Good Friend(s),
"We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do what suits you. If you wish to stop 'debating' with me simply because of an iteration of what you yourself said, an iteration subtly in reference to how our prior communication ultimately contributed/resulted in your personal insight, then so be it. What else but identity would be preventing you from appreciating the value of our exchanges? Why be peeved?
If one is striving for identitylessness and/or to be 'happy and harmless' it seems unclear why they would cease discussion with another because that person is telling you what they perceive to be honest. Let alone to turn down potential opportunities for that honesty to further shake one out of false beliefs concerning lacking an identity etc.
I refuse to placate an identity, especially one yielded by someone who publicly announces they wish to be rid of it. Why do you allow identity to be projected onto me and implicitly demand my behavior in line with placating said identity? I will not be your identity's slave, and you, good sir, shouldn't be a slave of said identity either; your birthright favorably demands you are entitled to much better than slavery.
Felipe C.:
I'm happier and more harmless than any time before, but I won't argue with you anymore since I am clearly 'deluded' and 'supressing' my affect like Richard
So claimed the people unknowingly involved in the rather telling & provocative Kumare documentary project, yet they were being deluded, by themselves and otherwise, yet still claimed genuine change, even though the whole project and master was a rather profound experimental hoax. Just as people have claimed benefit 'from' Osho and his 'teachings', it is not necessarily evidence for the efficacy, novelty, or profundity of particular practices or associated views or their source etc.
Overly appealing to your anecdotal experience too much leads no where but flawed reason.
If you are happier and more harmless than any time before, then thus you are happier and more harmless after the 'debate'.
Further and beyond this, surely you understand that drawing the conclusions you are, from the fact that you are better off during the third year of meditative practice compared to the first and second year is rather futile.
Surely you see that others also are generally better off than the prior year of practicing much of anything, including meditation. It is often & generally considered the nature of skill & neuronal progression to be better with five years of practice than one was at three. Better three than two etc.
Lastly on this, can you please clarify what you mean by 'practiced for two years'? Are you saying you practiced lightly, like for roughly 1 hour a day? If so, can you please explain what exactly you did for those 730 hours; what you specifically attained? Further, on average, what percentage per said practice-hour did you practice, was it 'lackadaisically' for 50% of the time, 10%, 1%? Or were you fully performing and properly committing every single moment of that hour to the intended practice? Would you switch between practices or ...? To what degree was there anti-meditation per day, aside from time spent abiding?
Please elaborate as to what you accomplished with compassion meditation. As 730 hours or half spent on compassion generation, and to only get mere low or mid-order compassion in that moment, or something as trivial, would likely mean you didn't practice that meditation well and/or properly. As that is not even the first attainment (both in terms of temporary attainment and non) that comes with such generative practice.
Moreover, please elaborate as to what you accomplished with the basic deity visualization meditation. As 730 hours or half spent on a basic deity visualization, and to only get a mere 'mind's eye' pseudo-clear, partial deity visualization with lesser bliss in that moment, or something as trivial, would likely mean you didn't practice that meditation well and/or properly. As that is not even the first attainment (both in terms of temporary attainment and non) that comes with such generative practice.
In either case, with a mere 50 full hours, it would be somewhat uncommon to not run into any of the attainments, lesser knowledges, or discernible changes. However, it can be considered generally common to begin running into to them before even 100 hours.
Thus careful of a self-serving bias in regards to concluding anything from one's experiences in relation to said generative meditations. As lack of efficiency would appear to be likely from one's conditions rather than from the generative meditations.
Practicing less than an hour a day doesn't exactly deeply qualify one to assert much on the topic. As Alan Wallace points out, serious hobbies can often take up to 4 hours a day. Which is telling, as it implies that if practicing less, then the practice itself, possibly the result, and importantly, the according knowledge might be considered of a level comparable to a less-than-serious hobby (by roughly 2190 practice/study hours). Let alone when practicing more seriously than merely a hobby or a hobby vacation (where one practices for a few weeks spending many more hours per day than usual on said hobby).
Withal, I challenge your assumption that 'you know yourself better'. When we first began communicating, by your second response, it was rather clear that you had an identity but didn't have it within your scopes; further, that the most direct way to show you this was not by reason and logic, but by subtly and forcefully exciting and perturbing the symbolic & emotional needs that are binding you. This was proven correct, as you attempted mental gymnastics to avoid the logic and reasoning, yet the subtle forcefulness indeed sowed a seed of experiential feedback, which eventually fruited temporary insight.
Also, when another has insight & recognition of a flaw in reasoning that one, who asserted such flaw, doesn't, then that someone has special insight into one's mind that one does not.
Also, when another has insight & recognition into the facts of scientific modernity and their implications pertaining to one, that one has yet to reach, then that someone has special insight into one that one does not.
Also, when another has insight & recognition into the 'structural' workings of the deeper or deepest orders of mind that one has yet to reach, recognize, or have insight to, then that someone has special insight into one's mind that one does not.
Also, when another has insight & recognition into the mental structure malleability and its associated potential for change & extreme theraputic release, applying to all minds that have even remotely similar structures, and one has yet to reach, then that someone has special insight into one's mind that one does not.
Therefor, one might know specific extraneous & superfluous identity and memory details, however, that someone has special non-trivial insight into one that one does not. So it may be the other way around, maybe it is possible that you know yourself, as in the relevant non-identity structures, less than someone else does.
Felipe C.:
I wonder if people argue because they are dissatisfied with their current moment and so choose a feeling of important engagement.
Bingo.
After that debate, I investigated my intentions and the emotional effects of those judgements. Why am I arguing on the Internet if this very action is making me uneasy? Why is it making me uneasy? What do I have to defend?
I retired from reading/posting in the DhO a few days and realized that my judging abilities were impeded/contaminated by my own confirmation bias and my actualist calenture. I realized that there was an identity behind all those lines: I was creating a belief of the (supposedly) absence of beliefs, and "my" identity clung to that part of "me" the same way it has clung with other aspects of my life that I considered important in the past, at the time of elaborating a definition of "me", of my identity and my role as a human being.
I realized that the judging is not the problem; it's the emotional shadow behind it (in the form of defensive pride or motivation) that makes the judging corrupted, biased, dishonest, cunning.
The debate provided the temporary gift of insight into your subtler state, underneath your admitted identity of identitylessness. Which reflects the use of causing subtle forceful perturbations.
The assertion that "people argue because they are dissatisfied with their current moment and so choose a feeling of important engagement" when put into context, should be rejected. Debate refines and sharpens the mind. Critical analysis is a critical ability in life and all its problems and is critically improved while participating in debate. How else will any complex macro-order problems get solved aside from critical analysis & wisdom? Debate is often a critical teaching skill, the Buddha used it and not because "he" was unsatisfied with "his" current moment. If the assertion is true, then it must be case that Richard is unsatisfied with his moment every moment he engaged in any form of debate. The person asserting this to begin with also must of been dissatisfied with his moment when he wrote that too, as what he wrote is no more or less debate than anything he is referring to... Thus the notion when taken to its logical end, is self-refuting.
Debate drives both personal growth and growth in all philosophy and thus science itself. Debate enabled Buddhism as a whole to expand and improve, which is why both physics and Buddhism speak of the same type of imminent co-emergence. Personal growth, for example, by recognizing personal limitations in reference to liberation, brought out by the debate. It is easier for monks to falsely convince themselves they are liberated when they have retired to simple hermited living devoid of intellectual confrontation, than monks who debate intensively amongst others. One's shortcomings are much harder to hide in the ladder situation, both from others and from oneself.
Again and lastly to iterate and summerize, it appears ridiculous to say all debate, most debate, or anything close is inherently caused from personal momentary dissatisfaction; quite an assertion to the debate clubs who maturely use is it, who derive pervasive satisfaction and moment by moment enjoyment from the sport and its process.
