Rich Engle

I interpret that the same way as the mustard seed parable. Where the fundies miss things is that when "the kingdom of heaven" is referred to, there's a lot of us who believe it means the here and now. Instead of looking for a palacial afterlife, or giant honking miracles, we can see the miraculous nature of life in the smallest things. The mustard seed parable is very koan-like, it is a great contemplative tool. "Judging quotes"....this is my favorite one: "Your measure will be made by the measure by which you measure, and more shall be added to you." Personally, I find some of the best stuff in the censored porno Bible stuff, namely the Gnostic texts. You can get all of those online, btw. It's a little clunky learning the translator marks, but it's worth it. If you're like me, it's a very attractive proposition to look at the stuff that they didn't want in the Bible.

Dang, I could've sworn I replied to this yesterday. I think I missed a button... I shall tray again here, I didn't like what I wrote anyway because I was rushing. Thanks on a number of counts, MSK, you know how deeply grateful I am for the help, and the opportunity you have been so gracious with extending. Gnosis. Yes, that definitely gets people urpy. But, you know, it's a simple word, it just means direct knowledge of the divine. Gnostics got in real trouble (even more trouble) when Constantine did his corporate mainstreaming job on Christianity. The argument, for the modern, is that gnosis cannot exist because the divine does not exist. You cannot have direct knowledge/experience of what isn't. I'm pretty much convinced that that argument is not fixable. My interest is in finding a solution for coexistence that both sides find acceptable. Going back to the debate on gnosis, or the mystical state in general, as I show in my article, we are dealing with ultra-murky waters. The interesting thing is that, while there are many types of plausible non-mystical explanations for the various states (epileptic activity, for instance), in the end there is no way of finding out if the mystic state is triggered by "God," or not. There is an excellent summary on this at http://skepdic.com/altstates.html Without going into a lot of detail and citation, there are some researchers who describe brain function and design related to this area as almost as if humans were born with an antenna that is pointed to the cosmos. It is also fair to say that it is likely that many people have experienced what they have described as a "mystical" state/experience when what it really was was more along the line of a consciousness-raising, a paradigm shift. There might be less argument to be had when talking about the idea that there are different tiers of consciousness in people.

Many states never used any of the billions in tobacco co. payout money at all. Others used them not for anti-smoking ads, etc., but to help balance their budgets, pay bills, etc. State governments are now in the unenviable position of needing more people to smoke in order to keep their revenue stream. Go figure.

