Varieties of Religious Experience - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-30T00:56:26Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/varieties-of-religious?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A61815&xg_source=activity&feed=yes&xn_auth=noQuote above from Nancy Frank…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2017-09-03:5301756:Comment:699162017-09-03T20:20:07.358ZDavidM58http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/DavidM58
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<p><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption"><span class="hasCaption">Quote above from Nancy Frankenberry, in Religion and Radical Empiricism (p. 96), referencing Lecture 20 (Conclusion) of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The actual William James quote is:<br></br> "What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of…</span></span></p>
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<p><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption"><span class="hasCaption">Quote above from Nancy Frankenberry, in Religion and Radical Empiricism (p. 96), referencing Lecture 20 (Conclusion) of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The actual William James quote is:<br/> "What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not. But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist."</span></span></p> Wow, t - what an amazing stor…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-07-10:5301756:Comment:618162015-07-10T21:31:29.591ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>Wow, t - what an amazing story. The website Brain Pickings is quite trippy too - I think I'll read a few of the articles.<br></br> <br></br> <cite>theurj said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/varieties-of-religious?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A61815&xg_source=activity#5301756Comment61815"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>I think …</p>
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<p>Wow, t - what an amazing story. The website Brain Pickings is quite trippy too - I think I'll read a few of the articles.<br/> <br/> <cite>theurj said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/varieties-of-religious?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A61815&xg_source=activity#5301756Comment61815"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>I think <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/07/r-crumb-weirdo-philip-k-dick/" target="_blank">this</a> fits here, illustrations of Philip K. Dick's religious experiences. I'm a Dickhead from way back. I enclose the first illustration below. See the link for more.</p>
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</blockquote> I think this fits here, illus…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-07-10:5301756:Comment:618152015-07-10T17:20:59.784ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>I think <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/07/r-crumb-weirdo-philip-k-dick/" target="_blank">this</a> fits here, illustrations of Philip K. Dick's religious experiences. I'm a Dickhead from way back. I enclose the first illustration below. See the link for more.…</p>
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<p>I think <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/07/r-crumb-weirdo-philip-k-dick/" target="_blank">this</a> fits here, illustrations of Philip K. Dick's religious experiences. I'm a Dickhead from way back. I enclose the first illustration below. See the link for more.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505377604?profile=original"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505377604?profile=original" width="505"/></a></p> In the final lecture (XX) Jam…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-06:5301756:Comment:77332011-03-06T14:48:09.347ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
In the final lecture (XX) James confirms my own pet theory that religious feeling is connected to the subconscious, which itself is connected to those deep and primal areas of brain-consciousness. Granted James didn't have benefit of our neuroscientific research to see that latter and to even further de-mystify the experience. He says:<br></br>
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“We must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since one of the duties of the science of religions is to keep religion in connection with the…
In the final lecture (XX) James confirms my own pet theory that religious feeling is connected to the subconscious, which itself is connected to those deep and primal areas of brain-consciousness. Granted James didn't have benefit of our neuroscientific research to see that latter and to even further de-mystify the experience. He says:<br/>
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“We must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since one of the duties of the science of religions is to keep religion in connection with the rest of science, we shall do well to seek first of all a way of describing the 'more,' which psychologists may also recognize as real. The subconscious self is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity; and I believe that in it we have exactly the mediating term required. Apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of.<br/>
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“Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its farther side, the 'more' with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with 'science' which the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time the theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life the control is felt as 'higher'; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true. <br/>
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“This doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of view. Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter side. Here the over-beliefs begin: here mysticism and the conversion-rapture and Vedantism and transcendental idealism bring in their monistic interpretations and tell us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was always one with God and identical with the soul of the world. Here the prophets of all the different religions come with their visions, voices, raptures, and other openings, supposed by each to authenticate his own peculiar faith.”<br/>
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However there is still quite a touch of that mystification in him. Even though he questions the metaphysical interpretations of said experience it seems he still adheres to a direct perception of this “beyond,” which is beyond embodiment in the more Platonic realm of pure Idea of Spirit, our subconscious embodiment as intermediary, not source. Continuing:<br/>
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“Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes. If I now proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of our personality, I shall be offering my own over-belief- though I know it will appear a sorry under-belief to some of you- for which I can only bespeak the same indulgence which in a converse case I should accord to yours. <br/>
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“The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely 'understandable' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.”<br/>
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It is real all right, but not embodied realism. Again, this is before the benefit of cogsci and he was on the right track. Nonetheless we can see this subtle Cartesian split continuing to play out in our transpersonal and trademarked integral movements.<br />