How can anyone miss the value of debate when it comes to liberation or else? Tantric practitioners from Buddhist traditions and non have often thrown direct insults at one another, as one is striving to be liberated from being influenced by praise or blame.
As the zen parable goes: A samurai approaches a Zen master with a pipe and exclaims "I have penetrated emptiness and attained enlightenment!". The master takes his pipe and smacks the samurai hard over the head. The samurai exclaims & instinctively clasps his sword. The master unflinchingly replies "Is emptiness so quick to anger?"...
Shouldn't there be two different sets of social ethics concerning contemplatives and non-contemplatives? With non-contemplatives there is generally more placating as many consider non-identity painful and to be avoided; further they project and expect certain appeals and social rules from others etc. With contemplatives, why should they placate to one's identity if all involved are trying to reduce or destroy it? Amongst contemplatives, shouldn't honesty & skillful means take a
much greater priority over identity appeasement?
"...there are probably few cultures that have mastered the art of the polemical insult to the extend that Tibetans have. And this undoubtedly is part of what makes the genre a spectacle, and therefor what makes it popular. Tibetan polemicists sometimes claim that their opponents are under the influence of drugs, or of various diseases, or worse, that they are possessed by demons - for why else would they be babbling nonsense. They compare them to dumb animals (sheep is the preferred species). They accuse them of pride, but too stupid to know even how to boast, they do their 'dance' with 'decapitated head rather than the tail of a peacock hung from their behinds."
In comparison, the criticism has been rather tame.
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Aside from this, what were you trying to get across by putting the quoted slices 'I am' or 'I reject' or 'I experience' in bold? As far as I can tell it serves no actual purpose. A passive appeal of sorts.
I am free of any sort of mental attachment related to false notions of identity or self etc, the terms are used as accessible and conventional language. This includes mental attachments to using "I", and
not using "I".
Surely you understand that the Buddha ended I making, was free of mental attachments and conventionally used I for the sake of conversation. Surely you know that Richard uses the term "I"...
Further, using 'this mind' or 'this body' or even 'the/this discriminative awareness' etc in place is still ultimately incorrect, so there is only so much use in creating semantic friction by resisting the natural flow of the English language being used. If we both spoke a language that somehow was void of all or a good many of the false notions of duality, identity, objects, substance, etc...then it would likely be used in favor.
Don't presuppose or assume any type of validity beyond the essential and conventional.
Can you graciously explain why you chose to bold "The jargon was created by a man who seemingly experiences grandiose delusions" and not "as he has claimed to 'know' (beyond belief) something that is academically false. It seriously calls into question his ability to 'know' (beyond belief) unadulterated consciousness from non."?
Context is important.
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Felipe C.:
Also, I wonder how good is the academia in making methods to be permanently happy, when it's pretty clear that it holds the view that is impossible to be happy 24-7-365.
Your assertion masquerading as wonder is unfounded. First, since you say "it's pretty clear" that "it" holds the view that it is impossible to be happy 24-7-365...then please provide any evidence supporting this.
Provide definitive (or how else could it be "clear" or "pretty clear")
evidence that it's clear that academia considers it "impossible" to be happy 24-7.
Not just unlikely or whatever, but clearly impossible. If you cannot provide any compelling evidence, then please understand your assumptions have no basis in or bearing on reality.
I reject the premise that it's "clear" or "pretty clear". I reject the premise that academia holds the view that it is impossible to be happy 24-7-365. You are incorrectly defining academia and are only merely relaying your own assumptions & projections.
Delusion or grandiose thinking may be considered unhealthy and not the supreme enjoyment of being alive. If you include delusion, then actualism doesn't provide constant happiness '24-7-365'. Consistent bodily pain is also essentially untouched by actualism. Buddhism deals with delusion to great degrees, which is why there are affectless schizophrenics who would not receive help from actualism as they are already devoid of affect, yet their sense contact is distorted by delusion, however there are some schizophrenics who have eventually become ordained Buddhist monks, who claim their sensory delusions have been ended (their psychosis thus controlled) through the paths, practices, and associated views/axioms of Buddhism.
Further, what does actualism do about the unhappiness from Polio or small-pox, or even a broken-leg? Buddhism was founded in a time and place where disease and painful death was a daily occurrence, it is specifically intended to counteract the pain and suffering of disease and death.
Academia recognizes it is possible to experience tantric orgasms even giving birth (no pain medication) etc. Some woman have explained clearly that dry-sockets that are caused by the removal of teeth are far more painful than giving birth with no pain medication, however, both Buddhism and neuroscience/psychology demands it be possible to experience pleasure, happiness, even tantric orgasms through said dry-sockets as well. Actualism doesn't have any applicable position or knowledge concerning how to fundamentally convert said pain.
Neuroscience additionally disagrees with you, as suffering is considered an unestablished hallucination. Further, all the brain structures related to suffering are ultimately integrated into areas related to joy, peace, bliss etc. Which when considering neuroplasticity, it becomes further reenforced that suffering is not inherent at all and further integration of certain systems can lead to an end (hippocampus-amygdala systems becoming harmonized across both hemispheres etc). This isn't exactly shocking, science has known for generations about varying circumstances where people are unable to feel pain at all; others where people are affectless, don't feel social cues, emotions, cogitatively identityless etc, it takes no imagination at that point to conclude it is a very real possibility (despite what any may think, scientists are generally rather creative).
Aside from this, neuroscience envisions direct suffering reduction to become more and more efficient as technology expands. Actualism has no tools to directly reduce another's suffering...Science does in a limited sense (as does Buddhism in a limited sense via direct transmission). Thus actualism is extremely limited in providing happiness, moreover, it has become effectively static.
Science on the other hand, is an emerging flux that will not stop progressing. To the degree that some neurophilosophers have been claiming for quite some time that eventually we will be able to directly, through technology, produce mystic states and experiential emancipation from pain/suffering. What you think the "God Helmet" is; isolation tanks, entheogens and "smart drugs" etc? Do you seriously think neuroscientists, psychologists, neurophilosophers, and otherwise are oblivious to the work of prior generations? The great Stanislav Grof, who conducted over three thousand entheogenic trials, for example.
Or Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Harvard professor who became one of America's most wanted men in a few short years, and two other well-known Ph.D.'s, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, wrote a manual on extreme psychology provoked by entheogens, based off the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They claim liberation from the psychological games that cause unpleasantness to be not only possible, but that they had replicated it with thousands of people (further they mapped out many repeatable results that correspond consistently to various causes & conditions).
Now the Germans have been (over the last thirty years or so up to present day) re-quantifying a hyper-simple form of the manual in controlled settings (read Thomas Metzinger and others for more information). They found long ago that the "Ozeanische Selbstentgrenzung" or "oceanic boundlessness" is related to extreme peace, transcendence, and non-discriminative unity etc and is easier to overlook in the clinical setting then the other two primary dynamics taken into account, as thought disturbances correlate directly. The other two being "Angst vor der Ich-Auflösung" or "dread of ego dissolution" and the visionary restructuralisation process.
It would be anti-academic for academia not to look into this. Especially since most academics are possabilists. Academia as a natural axiomatic process of emergence that necessarily builds in graduations is not the 'academia' that is inline with your projections.
Felipe C.:
In relation to throwing academia again and again,
Academia like applied technology, science, and philosophy? If defined like this, it can & does apply to every single particular possibly discussed, period. Shouldn't be surprised that it comes up a lot in our world.
"By extension Academia has come to mean the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters."
Felipe C.:
I wonder how academical are your own views expressed in other threads, ie. rebirth. [...]
What 'views' have I expressed as my own? What do you mean by views (plurality emphasized) and then simply refer to rebirth? One cannot draw much of a logical conclusion or even come to a point of asserted "wonder" about 'my own' 'views' in general, whether I have views at all, or whether said views have supposed friction with academia based off a particular appearance of view. For that would fall into an association fallacy. Further, it falls for a genetic fallacy to fault any other 'view' simply because its source is the same as another 'view' that is viewed as 'flawed'.
