we have to establish that this is possible and also 'part of creation'. You could very well say that an ape rises up out of matter and becomes conscious, and then begins to discern a 'divine underpinning' or 'divinity at a subatomic level' or that there are 'subtle nerve structures within the human body' that can be stimulated or awakened and that this augments consciousness and brings greater awareness, understanding, possibly intelligence, but essentially all that we mean when we speak of 'salvation'. (There are so many different ways to conceive and express it, all different and yet similar). Or, you could conceptualize it from another angle-of-view and say that 'an angel descends' and sort of lays itself over the human consciousness and 'gestates it', causes it to give birth as it were to so-called 'higher things'.

When I communicate with you, all your receptors are essentially 'mathematical/logical'. Like your programming language in which your consciousness is steeped. This is your strength and it is also a function of your personality and your 'subjective hookup'. You would not be able to 'relate' if I tossed out ephemeral poetry or any use of language that did not jibe with your mathematical approach, the way you order ideas, the way you order your conception of where and what you are and also 'how things work'. Having this sort of inner formatting is not bad, in my view. But insisting that the only way you will allow meaning to reach you will be through your ordered mathematics is, in my view, a mistake. A way open to you to understand different ways that consciousness functions in our world is to begin to have some grasp of those different perceptive structures. In Depth Psychology there are four. The Four Functions. I cite them only because it is a system that has been articulated. I also cite them because understanding how different people are ordered differently, and being able to recognize it, helps one in communication. It also helps one to understand how, in many cases, communication goes bad. I don't think I need to spell out to you the implications of the four functions. (And there are numerous classification systems that could also be used).

If I speak of a hierarchy of consciousness and also of 'making contact' with 'higher intelligence', and I am speaking with Harry, I know that he will go to the window and look up at the clouds to try to discern just where are those 'spirits' that are higher. Similarly, if I were to speak of dark and subterranean entities and 'spirits' I assume you would get down on the floor and peer down through the cracks in the floor to see if they were there. Up and down, higher and lower, earth and cloud, subtle and dense, luminous and dark.

Now, the reason you have difficulty understanding what I write is 1) it does not conform to your pre-established conceptual order which is, as with many of mathematical bent, rather rigid. To ask that you bend this rigidity is asking much. Indeed, it could amount to a remodeling of the way that you order your perceptions and this is no light matter. 2) You will not read and you will not slowly and surely amplify your conceptual base, widen it and expand it. So, you have only the 'conceptual pathways' that you have established through your history. There is of course a 3) and a 4) and even more. But these are more touchy subjects. When one begins to move in those directions one runs up against a protective wall that one cannot get through. And you can of course refer to other conversations, not wholly successful conversations, where the wall has been hit, though you do not see it like this.

On a thread that was just started, someone asked a question about the exegesis of Stephen T. Davis. I never heard of him so I looked him up and came across this breakdown of the content of his book 'The Debate About the Bible' (errancy and fallibility vs inerrancy and infallibility). Myself, I read this sort of stuff and I believe that I understand where, intellectually and cognitively, they are coming from. They 'function within systems' and see the systems as in a sense 'all powerful'. They seem to function within an idea system that allows them to believe that it is possible to 'reason it all out'. I regard this as a confusion about categories. Certainly in mathematics, and I reckon within programming, it works like that. There is a great deal that is amenable to that 'function'. But to me it is simply a truism, an obvious statement needing little support, that when it comes to 'life', 'existence', 'meaning', 'being', 'consciousness' and in short the very core and essence of what we mean when we say 'ourself' and 'here', that these tools become not useless but less helpful, and sometimes they are blocks. This is where the problems begin. It becomes problematical in uncertain territories. Language becomes confused. Communication goes off the tracks. If a man needs to go through a mathematical and logical ordering of his ideas in order to have for himself a functional and stable basis for his faith then what really can you say? But as you have gathered my focus is on 'essences' or 'core meanings' or 'essential meanings', and because I have established THIS as my primary territory I have, or allow myself, or cheat my way into, greater fluidity in how I view things.

Within that breakdown linked to above he separates out the following which was interesting to me because, I realize, I essentially express the core meaning and the essence in the post to which, here and now, you respond to. This from the breakdown essay:

• 1. The Bible is inerrant
  2. We are lost and need redemption
  3. Christ rose bodily from the dead
  4. Persons need to commit their lives in faith to Christ.

To me this is a conceptual model. If it has validity it is not in the specificity of the declarations but in the essential truth and validity and perhaps 'functionality' of the notions. As you may guess I don't bother with questions of errancy and inerrancy. The reason I do not is simple: my very own spiritual experience, those sort of events and occurrences which have moulded my life and person, have offered to me sort of 'proofs' that convince me at fundamental levels. Those experiences are more or less impossible to explain and so I don't really try. But let us work with the essence here:

1) 'The Bible' is not really the question or the problem here. The real question is Is it possible for man to receive (perceive) and to record truth or meaning, and to communicate that meaning through any gesture (word, tune, body movement, touch, look)? And is it possible to record in those forms, and to express so that another can receive from it, deep truths about ourselves, the nature of our being here, the nature of the place, etc?