<br/> “The Continental schools of p…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-04:5301756:Comment:78122011-03-04T03:12:26.132ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a name="444"></a>“The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view.... An American philosopher of eminent originality, Mr. Charles Sanders Peirce, has rendered thought a service by disentangling from the particulars of its application the principle by which these…</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a name="444"></a>“The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view.... An American philosopher of eminent originality, Mr. Charles Sanders Peirce, has rendered thought a service by disentangling from the particulars of its application the principle by which these men were instinctively guided, and by singling it out as fundamental and giving to it a Greek name. He calls it the principle of pragmatism.”</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He then launches into a diatribe against Kant's transcendental ego and like minds that came thereafter, like Hegel, who do not maintain this organic connection. However philosophy is redeemed in that it can provide an invaluable service, much like what our friend Sam Harris champions:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Both from dogma and from worship she can remove historic incrustations. By confronting the spontaneous religious constructions with the results of natural science, philosophy can also eliminate doctrines that are now known to be scientifically absurd or incongruous.”</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> James does admit that such fe…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-03:5301756:Comment:78112011-03-03T19:11:24.690ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>James does admit that such feelings are themselves dumb and it takes the intellect to articulate them. He might hint that the latter is what in fact transforms base feelings into the divine through interpretation. Nonetheless without the base feeling there is no leg to stand on, literally. And said interpretations are shaped by culture (but I like the way he says it better):</p>
<p>"The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us."</p>
<p>It is also our…</p>
<p>James does admit that such feelings are themselves dumb and it takes the intellect to articulate them. He might hint that the latter is what in fact transforms base feelings into the divine through interpretation. Nonetheless without the base feeling there is no leg to stand on, literally. And said interpretations are shaped by culture (but I like the way he says it better):</p>
<p>"The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us."</p>
<p>It is also our philosophic interpretation of experience that seeks the general from the particular, the universal formulas to add coherence to what otherwise might seem random, brute impulse. It is here that we seek “objective” standards. James comments:</p>
<p>“It will suffice if I show that as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension to be 'objectively' convincing. In fact, philosophy does so fail.”</p>
<p>So our drive to universalize said religious feeling fails. James derails the argument by design, the moral argument and the argument ex consensu gentium. It is the rational drive to make sense and order out of chaos, which then overlays “reality” with said order that wasn’t there from the start. In essence, it creates an “underlying” reality that pre-originates the sensible reality and hence takes the metaphysical, absolutist turn.</p>
<p>Ah, back to “work.” To be continued.</p>
<p> </p> So while the above is showing…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-03:5301756:Comment:79062011-03-03T18:33:54.864ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
So while the above is showing the base of thought in bodily experience, and questioning a disembodied, a priori, metaphysical type of rationality, it still seems to assume said "experience" is direct in a type of religious (metaphysical) realism. Granted he doesn't have the benefit of the cogsicprago research and their distinctive embodied realism, which doesn't accept experience as the thing in itself. More comment when I read further.
So while the above is showing the base of thought in bodily experience, and questioning a disembodied, a priori, metaphysical type of rationality, it still seems to assume said "experience" is direct in a type of religious (metaphysical) realism. Granted he doesn't have the benefit of the cogsicprago research and their distinctive embodied realism, which doesn't accept experience as the thing in itself. More comment when I read further. Now we're getting somewhere,…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-03:5301756:Comment:77152011-03-03T14:18:23.540ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Now we're getting somewhere, from the same lecture:</p>
<p>"But all these intellectual operations, whether they be constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences as their subject-matter. They are interpretative and inductive operations, operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coordinate with it, not independent of what it ascertains.</p>
<p>"The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be something altogether…</p>
<p>Now we're getting somewhere, from the same lecture:</p>
<p>"But all these intellectual operations, whether they be constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences as their subject-matter. They are interpretative and inductive operations, operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coordinate with it, not independent of what it ascertains.</p>
<p>"The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be something altogether different from this. It assumes to construct religious objects out of the resources of logical reason alone, or of logical reason drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It calls its conclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not call them science of religions. It reaches them in an a priori way, and warrants their veracity."</p> However this from Lecture XVI…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-03:5301756:Comment:78102011-03-03T14:11:24.301ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>However this from Lecture XVIII:</p>
"In short, you suspect that I am planning to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitate the primitive and unreflective, and to dissuade you from the hope of any Theology worthy of the name.<br></br>
<p>To a certain extent I have to admit that you guess rightly. I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue. But all…</p>
<p>However this from Lecture XVIII:</p>
"In short, you suspect that I am planning to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitate the primitive and unreflective, and to dissuade you from the hope of any Theology worthy of the name.<br/>
<p>To a certain extent I have to admit that you guess rightly. I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue. But all such statements are misleading from their brevity, and it will take the whole hour for me to explain to you exactly what I mean."</p>
<p>After I read it I'll comment on what he means, or what meaning I glean from what he says.</p> Here's an interesting relatio…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-03-03:5301756:Comment:78092011-03-03T04:01:09.467ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Here's an interesting relation between James and Mead on the transcendental subject, from the latter's <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mead/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SEP entry</a>:</p>
<p>"In trying to differentiate it from the empirical, knowable, 'Me,' he states, 'The ‘I’ is the transcendental self of Kant, the soul that James conceived behind the scene holding on to the skirts of an idea to give it an added increment of emphasis' (MSC in SW, 141). However, this statement…</p>
<p>Here's an interesting relation between James and Mead on the transcendental subject, from the latter's <a rel="nofollow" href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mead/" target="_blank">SEP entry</a>:</p>
<p>"In trying to differentiate it from the empirical, knowable, 'Me,' he states, 'The ‘I’ is the transcendental self of Kant, the soul that James conceived behind the scene holding on to the skirts of an idea to give it an added increment of emphasis' (MSC in SW, 141). However, this statement should not to be interpreted as endorsing the notion of a transcendental ego. Mead is seeking to emphasize that the 'I' is not available to us in our acts, that is, it is only knowable in its objectified form as a 'Me.' This point is clarified by a remark that directly follows the statement just cited. 'The self-conscious, actual self in social intercourse is the objective 'me' or 'me's' with the process of response continually going on and implying a fictitious 'I' always out of sight of himself" (MSC in SW, 141). A transcendental ego is not fictitious. But for Mead, since we are dealing with a functional distinction here, it is quite acceptable to refer to the 'I' as fictitious in metaphysical sense."</p>
<p>I'm not certain here if Mead was distinguishing himself from Kant's transcendental ego with which James seemed to agree, since apparently Mead's "I" was "fictitious." (Perhaps like Varela's "virtual" self?)</p>
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