However, your 'wonder' is completely unjustified. I have made it rather clear I operate as possabilist. 'Wonder' to whatever degree suits you, despite already being told. The wonder of possabilism, is one can drop nearly every order of opinion and rationally address the evidence and all sides, drawing probabilist ratios based off the evidence and introspection into the limits of one's own knowledge if wished.
There is just no need for said opinions, as the logical-matrix of possabilism is rationally superior in every way & thus does away with them. Therefor, I don't need a 'view' of rebirth at all and thus don't possess one; I completely reject your simple-minded thinking and projections.
Ian Stevenson:
"I believe it is better to learn what is probable about important matters than to be certain about trivial ones."
Science & academia is not a democracy. It is a bastardization of science to think it is consensus based or oriented, science is not a consensus. History is riddled with broken ideals where science assumed it had actually glimpsed into the real to such a degree that an aspect or it itself was fully known, every time shown to be completely wrong. In modernity, academia/science has much more humility, for the most part rejecting ontology and reaffirming scientific principles of possabilism and non-provability. In modernity, there are more scientists and engineers than any time in history by huge portions, this and the aforementioned forces modernity into an active open-minded debate, each vector knowingly limited by their own lack of knowledge & insight into logic (as the sheer amount of information has increased so significantly). This all makes for an advantage in favor of modernity in the sense that academia/science hinges less on the mental attachments of a few men.
You might be surprised to find the majority of academics are not eliminative materialists. In clarity, what do you even mean by "academical"? A narrow view concerning how science might be practiced doesn't constitute in the slightest as to what is "academical".
In fact can you explain the tests and theories related to determining what is academic? How does one prove or disprove in a scientific way, what is academic? Further, how can you test for whether or not the method of peer-review etc is academic or further, scientific? Is science academic, considering it is based on an induction fallacy? Is reason itself scientific considering it is the identification and integration of perceptions?
Generally one's presuppositions are not a measure of anything meaningful or anything related to reality.
Matthieu Ricard:
There are many things that ordinary mortals find hard to accept-such as most scientific results! Just take the notion of space-time, or quantum uncertainty!"
Are these notions "academical": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfdMdbSnNSw ? (if you try to claim this isn't academical, then please dedicate the remainder of your time winning the million dollar Nobel prize and also the 'quantum randy challenge' which itself has something like a million dollar prize, by disproving modern physics, as you are challenged by the video)
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cKj3kx4NTY ? (if you try to claim this isn't academical then you must debunk it on scientific philosophy grounds, best of luck definitively disproving trained philosophers by means of logical proof; however, you shouldn't just post it here, make sure you write into Oxford and formerly debunk their philosophers, and then write to Johanan Raatz, the the maker of the videos, who has degrees related to said axioms, as to formerly debunk him.)
If one implicitly asserts one's knowledge is so pervasive that one thinks one is capable of making wide-sweeping hasty generalizations concerning what academia considers impossible or "academical", then possibly one considers this within one's grasp.
It actually appears it would be easier to argue the links are overly academic than not in fact properly tinged with the minimum.
Further, know that both links necessarily & implicitly provide the basis for the subtle notions of Buddhist rebirth. Thus, if you cannot refute the bedrock of both links, then rebirth is necessarily a possibility.
Moreover, is http://parvati.tripod.com/strassman.html academical?
"Rick Strassman, M.D. is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. [...]
In January 1991, twenty-three minutes after I injected a large dose of DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) into Elena's arm vein. Elena is a forty-two-year-old married psychotherapist with extensive personal experience with psychedelic drugs. DMT is a powerful, short-acting psychedelic that occurs naturally in human body fluids, and is also found in many plants. Elena has read some Buddhism, but practices Taoist meditation.
Within thirty seconds of injection, she loses awareness of the room, and us in it. Besides myself, Elena's husband, who has just undergone a similar drug session, and our research nurse sit quietly by her side. I know from previous volunteers' reports that peak effects of intravenous DMT occur between two to three minutes after the injection, and that she will not be able to communicate for at least fifteen minutes, by which time most effects will have faded. Her eyes closed, she begins spurting out laughter, at times quite uproarious, and her face turns red. "Well, I met a living buddha! Oh, God! I'm staying here. I don't want to lose this. I want to keep my eyes closed to allow it to imprint itself. Just because it's possible!"
Elena felt great the next week. "Life if very different. A buddha is now always in the upper right-hand corner of my consciousness," says Elena. "All of what I have been working on spiritually for the last several years has become a certainty. Left hooks from the mundane world continue to come up and hit me, but the solidity of the experience anchors me, allows me to handle it all. Time stopped at the peak of the experience; now everyday time has slowed. The third stage, that of coming down from the peak was the most important; if I had opened my eyes too soon I wouldn't have been able to do as much integrating of the experience as I have."
[...]
On one hand, a Buddhist perspective might hold all of these experiences to be equal. The matter-of-fact approach to nonmaterial realms in Buddhism provides firm footing for accepting and working with those experiences. It also does away with judging nonmaterial realms as better (or worse) than material ones--a tendency in some New Age religions. The experience of seeing and speaking to deva-like creatures in the DMT trance was just that: seeing and speaking with other beings. Not wiser, not less wise, and not more or less trustworthy than anyone or anything else."
Of the curious particulars that have academicians interested in this phenomena - not merely the enlightening experiences or even the extremely rich contact with apparent entities (normative dmt entities and non). Though the fact that permanent visual imprintation is not a standard feature of the chemical or induced experience, further that the spontaneous knowledge of willingly initiating said visual imprintation is anti-normative. They do not occur randomly during trials, they do not occur during standard positive, neutral, or negative experiences, they only occur during apparently trans-personal entity experiences under very specific circumstances. Though not just any entity type out of the many, as not even deva-type experiences appear to induce either the spontaneous knowledge of possible near-future imprintation and the actual & willing imprintation.
Academia naturally goes where the cloud of intriguing mysteries remain (despite socio-geopolitical frictions & conditionings), especially when it is a phenomenon which is rather anomalous and eludes many paradigms (and is quite curious by most standards).
Beyond, to address "Omega is a Tibetan practitioner". If to be considered anything, a 'general buddhist scholastic' is far more appropriate, rather versed and have received direct teachings pertaining to several sub-traditions (a portion being Indo-Tibetan), beyond, having accumulated a knowledge of the dharma in general. Modern academia considers that being a Buddhist or a practitioner of a particular school to mean something very different if growing up in the culture, even further concerning various geo-historical vectors, where less globalization would even further emphasize the cultural influence on a developing mind.
This developmental difference is so significant that modern academia seriously questions if one can be a Buddhist or a practitioner of a specific school in this proper sense, as we have minds that have developed with an entirely different symbolic scheme, and then later were introduced to Buddhism. Further our minds find a such developmental difference by virtue of globalized high-speed information channeling and the archiving of hundreds and hundreds of cultures and texts.
'General Buddhist Scholasticism' is bound by no particular school but interested in studying the Dharma in general, both in its historical context per sub-tradition, but also as an emerging and interpenetrating whole, which is of course how many great Buddhist masters saw it.
This should not developmentally limit one, as Shakyamuni certainly did not develop in a Buddhist culture (if studying hard, practicing well, and actively challenging your teachers, it may very well developmentally assist one to forsake any particular sub-tradition in favor of in-depth yet general buddhist scholasticism). Further many Buddhists are critical of cultural influence having an unwanted effect, such as the rigidity of some aspects of the relationship between the monastic community and the laypeoples who grow up amongst such culture.
Concerning rebirth,
"One moon shows in every pool in every pool the one moon."
"At birth we come At death we go... Bearing nothing."