2) How might we conceive and understand 'lostness' and 'need of redemption'? The essence goes far beyond a specific cultural signification such as 'laws' and 'mores' which is often though not always what the religious mean by it. If we are lost in our little World, and this as an Event outside of our capacity to visualize or to understand, what would be the meaning of being lost in a universal sense? If salvation exists for us, what would salvation mean in any of the billion universes? I think we have to extend the notion of what we are talking about when we use these terms, when we use the specificities.

3) Here it gets especially complex. Because if we have access to a far more universal sense of what 'perdition' means, and if it has been clarified, we then might have access to a group of goals toward which to strive. Not limited behavioral goals like "I' a-gonna stop ma drinkin' an' fornicatin' an go to church every Sunday from here on out or the Devil take me!" In my own view, which is problematic I know (to strict Christianity) I think we need to conceive of 'Christ' in a very different way. Obviously, I mean 'non-literally'. Jungian notions of 'the Self' and the emblems and symbols of the Self are relevant though, for many, unpopular. But what is the *meaning* here. It is that *someone* has transversed this material condition and that a 'model' of it exists. A pattern. I assume it is universal and functions in 'all possible worlds'. Looking into it and speaking about it, ordering conceptions about it, leads to a different notion of what we are involved in 'here'. When we refer to divine beings or divine men we are speaking with deeply steeped symbols. I see for example the Johannine Gospel as being an encapsulation of all the possible sense, in a metaphysical sense, that extends beyond literalism. It is a coded language. Similar coded languages also function. But the essence is what is important. (There is far more here that could be broached and I deliberately do not).

4) This is an emphatic statement. It is placed in an imperative mood, isn't it? 'You have to', 'you need to', 'you will'. Actually it is really quite the opposite if we were to be truthful. To start from the other side allows for something more powerful to emerge. You don't need to do fucking anything! You can take it any where you desire. You can use your 'speech' (all the possibilities open to a man to channel consciousness and life) toward any goal or desire that you desire. And you can do this eternally. You can truly go as far down as you wish or simply be completely unconcerned about the whole question. Up? Down? Over? Under? Who gives a flying fuck?

But there exists another possibility and at least linguistically it fits into a dualistic paradigm. If one desires to describe a path of ascension within our world and within, too, all possible worlds, what shall be the terms of ascension? What will ascension mean? A possibility will stand before you: to look into all the traces and the clues and the signs and the 'metaphors' that have been devised and encased or encoded in language, bodily movement, sound, ordering, pictogram, image, symbol, etc.

I have not exactly touched on the question of 'literalism'. You said that I have said that 'it is all in our mind'. This is an interpretation and a limited one. I would rather say it is all within our bodily self and in consciousness strangely wedded to physical structures. When we look backwards into the body in a physical sense we go literally backward and down into biological structures, into the flesh, the cell, the molecule, the atom. But when we look backward in the sense of 'the soul' and also 'consciousness' and certainly 'the psyche', what 'world' is really there? And where is it?

Let us suppose you dream of a huge Wheel that you see in the sky over the horizon and among the clouds. You know that it is supposed to turn clockwise and that that is part of the natural order. But in the dream, and you realize this with a certain alarm, it is turning counter-clockwise. Then you wake up. What is this and where is it? Is it a projection as through a lens from your interior 'world' in 3D onto the screen of the perceptible world? Is it 2D? Is it noD? To begin to understand what I mean when I employ prepositional language you would have to mull over this question. I believe that you would at least have a sense that it is a different territory.

And finally, and as always, I ask you the only question that in my view can have relevance in your case: If you are plagued by bad spirits, and if they are 'real', how do you propose to banish them? I ask this not because I desire to talk about it with you. I don't. But it would seem to me to be the prime question. The answer to it of supreme importance. Essentially I see this as being man's problem.

[Felasco]

3) Here it gets especially complex.

Perhaps it gets especially complex because just as Harry has what you call a mathematical mind, you have a mind that relishes complexity?

A mind with mechanical aptitude will see reality as a mechanism. A mind with an aptitude for complexity will see reality as complex. A mind with an addiction to typoholic debate will see reality as a courtroom.

If readers will pardon me, we are back to the pink sunglasses example. The nature of the equipment we are using has to be accounted for.

Personally, each of us sees the flavor of reality corresponding to the channel our particular mind is set to, thus none of us sees the whole picture. Globally, as human beings we are all profoundly influenced by the nature of medium we all share, thought.

If we study the content of thought, we learn something about a particular point of view. If we study the nature of thought, we learn something about all points of view.