The Challenge of Understanding Mysticism by Richard D. Engle One sometimes hears comments about mysticism that suggest a lack of understanding. There is rarely any meanness in these remarks, but I believe the subject to be more complex than some believe, and wish to consider some generally unexamined possibilities. What is mysticism? Mysticism is widely misunderstood. This is due in no small part to the accounts of the mystics themselves. Some mystics—George Fox, founder of the Quakers, comes to mind—were intense and perhaps off-putting to average people.(a) Recently my Unitarian Universalist minister Reverend Nicole Kirk presented an overview of mysticism from the Unitarian Universalist perspective. She contrasted those "heavy hitters" who often scared people out of the pews, with the likes of Rufus Jones, an author and a Quaker mystic who brought "mysticism to the masses" in the United States between the world wars. Prior to that, mysticism was something of a pastime of the wealthy, and its practitioners were seen as "spiritual athletes." Jones, if you will, democratized mysticism. (b) Let's examine the American Heritage Dictionary definition of mysticism: Objectivism and mysticism In Objectivism, mysticism generally refers to beliefs that are accepted as valid even though they are not supported by factual evidence. This includes beliefs arrived at through mistaken thinking, tradition, and upbringing. Objectivism says, in effect: Rather than considering the American Heritage definitions 1 and 2, simply refer to number 3. This efficiency of definition often carries more than a hint of reproach. By extension, the word is broadly applied to all things considered to spring from it: rituals and practices, symbols, the whole of religion, UFOs, reincarnation, prophets, shamanism, superstition, among others. Many Objectivists consider these forgivable, so long as the beliefs themselves are abandoned and replaced with those that are directly tied to reality. Is there justification for Objectivism's handling of things in such a sweeping manner? How can Objectivism dismiss something as entirely groundless if it is an internal, private process? Objectivism's view of the mind I believe this use of 'mysticism' to be too broad. Mysticism, as I am about to delineate it, is the driver of individual religious consciousness, but it is not religion itself. Nor does it necessarily entail every phenomenon lumped with it. Objectivism seems to rely solely upon its epistemology, as it has few strategic alliances within the field of psychology. Could it be that Objectivist epistemology assumes a fixed model of the mind's capabilities? I do not believe that Objectivism has produced any of its own great psychological thinkers, outside of Nathaniel Branden. As Branden puts it, the mind is our most powerful tool for survival on earth. It displays stunning vastness, versatility, and raw power. Could it be that while recognizing this, we have relegated the study of its untapped or undefined powers to the back burner? Is the maximum awareness reached after optimizing it via epistemology or ordinary psychology? If we have a well developed state of normal awareness, does that mean this is the only type of awareness? The tendency of Objectivists to see mysticism this way may owe in no small part to the predisposition of the founder of Objectivism, Ayn Rand. Of her Nathaniel Branden writes: An expanded awareness Mysticism, as I'm using it, refers to a state of being greatly different from our normal state of awareness. William James' lecture on mysticism may provide some guideposts: At this point, nearly every mainstream Objectivist I have ever known is having a visceral (and not altogether positive, to indulge in understatement) reaction to this line of thinking. If you haven't experienced a mystical state, or maybe did once but couldn't quantify it, you have to simply go with this from the perspective that his observation is drawn from many and varied accounts. These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are: How long it lasts and what remains shouldn't be much cause for alarm. Gradations and mixtures. This speaks to the complexity involved when examining accounts. These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group. It bears mention that religious mysticism lays within these parameters as a subset—meaning, the mystical state is not necessarily a religious one. Think about that: mysticism is not reliant upon religion. What we are talking about, at the core, are various levels of altered, frequently elevated states of consciousness, which may be induced by any number of means, including mental practices, and ingestion of substances like alcohol, psychotropics, and medical anesthetics (hopefully not all at once). These states, however, can arise in the absence of any of those. There are endless subsets of the mystical experience that can be studied (technically, as many as there are people experiencing them), but it is not necessary for the purposes of this article. James summarizes his lecture with three conclusions: Mystical states carry authority for him who has them; Such states carry authority for no one else; Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states—they strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses. (d) After studying this and many other aspects of the topic, I kept circling back to two very pregnant questions: How did this all come to be? And, if alternate states of consciousness exist, why are they not readily and uniformly available to everyone? The answer, it seems to me, lies in the survival-critical process of upbringing, socializing, and civilizing that all people experience. When we are born, we are born pure of mind, the way nature intended the mind to be at onset. Very quickly, though, many people stand in line to write on our clean sheet of paper. They write not only things that are directly pertinent to their present society, but many of the things that have been carried over from those who lived before them. So, this also speaks to Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. During that process, a person is brought to a day-to-day consciousness that is compatible with whatever society they are living in. This involves a good deal of normalization, modification, and rerouting. Our perceptual processes are normalized into practical, common sense ones. Allesandro Pluchnio speaks of these general conditions in his article Monsieur Gurdjieff and the Neurosciences: Given that normalization, it is not surprising that altered states of consciousness would be seen as dubious to those not sharing this experience. But their significance should not be dismissed out of hand. October, 2005 (a) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fox (B) http://www.crosscurrents.org/Hedstrom0204.htm © The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand- A Personal Statement (d) Monistic in terms of wholeness, the universe as one and the same primal "stuff," optimistic as in the transcendentalist writers such as Emerson and Thoreau. (e) http://www.quartavia.org/inglese/neuroscenze1.htm