Anyone analyzing the Buddhist concept of rebirth for the purpose of rejection or otherwise should use the academic physicist Robert Oppenheimer's quote as a guidepost.
"If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no;' if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no;' if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no;' if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no.' The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of man's self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth-century science."
Anyone who would like to doubt rebirth should first have the actual notion put forward in one's mind, as to doubt the right thing.
Therefor the notion must fit the following:
'If we ask, for instance, whether the conditions of a man's mind-stream after his death remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the conditions of a man's mind-stream after his death changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the conditions of a man's mind-stream after his death is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the conditions of a man's mind-stream after his death is in motion, we must say 'no'.'
So please, 'speak up' (anyone) and explain how the notion of "Buddhist" rebirth that you are particularly doubting fits with those.
I thus iterate clearly to everyone that ever has the intention of evaluating the most basic aspects of the Buddhist claim of rebirth with any sort of authenticity, make sure that the notion that you summon accurately falls in line with the aforementioned. Further, it must be inline with co-emergence; not substance, not productive causality, & not causality by law-like successions.
It is rather likely the majority of attempted notions relating to "rebirth", when discussed on this forum or others, are not inline with the above (or generally even close). How can someone make comment on, evaluate, or reject, a notion that has never even properly entered into that someone's mind? Those people often assert trivially simplistic causal views and/or create soul-like/person-like notions of incarnation, project them unto Buddhism & assume this represents the Buddhist notion of rebirth, then they belittle it, doubt it, reject it.
Those people are foolishly rejecting their own projections while under the spell that those projections are others'. While holding said rejections of said projections against the others. Concluding that those "buddhistic" rebirth notions are narrow, false, anti-modern, anti-academic, scientifically questionable etc. Yet those conclusions are not actually of Buddhist notions but of their own projections so know this and know this well.
As all do themselves a disservice by creating straw-men, becoming under the spell of them, and then evaluating the world from the confines of said spell. It is highly likely that incorrect conceptions will be the most common and consistent notions presenting themselves to those who have not even reached the many and vast vision samadhis, let alone the relevant and significant ones (requiring a certain moxy), which serve as a basis for Shakymuni's assertions concerning rebirth; which are epistemic and non-ontological outside the epistemic boundary.
Thus, any who try to refute or doubt an ontological model of rebirth are committing a category error.
Felipe C.:
I don't care nor do I believe in the cosmological/astrophysical claims of Richard, the same way I didn't with those of the Buddha
Case and point as to said category error, as Shakyamuni specifically avoided answering ontological questions. Further, by definition it is rather farfetched to say Shakyamuni made astrophysical claims, considering this it is very farfetched to assert he made cosmological claims.
Moreover, your lack of interest, care, or belief has nothing to do with the fact that you were making unsubstantiated assertions (such as super-naturalism etc). When pressed for a single example as to why, instead of taking the time to write a single sentence containing an example, you inverse the burden of proof & specially plead as to why you won't or can't provide or 'put up'.
Further, I stated simply "I would LOVE to hear how you think rebirth in Buddhism is somehow scientifically questionable". Why are you unwilling to explain yourself and respond in a straightforward way opposed to mental gymnastics as to avoid answering? Thought-terminating appeals and cliches will do one no good.
You have been asked directly to give a single reason why rebirth is to be considered 'anti-scientific', 'non-academic', or 'scientifically questionable' as you have implicitly and explicitly asserted in the past (as you compared it in line as scientifically questionable amongst notions that have been blatantly & experimentally debunked). In response to being asked for a single example:
Felipe C.:
I won't discuss again if consciousness does cease or doesn't cease after physical death.
Yet Shakyamuni publicly refuted Sāti, the Fisherman's Son, as to the notion that his teaching consists of consciousness being that which moves on after death. Sati thought the Buddha's teachings concern consciousness doing the wandering, and the Buddha refuted him. Thus you are referring to something of your own creation and little to do with the Buddhist rebirth.
After the proverbial cop-out, you demanded an entire model explaining how it could be possible, thus explained both in terms of science and Buddhism... like somehow these differing requests were even close to rationally equivalent. You are the one that put forward your presuppositions without evidence as to the conclusions and what was implicitly asserted as scientifically questionable.
You also claimed before that you didn't answer many questions due to the fact they were of a 'scientific nature' or because of time restraints...yet you now put forth the time to expand your knowingly unfounded claim (as you chose to leave it unanswered) that not only rebirth is anti-scientific but that "current" academia rejects it. You see how there is a disconnect between your assertion that you don't have time to give a single example or through lack of knowledge you cannot give a single example, yet in this short time, you have gained the knowledge to say what currently academia, as a whole or not, absolutely rejects and rejects-not as current or "academic", or possible? Is this really knowledge expansion, or are you expanding your presuppositions?
Matthieu Ricard:
"If the man in the street believes in electrons, it's because a large number of reliable physicists believe that they exist. He's sure he would reach the same conclusion, if he spent a few years learning physics. And if the man in the street now feels less sure about electrons being real entities, then it's because other equally reliable scientists have deduced from quantum mechanics that an electron is just an "observable" phenomenon, which can also appear as a wave."
I really advise more time downloading papers off the libraries of Cornell, Stanford, Oxford. Also taking advantage of the many free online courses. Academia is far less settled or one sided and many unusual and abstract notions are born from its breeding grounds. Laypeople project commonly project so much (and incorrectly) about what is settled and what is not.
Can you point me in the direction of the dictator of academia, that which definitively determines what is the "current" academic understanding (can you point to a single academic who says definitively on behalf of science and academia itself that rebirth is off the table; as I can point to academicians that distinctly refute you)?
If you can't point to a single logical example why rebirth is anti-scientific or anti-academic, or a single academic who can say for you, definitively in agreement, then what other than identity is causing you to come to this conclusion or assert this in public? Simply assuming or asserting that rebirth is not academic is completely meaningless and isn't an academic practice in its own right. It is presuppositionalism.
You appear to believe because you believe because you believe.
"(Parenthesis: I would also LOVE an explanation from you on how is not scientifically questionable or not-supernatural the transplantation of accumulated abstract actions and effects from body to body, existing in 6 different realms, incluiding hell and heavens; all this dynamic according to some moral precepts and rules, for example)"
However informal, this is ignoratio elenchi, as this fails to address the question at hand, further shifting the burden of proof & appealing to misleading vividness. Moreover, I don't have to explain or justify your description, especially beyond potential semantic games, as it is distinctly not Buddhist nor what was implied. For example, there is no "transplantation" of abstract effects; the nature of karma is soleness.
Further, the realms are delineated and are phenomenological, epistemological, soteriological. They are observed pyche-structural phenomena etc. Moreover, they constitute a path of transformation where an active comparative analysis is had between one's present experience and the six extreme psychological potentials, transforming experience into appreciation, compassion, and unbinding/liberation.
The early texts were more anti-realist than you appear to realize, further even the abidhamma is far less realist than exoterically seems the case. Esoteric abidhamma makes clear its model is really representative twilight language. The sun and the moon are the eyes, mount meru is the energetic-cerebrospinal system, the four continents are the arms and legs etc etc. The realms relate to psycho-energetic configurations and conditionings of the prana/rlung system and their associated experiential modification. Etc.
To explain again why it is improper for you to assert super-naturalism, super-naturalism specifically relates to something transcending & completely outside the natural world. For example, if someone asserts God, it is pseudo-philosophical and logically unsound to automatically label such assertion as supernaturalism.
If another were to object and 'counter' with "I would also LOVE an explanation from you on how it is not-supernatural ", then the logical refutation of said objection is simply asserting that God is part of the natural world. Your question is definitional in nature and so the answer.
Thus a new & logically coherent method must be sought if interested in deconstructing the assertion. Beyond, do not conflate Buddhist epistemic claims and epiontic implications, that are interested in understanding the necessary & pertinent knowledge as to the is/reality (by definition the natural world) with supernatural claims.
The models of Buddhism are derived from experience and probing logic, both of which necessarily deal with and are of the natural world, all epistemic extensions thus are also the natural. The Buddhist inseparability of emptiness/conventional demands no extension or assertion as to a 'super-natural', so seeing this a false dichotomy. Even if you assert one or another Buddhist particular as mere imaginary pontification, then this is still under the purview of the natural world, imagination is part of the natural world and surely isn't 'supernatural'.
Despite already linking to academic models that necessarily allow the possibility of rebirth, models can be derived from quantum information theory, neo- orch-or & integrated information theory, decoherence theory, & Chalmer's hard problem of emergence etc. Another order of example; self-collapsing wave-functions have acausal entanglement with the universal wave-function and other wave-functions. Self-collapsing wave-functions and their associated systems can cause environmental decoherence to other wave-functions, self-collapsing and non. The environmental decoherence amongst self-collapsing wave-functions 'tunes the entanglement' between them and their entanglement with the universal wave-function. The co-emergent neuronal/mind system is necessarily explained by quantum information theory as and via wave-functions. One neuronal/mind system tunes various entanglement functions by virtue of another self-collapsing wave-function's environmental decoherence.
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Withal, especially keeping in the mind the most basic, at the very least, the lack of duality between cause & effect.
One of academia's postulates is that the whole universe is interpenetrating and inseparable, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (opposed to emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that the universe's energy and mass don't change; that its net energy content is zero. How is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (opposed to emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that the entropy of the universe is never decreasing, entropy increases with the arrow of time. Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (opposed to emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that the entire universe is co-entangled, everything is not merely connected (like through internet cables connecting computers), it is whole (in actuality there is no information transferred as there is no "other", which is necessarily required to "transfer"; entanglement is acausal to a serious degree). Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (opposed to emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that local and non-local realisms are entirely false, if something isn't measured/observed/entangled, it doesn't exist and isn't there. Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (which is distinct from emergence)?
Of academia's postulates are the holographic & digital paradigms, where everything is a 'single' emanation, and all the information pertaining to all of the 'single' emanation is contained everywhere amongst it (via universal wave-function). Considering this with the above, how is therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (which is distinct from emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that organism systems (systems biology) are of a no-self/non-self nature. Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (which is distinct from emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that after being anesthetized, it is not an utterly new & unrelated consciousness-stream springing out of nothingness to return in place of a different/other consciousness. Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (distinct from emergence)?
One of academia's postulates is that consciousness relates to quantum microtubule processing, therefor sub-neuronal; which after all are nothing but molecular fields; which after all are nothing but atomic fields; which after all are nothing but subatomic fields; which after all are nothing but fields of 'fundamental forces'; which after all are nothing but resultants of co-emergent information processing. Considering this with the above, how is it therefor academic to assume new consciousness-continuums are created out of absolute and utter nothingness (distinct from emergence)?
Etc.
Such as considering P. polycephalum demonstrating non-random, seeming intelligence or proto-intelligence & memory without a brain or nervous system whatsoever, most of the time remaining a single cell.
Intelligence, like consciousness, behaves as an integrated pattern.
Etc.
Why assume a special and entirely unique set of emergence logic for consciousness-continuums, when there doesn't need to be any such assumptions, as more is explained with less assumed by following the logic actually demonstrated and observed of reality. For example, the logically consistent notion of an emerging unified (quantum inseparability) potential-field of consciousness is more preferable over the fantastical notions of dualism based on presuppositions and logic that are no where to be found in our understanding of physics/scientific principles.
In other words, it appears implicit in your assumptions, several orders of presupposed special-pleading that have no logical basis in the evidence related to what we know of "reality".
"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
-Max Planck, founder of quantum theory
Moreover, can you give me a rough number on how many thousands of people have to claim to remember details from what appear to be past lives until it can be approached in an academic fashion & with academic rigor? To be blunt, the notion that Buddhist rebirth is inherently antithetical to modern science or academia is patently absurd. Step outside of one's projections.
You appear to be merely continuing some outdated cultural projection likely inherited from western cultures. You must remember, academics and scientists in Asia don't have many of the cultural sticking points that many westerners are attached to (that are not founded in science, like the experimentally debunked metaphysical position that there is an objective material reality, local realisms etc). As most Asian and Indian quantum physicists that I am aware of consider rebirth at least as likely (if not more likely) than not. They represent a large portion of academia and thus the community, yet they would completely disagree with you.
If one actually thought somehow "western" academia is somehow superior to "eastern" academia, then one would be extremely out of touch, and possibly deluded with subtle culturalism. The vast majority of aged and modern quantum physics textbooks were written by Indians and other Asians, the very same ones who are not as culturally bound and have frankly been pushing the science of cutting-edge physics with often a greater degree of open mindedness.
Not shockingly, on the other hand, some of the greatest western scientific minds (who will be remembered for generations) of modernity, contemporary Einsteins, Bohrs, and Bohms such as Penrose with the modern theory of black holes and Orch-OR etc, Zeilinger with inventing actual quantum teleportation and experimentally debunking local and non-local realisms etc, Susskind for discovering string-theory, the holographic principle etc, have contributed in significant (groundbreaking) ways to physics that force its modelling closer in line to many causality-based Asian models (and each contribution changed the forced modelling in ways such that each increased the chances of rebirth being possible & reasonable).
Someone like this also might jump to the scientistic conclusion that notions of universal mind are also not inline with academic thinking. This is also a false conclusion.
Ian Stevenson, a professor of the university of Virginia has studied three thousand cases of claimed past life memories, he has identified twenty in which the detail of recollections indicate an explanatory mystery. Basically these are extremely difficult to explain as anything other than the product of previous lives; they always are ordinary children. You should write in haste to Stevenson and alert him he is wasting his time being non-academic!
Felipe C.:
Clearly you know better. Maybe I should check some tantric texts to know the truth you are clearly seeing. [...]
Sorry dude, but these methods -both buddhism and actualism- claim a lot of things that don't quite align with the current academical understanding of human experience and its current solutions to the problem of human suffering.
Can methods claim (as methods can be considered distinct from views)?
You mean they don't align with your assumptions and beliefs. As you have demonstrated a lack of knowledge as to the 'current academical understanding'. It isn't hard to pontificate about something you know absolutely nothing about, as then there are no bounds or limitations for your assumptions and believed assertions. Any appeals to equality between Buddhism & actualism on the basis of your assumptions concerning scientific coalescence or lack thereof, are unfounded.
Beyond, a dynamic social-memory complex that has over half a million texts to its name, in point of fact, is not merely a method, or methods. I would advise pushing oneself to read considerably more than one intends. If you intend on only studying in detail 10 texts, make it 50. As even with 1000 texts, it is only a drop in the bucket and still limits one's ability to make broad and sweeping judgments of the entire meta-tradition. It isn't just repeating the same thing over and over, as there are thousands of christian sects, and yet Buddhism has more texts than all religions combined and a good portion of philosophy put together.
Further know that amongst the tantra texts are generally only the outer & inner levels of Buddhist knowledge, there often are at least two subtler orders of knowledge, the secret and the inner-most secret. Further as per Buddhism's dark age, the texts are dispersed and rather unorganized.
What I see clearly is more than from texts or pith-instructions, but from visionary-experiences, direct-transmission, meditative and knowledge/wisdom attainments, directed logic & evaluation, and lengthy experimentation.
Also, one might want to reconsider one's study habits, as after 'studying Tibetan for two years' and 'practicing Tibetan related meditation', you have demonstrated a lack of basic knowledge as to Tibetan Buddhism in general and the meditation you claim to have practiced for two years. Thus if you bring the same study-ethic, it is likely you will gain little to no understanding of or value from Tantra, or even modern science.