Whew. To tell you the truth, I feel bad for him, Roger. I have seen this kind of thing many times before. It is a sadness. I am not a Christian, but I can tell when someone is missing some key points and spending too much time wallowing around in rapture. Loving Jesus doesn't give you carte blanche to rationalize everything, turn into a very odd sort of determinst, and generally be an ass-pain because you aren't taking care of business. The truth is probably there is some real religious sentiment underneath there, but the thing is, you have to walk the talk. I have a way of translating that kind of Christian speak and it is a fine line between good, earnest ol' time religion and just blathering. This is blathering. I don't know what church he goes to, but I can make a pretty good guess what KIND of church it is. There are a lot of them that really play on disadvantage and thin places in life. And then, if something good happens to come out of it, of course it's God's Will<tm> Yay, proof positive! Being of the UU church, there's one thing we are really into- action, and that's here on earth. That includes not being a victim. A good, rational (yeah yeah) deist knows that God doesn't like slackers. Sheesh... it's a burden. I could go on and on.

Gary, It is a long and odd history when you look at the various O'ist sites. I remember years and years back when I first got on the Internet, I went on to (never mind), all full of excitement about meeting more of "my people". Holy heck, I got my nuts shot off and I'm not even sure what I did! I slinked off. I think I got put on moderation once for something mundane. For the longest time, I stayed hunkered down at Nathaniel's site (now on Yahoo, before that it was on his actual site). We used to have pretty good traffic going through there for a Yahoo site, but things just dropped off all of a sudden (I have a theory why, but I'll keep it to myself)There are some great discussions in those archives. Nathaniel is very forthcoming about answering questions, and it seems he really likes it when new people ask him things. The thing about that site was that we would get very, very off the topic of self-esteem. It used to get really out there. I'm very excited about this place, because I know who's behind it, and who has already showed up. This is special.

ACK!!!! You poor folks! I'm looking forward to that thread. It's great to see you here, Roger. If you need help, let me know. We have a number of young Ohio pagans that attend my UU church, I'm sure they would be glad to start counter-terror activities. :twisted: Or, to mess with them, refer them to www.christianalliance.org and ask them if they will sign the petition. Cheers, rde Hit 'em hard.

I have long suspected that species considerations are denied by many of those who adopt Objectivism. Now, after months of posting on SoloHQ, I know it. A heartfelt and honest post... Species, yes. "Incarnation" - "into the flesh". The behaviors you describe have occupied my thoughts for a long time. They first became more in my forefront because I began to realize those behaviors in myself. I could not see them, or, when I did, I called them something else, something more favorable to my ego. I will not blame my heavy involvement with Objectivism for those behaviors. But, I will say that Objectivism facilitated them nicely. I still have not decided if that is something innate to Objectivism, if I misnterpreted what I read, or perhaps both. It is evidentially, not speculatively, that I can say that I continue to see those behaviors run through a significant amount of those who are around Objectivism. I believe that this is problematic to being able to spread the virtues of Objectivism. It is, in the end, a psychological issue. I can only isolate two areas that I think are reasonable to attribute to the behaviors. The first, and probably the most prevalent, has to do with self-esteem, as defined by Nathaniel Branden. It is deadly clear that the behaviors you speak of are very frequently seen in those who have low self-esteem, whether more in the area of self-worth, efficacy, or both. Personally, I believe that it is more common in those dealing with the self-worth side, who might be reasonably efficacious. But it could come out of any situation of low self-esteem. The second area is one that I have not articulated very clearly as of yet. I am convinced that it has to do with how one deals with mortality, and Michael has suggested that I write on that separately, which I will. In Objectivism, what I see sometimes is an attitude that the Objectivism, when reasonably mastered, has now closed all the loose ends, answered all the nagging questions that make us wake up in the middle of the night feeling stark and mortal; it is done with and on to the next thing. I do not believe that is always possible. I do not believe that Objectivism can do that on a standalone basis. Why? More to consider. I only look at lackings. For one, there are difficulties with how interpersonal skills are addressed (or non-addressed). There can be a harsh, judgmental way of going through life as a good Objectivist, although it is not required. It gets done, though. I believe this involves misinterpretation, or too close of a modeling of Ayn Rand the person. It is something in there. Secondly, if Objectivism is to be developed as a way of living (and dying) on earth, it might be that more writing could be done specifically addressing the issues incarnate. Put it this way: in Objectivism, if you're not careful, you will end up alone because you alienate. You will be very alone. rde