The Dalai Lama has made it clear to be careful not to mistake Buddhist science with anything else considered Buddhism. You cannot take claims that academic Buddhists themselves do not consider academic or scientific and conflate or throw them in the same category as those claims that are put forth seriously as academic or scientific. Essentially, taking a soteriological text and incorrectly interpreting it or presenting it as ontological is a category error.
At least if one is actually & sincerely interested in understanding academic Buddhism's place amongst the rest of the academic world (rather than affirming presuppositions). As a general rule, it isn't hard to doubt something when you don't know much or anything about it, its limiting factors, the axioms leading up to it etc etc.
Henry Stapp, quantum physicist:
"...the re-bonding [between mind and matter] achieved by physicists during the first half of the twentieth century must be seen as a momentous development: a lifting of the veil..."
"In order to free human beings from the false materialist mind-set that still infects the world of rational discourse, a serious effort is needed to move people's understanding of what science says out of the seventeenth century and into the twenty-first."
"Respectable theorists hold a wide variety of views as to how to understand quantum mechanics. That theory accommodates a large variety of phenomena that are not allowed by classical mechanics. The key point here is this: If something like James’ fantastic laws of clinging do exist, and they are sufficiently strong, then aspects of a personality might be able to survive bodily death and persist for a while as an enduring mental entity, existing somewhere in Descartes’ world of mental things, but capable on rare occasions of reconnecting with the physical world.
I do not see any compelling theoretical reason why this idea could not be reconciled with the precepts of quantum mechanics. Such an elaboration of quantum mechanics would both allow our conscious efforts to influence our own bodily actions, and also allow certain purported phenomena such as “possession”, “mediumship”, and “reincarnation” to be reconciled with the basic precepts of contemporary physics.
These considerations are, I think,
sufficient to show that any claim that postmortem personality survival is impossible that is based solely on the belief that it is incompatible with the contemporary laws of physics is not rationally supportable. Rational science-based opinion on this question must be based on the content and quality of the empirical data, not on the presumption that such a phenomenon would be strictly incompatible with our current scientific knowledge of how nature works."
You are welcome to read Stapp's paper "Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival" & his more detailed book "Mindful Universe". Stapp says quantum mechanics & quantum theory lead him to embracing Buddhism and labeling himself Buddhist.
Dalia Lama:
"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change."
Ajahn Brahmavamso:
"When a Buddhist looks through a telescope, they are not scared by what they might find. They are not scared of science. Science is an essential part of Buddhism.
If science can disprove rebirth, then Buddhists should give up the idea of rebirth. If science disproves non-self, and shows there is a self, then all Buddhists should abandon non-self. If science proves there is no such thing as kamma, but instead there is a big God up in the sky, then all Buddhists should believe in God.
That is, if it's provable science. Buddhism has no sacred cows."
If you don't understand much about science or Buddhism, you are not qualified to draw comparisons, as said comparisons will be necessarily limited and reduced to a degree of shallowness that is defined by your knowledge or lack thereof.
B. Alan Wallace:
"In the theory of ontological relativity there is one truth that is invariant across all cognitive frames of reference: everything that we apprehend, whether perceptually or conceptually, is devoid of its own inherent nature, or identity, independence of the means by which it is known. Perceived objects, or observable entities, exist relative to the sensory faculties or systems of measurement by which they are detected - not independently in the objective world. This is the broad consensus among psychologists, neuroscientists, and physicists."
Vlako Vedral:
"Quantum physics is indeed very much in agreement with Buddhistic emptiness."
Hawking and Mlodinow:
"Model-dependent realism short circuits all this argument and discussion between the realist and anti-realist schools of thought. According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If there are two models that both agree with observation ... then one cannot say that one is more real than another. One can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration."
G. P. Smetham:
"Model-dependent realism accepts that the nature of reality is such that it necessarily manifests in different, yet coherently interdependent, ways. Because of this some models, materialism for instance, can definitely be ruled out. In Hawking and Mlodinow's formulation the terms 'realist' and 'anti-realist' are used quite loosely for, in face, Model-dependent realism necessarily will have to impute a lack of 'inherent reality' to all models. The whole meta-physical point of such a perspective is that it is the very nature of reality to manifest in a coherently coordinated variety of different ways; this is exactly what one would expect in a quantum epiontic universe."
"However it appears that we may have to accept the fact that the nature of reality may be such that a constrained 'epiontic' metaphysical relativism, or 'ontological relativity' as Wallace calls it, is required within which various differing, and yet interconnected, conceptual formulations are possible, the only final 'knowledge' being a direct experiential non-dual awareness achieved by very few. In a sense one might say that quantum theory is not so much 'elegance and enigma' but demonstrates the
elegance of enigma. The elegance is the result of the universal Mindnature exploring it's multifaceted qualitative experiential potentialities. And it is only within direct non-conceptual experience that we can possibly have any final knowledge of reality."
"The alayavijnana is in many respects analogous to a universal wave function and one can consider that the process through which 'seeds' are karmically 'deposited' into this fundamental subtle ground of reality accounts for the potentialities within wave functions. So we may draw an analogy between the universal alayanijnana and Zurek's universal wave function."
"The answer is - one adopts a rigorous practice of meditation in order to get enlightened. Then you do not need a mathematical description of mind because you directly know the non-dual nature of fundamental awareness. In one metaphor one can say that the enlightened being becomes the mind of the universe and a mathematical description becomes irrelevant. Anyway we already have a mathematical equation of the functioning of the mind - it's called the Schrodinger equation."
"And, as Stapp has indicated on many occasions this 'lifting of the veil; has shown the validity of the notion of 'free-will.' Furthermore, further and deeper investigation reveals that humans beings have 'free will' within a spiritual universe, the evolution of which is towards enlightenment. The finding of a new mathematical equation surely pales into insignificance when viewed in the light of the possibility of transforming one's own consciousness towards deeper levels of universal awareness. We now know that human beings, given the right conditions, have the freedom to pursue the ultimate aim of the universe itself, which is the attainment of the farther reaches of human nature, which is buddhanature."
Wiki on 'Buddhism and science:
"More consistent with the scientific method than traditional, faith-based religion, the Kalama Sutta insists on a proper assessment of evidence, rather than a reliance on faith, hearsay or speculation:
"Yes, Kalamas, it is proper that you have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome (akusala), and wrong, and bad, then give them up...And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome (kusala) and good, then accept them and follow them."
The general tenor of the sutta is also similar to "Nullius in verba" — often translated as "Take no-one's word for it", the motto of the Royal Society."
"In 1974 the Kagyu Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa predicted that "Buddhism will come to the West as psychology". This view was apparently regarded with considerable scepticism at the time, but Buddhist concepts have indeed made most in-roads in the psychological sciences. Some modern scientific theories, such as Rogerian psychology, show strong parallels with Buddhist thought. Some of the most interesting work on the relationship between Buddhism and science is being done in the area of comparison between Yogacara theories regarding the store consciousness and modern evolutionary biology, especially DNA. This is because the Yogacara theory of karmic seeds works well in explaining the nature/nurture problem. See the works by William Waldron on this topic, e.g. Waldron (1995), (2002) and (2003)."
"William James often drew on Buddhist cosmology when framing perceptual concepts, such as his term "stream of consciousness," which is the literal English translation of the Pali vinnana-sota. The "stream of consciousness" is given various names throughout the many languages of Buddhadharma discourse but in English is generally known as "Mindstream". In Varieties of Religious Experience James also promoted the functional value of meditation for modern psychology. He wrote: "This is the psychology everybody will be studying twenty-five years from now." "
"Buddhist teacher S.N. Goenka describes Buddhadharma as a 'pure science of mind and matter'. He claims Buddhism uses precise, analytical philosophical and psychological terminology and reasoning. Goenka's presentation describes Buddhism not so much as belief in a body of unverifiable dogmas, but an active, impartial, objective investigation of things as they are."
Buddhism in general seems to have a far more scientific attitude than your presuppositions indicate on your behalf.
"Niels Bohr, who developed the Bohr Model of the atom, said,
"For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory...[we must turn] to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence." "
"Nobel-prize winning philosopher Bertrand Russell described Buddhism
as a speculative and scientific philosophy:
"Buddhism is a combination of both speculative and scientific philosophy. It advocates the scientific method and pursues that to a finality that may be called Rationalistic. In it are to be found answers to such questions of interest as: 'What is mind and matter? Of them, which is of greater importance? Is the universe moving towards a goal? What is man's position? Is there living that is noble?' It takes up where science cannot lead because of the limitations of the latter's instruments. Its conquests are those of the mind." "
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C. Kohl:
"Reality is nothing static, firm or independent. It does not consist of single, isolated material or immaterial factors, but of systems of dependent bodies. Most of the systems consist of more than two bodies but there are no systems that consist of less than those two bodies. In quantum physics we call such fundamental two-body-systems earth & moon, electron & positron, quark & antiquark, elementary particle & field of force. Nagarjuna calls his systems walking person & way to be walked, fire & fuel, action & actor, seer & object of seeing. Both of these models describe two body-systems which have objects that are separate and at the same time in communication with each other. They are neither identical with each other, nor do they break up into parts. The bodies are not independent and individually none of these parts are observable because in their state of existence they are dependent from each other and cannot exist independently. They are entangled by interactions, even in a far distance. One body cannot be reduced to the other. The systems have a fragile stability that is based upon four well known, sometimes not completely known and sometimes completely unknown interactions [in the case of entangled and separated photons] and mutual dependencies of their components.
What is reality? We are used to being on our feet on terra firma and to see fugacious clouds in the sky. The concept of reality in the philosophy of Nagarjuna and the physical concepts of complementarities and interactions in quantum physics, tell us something different that could be expressed as follows: all is built upon sand and even not the grains of sand have a solid core or nucleus. Their stability is based on instable interactions of their components. "
" Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, fell into a coma for seven days in 2008 after contracting meningitis.
During his illness Dr Alexander says that the part of his brain which controls human thought and emotion "shut down" and that he then experienced "something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.[...]
Dr Alexander says he had heard stories from patients who spoke of outer body experiences but had disregarded them as "wishful thinking" but has reconsidered his opinion following his own experience.
He added: "I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone even a doctor told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion.
"But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons." He added: "I've spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold as I myself did to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us.
"But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it." "
"Dr. Jeffrey Long
and others have gone over thousands of cases of near-death experiences. "Long contends his study shows that accounts of near-death experiences play out remarkably similarly among the people who have had them, crossing age and cultural boundaries to such a degree that they can’t be chalked up simply to everyone having seen the same Hollywood movie. [...]
In his book, Long details nine lines of evidence that he says send a “consistent message of an afterlife.” Among them are crystal-clear recollections, heightened senses, reunions with deceased family members and long-lasting effects after the person is brought back to life. Long noted that he was especially fascinated that very small children who have near-death experiences almost always recount the same stories as adults, even if the concept of death isn’t fully formed in their minds."
H. Wambach recounts a seven year old male NDEer who asserted "Death is like walking into your mind."
David Bohm, founder of quantum theory:
"Deep down the consciousness of man is one."
Dr. Robert Anderson Jr.:
"Believes we are only able to tap into information in the implicate order that is directly relevant to our memories. Anderson calls this process personal resonance likens it to the fact that a vibrating tune fork will resonate with (or set up a vibration in) another tuning fork only if the second tuning fork possesses a similar structure, shape, and size. "Due to personal resonance, relatively few of the almost infinite variety of 'images' in the implicate holographic structure of the universe are available to an individual's personal consciousness," says Anderson. "Thus, when enlightened persons glimpsed this unitive consciousness centuries ago, they did not write out relativity theory because they were not studying physics in a context similar to that in which Einstein studied physics."
Michael Talbot:
"Fa-Tsang, the seventh-century founder of the Hua-yen school of Buddhist thought, employed a remarkably similar analogy when trying to communicate the ultimate interconnectedness and interpenetration of all things. Fa-Tsang, who held that the whole cosmos was implicit in each of its parts (and who also believed that every point in the cosmos was its center), likened the universe to a multidimensional network of jewels, each one reflecting all others ad infinitum.
When the empress Wu announced that she did not understand what Fa-Tsang meant by this image and asked him for further clarification, Fa-Tsang suspended a candle in the middle of a room full of mirrors. This, he told the empress Wu, represented the relationship of the One to the many. Then he took a polished crystal and placed it in the center of the room so that it reflected everything around it. This, he said, showed the relationship of the many to the One. However, like Bohm, who stresses that the universe is not simply a hologram but a holomovement, Fa-Tsang stressed that his model was static and did not reflect the dynamism and constant movement of the cosmic interrelatedness among all things in the universe.
In short, long before the invention of the hologram, numerous thinkers had already glimpsed the nonlocal organization of the universe and had arrived at their own unique ways to express this insight. It is worth noting that these attempts, crude as they may seem to those of us who are more technologically sophisticated, may have been far more important than we realize. For instance, it appears that the seventeenth-century German mathematician and philosopher Leibniz was familiar with the Hua-yen school of Buddhist thought. Some have argued that this was why he proposed that the universe is constituted out of fundamental entities he called "monads," each of which contains a reflection of the whole universe. What is significant is that Leibniz also gave the world integral calculus, and it was integral calculus that enabled Deenis Gabor to invent the hologram."
Robert Jahn:
"I think we have long since passed the place in high energy physics where we're examining the structure of a passive universe, I think we're into the domain where the interplay of consciousness in the environment is taking place on such a primary scale that we are indeed creating reality by any reasonable definition of the term."
"The question of whether there's an 'out there' out there is abstract. If we have no way of verifying the abstraction, there is no profit in attempting to model it."
Stanislav Grof:
"Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena."
"As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions."
"Rather than being unrelated and random, the experiential content seemed to represent a successive unfolding of deeper and deeper levels of the unconscious."
"After years of conceptual struggle and confusion, I have concluded that the data from LSD research indicate an urgent need for a drastic revision of the existing paradigms for psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and possible science in general. There is at present little doubt in my mind that our current understanding of the universe, of the nature of reality, and particularly of human beings, is superficial, incorrect, and incomplete."
"There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain."
"Bohm's concept of the unfolded and enfolded orders and the idea that certain important aspects of reality are not accessible to experience and study under ordinary circumstances are of direct relevance for the understanding of unusual states of consciousness, including well-educated and sophisticated scientists from the various disciplines, frequently report that they entered hidden domains of reality that seemed to be authentic and in some sense implicit in, and supraordinated to, everyday reality."
"While the traditional model of psychiatry and psychoanalysis is strictly personalistic and biographical, modern consciousness research has added new levels, realms, and dimensions and shows the human psyche as being essentially commensurate with the whole universe and all of existence."
"The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology."
"The new formula in physics describes humans as paradoxical beings who have two complementary aspects: They can show properties of Newtonian objects and also infinite fields of consciousness."
"Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality."
"If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death."
"The materialistic paradigm of Western science has been a major obstacle for any objective evaluation of the data describing the events occurring at the time of death."
"Research challenges the materialistic understanding of death, according to which biological death represents the final end of existence and of all conscious activity."
"In some instances, the accuracy of past-life memories can be objectively verified, sometimes with remarkable detail."
"The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death."
"Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior."
"Patients reported that their psychedelic sessions were an invaluable experiential training for dying."
"The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world."
"Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution."
"An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type."
"The motif of death plays an important role in the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material."
"Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise."
"There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment."
"For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death - the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life."
"Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious."
"The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped."
"It is conceivable that certain unusual states of consciousness could mediate direct experience of, and intervention in, the implicate order. It would thus be possible to modify phenomena in the phenomenal world by influencing their generative matrix."
"At a time when unbridled greed, malignant aggression, and existence of weapons of mass destruction threatens the survival of humanity, we should seriously consider any avenue that offers some hope."
"I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in."
"A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm."
"In the kind of world we have today, transformation of humanity might well be our only real hope for survival."
Kenneth Ring:
"Access to holographic reality becomes experientially available when one's consciousness is freed from its dependence on the physical body. So long as one remains tied to the body and its sensory modalities, holographic reality at best can only be an intellectual construct. When one is freed from the body one experiences it directly. That is why mystics speak about their visions with such certitude and conviction, while those who haven't experienced this realm for themselves are left feeling skeptical or even indifferent."
"Pribram's assertion that our brains construct objects pales beside another of Bohm's conclusions: that we even construct space and time.
[...]
As has been mentioned, according to the holographic idea, matter is also a kind of habit and is constantly born anew out of the implicate, just as the shape of a fountain is created anew out of the constant flow of water that gives it form. Peat humorously refers to the repetitious nature of this process as one of the universe's neuroses. "When you have a neurosis you tend to repeat the same pattern in your life, or do the same action, as if there's a memory built up and the thing is stuck with that," he says. "I tend to think things like chairs and tables are like that also. They're a sort of material neurosis, a repetition. But there is something subtler going on, a constant enfolding and unfolding. In this sense chairs and tables are just habits in this flux, but the flux is the reality, even if we tend only to see the habit." Indeed, given that the universe and the laws of physics that govern it are also products of this flux, then they, too, must be viewed as habits.
Nobelist Brian Josephson, himself a longtime meditator, is also convinced that there are subtler levels of reality, levels that can be accessed through meditation and where, quite possibly, one travels after death.
At a 1985 symposium on the possibility of life beyond biological death held at Georgetown University and convened by U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell, physicist Paul Davies expressed a similar openness. "We are all agreed that, at least insofar as human beings are concerned, mind is a product of matter, or put more accurately, mind finds expression through matter (specifically our brains). The lesson of the quantum is that matter can only achieve concrete, well-defined existence in conjunction with mind. Clearly if mind is a pattern rather than substance, then it is capable of many different representations."
Even psychoneuroimmunologist Candace Pert, another participant at the symposium, was receptive to the idea. "I think it is important to realize that information is stored in the brain, and it is conceivable to me that this information could transform itself into some other realm. Where does the information go after the destruction of the molecules (the mass) that compose it? Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and perhaps biological information flow cannot just disappear at death and must be transformed into another realm," she says.
Is it possible that what Bohm has called the implicate level of reality is actually the realm of the spirit, the source of the spiritual radiance that has transfigured the mystics of all ages?
Bohm himself does not dismiss the idea. The implicate domain "could equally well be called Idealism, Spirit, Consciousness," he states with typical matter-of-fact-ness. "The separation of the two-matter and spirit- is an abstraction. The ground is always one."
[...]
We are indeed on a shaman's journey, mere children struggling to become technicians of the sacred. We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one lesson stands out above all others. As long as the formlessness and breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue to dream a hologram for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well defined.
But we must always heed Bohm's warning that the conceptual pigeonholes we use to parse out the universe are of our own making. They do not exist "out there," for "out there" is only the indivisible totality. Brahman. And when we outgrow any given set of conceptual pigeonholes we must always be prepared to move on, to advance from soul-state to soul-state, as Sri Aurobindo put it, and from illumination to illumination. For our purpose appears to be a simple as it is endless.
We are, as the aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity."
-M. Talbot
Christopher A. Fuchs:
"For my own part, I imagine the world as a seething orgy of creation...There is no one way the world is because the world is still in creation, still being hammered out. It is still in birth and always will be."
"There is no such thing as THE universe in any completed and waiting-to-be-discovered sense...the universe as a whole is still under construction...Nothing is completed...even the "very laws" of physics. The idea is that they too are building up in precisely the way - and ever in the same danger of falling down as - individual organic species."
"How does the theory tell us there is much more to the world than it can say? It tells us that facts can be made to come into existence, and not just some time in the remote past called the "big bang" but here and now, all the time, whenever an observer sets out to perform...a quantum measurement...It hints that facts are being created all the time all around us."
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In order to iterate and to be clear, to demonstrate that the concept of rebirth is "academical", all that I have to show is that rebirth is necessarily under the purview or scope or interest or dispute of academia by virtue of being a logical possibility resulting from an academic process. I am not required to show that is a necessary possibility or a non-disputable possibility; I merely have to show how it is necessarily more possible than the equivalent of being "academically impossible" or "virtually academically impossible".
Beyond the already directly mentioned clearly showing to various degrees, further these links also provide academic models in which rebirth is a possibility:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfj4R52Q6I&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj8UdHuP5l8&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee2jtmhyO8Q&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxupWHZnOE&feature=plcp
Thus not only is rebirth a logical possibility resulting from an academic process, it is a necessary possibility.
If you disagree, contact Raatz himself (etc) and ask him.
Further, when assigning probabilist ratios, there is little justification in axiomatically reducing rebirth below equal footing to other possibilities. From that point and then addressing the evidence, the ratios can be argued to lean in the favor of rebirth. However, even for the sake of argument, if one probabilistically draws rebirth as unlikely, then this still is tautologically inline with Buddhism. As there are sub-traditions that consider that continuums have no existence or lack intrinsic establishment to the degree that there is just a 'constantly' blooming meta-continuum.
So when the body breaks-up, there is just the unceasing utter extinction (as per wilting petal). This causal model is less coherent and more chaotic than certain models, however if it were true then there is even greater karmic responsibility towards perpetually selfless behavior.
No matter how one models an unceasing utter extinction, one runs into to the 'hard problem of consciousness', which questions the validity of asserting a brand new unobserved (not observed anywhere in nature) type of emergence related to consciousness. As all observed emergence is a coalescence of functional information leading to novel patterns, which is distinct from unrelated causes actually producing and utterly creating something; further, utterly creating something that forms supposedly a vectored-dichotomy (subjectiveness, consciousness) in reality, which is clearly illogical (dualism self-refutes). There have been struggled attempts by certain modern thinkers like Dennet and Searl, both of which know that a monism is the only logical option, yet every attempt they have separately claimed as monism has been debunked as a functional dualism, which when unpacked is an appeal to brush the actual crux of the problem of dualism under the rug.
Thus the remaining and necessary models for unceasing utter extinction upon the break-up of the body require in the very least some sort of proto-consciousness, proto-subjectiveness, or an emergent-probability function that has some sort of ontic reality. Now when considering the illogic of the supposed dualism, we necessarily see it is special pleading to blindly assert a special case of some utterly & newly substantially productive class of emergence opposed to some type of emergent-probability field at the order of emergence of the other forces (some have even proposed a separate quantum field, others like one of the creators of the 'god' helmet, considers a primarily a quantum electromagnetic field phenomena, etc).
Further considering non-identity and the emergent necessity, again following the forced model for the sake of argument pertaining to unceasing utter extinction, it means an equality of basis between all apparent streams. So streams/petals bloom and wilt, fundamentally the same. This sameness can be considered a soleness axiomatic necessity that calls for greater karmic responsibility. Further considering the equality of basis, what sense does it make considering sameness and non-identity, to assert rebirth or non-rebirth, or even birth and death? For within these models, often deep and hidden to those even expounding these models, that which permanently experiences extinction is the subject-object dichotomy illusion.
"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."
-Max Planck
Thus a type of coherent phenomenologic-epistemic-soteriologic academia is required.
Albert Einstein:
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will have to transcend a personal god and avoid dogma and theology. Encompassing both the natural and spiritual, it will have to be based on the religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, considered as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description...if there is any religion that can respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.