Dr. Rupert Sheldrake Brings Science to Spiritual Practices |376|

...Alex who was forced to attend a church when young.
It might have more to do with the several return visits I've had over the last few months (for various reasons). I always convince myself that church is a community of good/god loving souls who are interested in the highest truths... only to have my illusions shattered by cultish elements and mind-numbing scripture :)
 
Christ is the consciousness you obtain when harnessing the energy of lucifer (light bearer) not the devil as christianity made it out to be

Lucifer and Satan are mutually exclusive
 
This is what I don't understand if something works, why does there have to be a placebo distinction? I'f i'm taking a homeopathic remedy, which according to skeptics has no evidence and if it does work it is merely a plaecbo?
You see how stupid that sounds? The point is it worked regardless if it was a placebo or not. It worked!
 
This is what I don't understand if something works, why does there have to be a placebo distinction? I'f i'm taking a homeopathic remedy, which according to skeptics has no evidence and if it does work it is merely a plaecbo?
You see how stupid that sounds? The point is it worked regardless if it was a placebo or not. It worked!

You didn't get my point, that's why it sounds "stupid" to you (thank you for your kind words, btw.....).
If the mere fact that something works for someone implies that the believers' claims about it are real (eg: Christian rituals work for Sheldrake and Co; hence Jesus actually existed, was resurrected by God the father etc), then we end up with an approach whereby any beliefs that work, albeit just for some (including Unicorns and Scientology, say) have to be accepted as truthful, too, even if all these beliefs are 100% in contradiction with each other (eg: Jesus never said one should try to establish a spiritual connection with Unicorns).

This cannot make sense from an intellectual point of view.

The fact that religion/spiritual beliefs work tells us nothing about their truth content, only show us how our beliefs can have an effect on our feelings, state of mind and even bodies. This is interesting in itself, but cannot be considered a truth test.
 
Christianity may "work" like a placebo may work, but as long as it works it needn't contain an "active ingredient" (= actually be the one and only revelation of the Ultimate Truth

From which philosophical tradition did you adopt this Standard that there must be One Ultimate Truth that beats all others?
 
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I always convince myself that church is a community of good/god loving souls who are interested in the highest truths... only to have my illusions shattered by cultish elements and mind-numbing scripture

LOL I'm going in the opposite direction.

I was raised in the bible-thumpin Southern U.S. tradition wherein ritual and regalia are regarded as Satanic, and hard-kore competing preachers get in fist-fights at Wal-Mart over obscure, minuscule points of doctrinal legalisms.

I mean this literally. Women at Pentecostal churches get in fist-fights in the parking lot on Sundays after services over doctrinal disputes, and they show video of it on our local evening news.

I know almost nothing about the Russian/Greek Orthodox Church. I have recently become fascinated with the fact that they are okay with "Yeah. There's mysteries. Meh. Let's get together and do worship." Exotic! Impossible! :)
 
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I enjoyed Dr. Sheldrake's short discussion of "Geographic Spiritual Pilgrimages".

I think there may be some type of "morphic resonance connection" between where a person's family spends a lot of time, plus where a person is born.

I watch a lot of MegalithoMania and NewEarth videos. There is some reason why Native Americans, Native Europeans, and Native Asians have such strong fixations with certain geographic locations that they expend extraordinary amounts of time and energy constructing megalithic structures in special places.

I know a difficult pilgrimage via long-distance motorcycle riding to spiritual places produces different results than when I just fly there and visit. Smelling the air and touching the soil along the way provides more connection with the landscape. It amplifies the feelz.
 
I watch a lot of MegalithoMania and NewEarth videos. There is some reason why Native Americans, Native Europeans, and Native Asians have such strong fixations with certain geographic locations that they expend extraordinary amounts of time and energy constructing megalithic structures in special places.

Couldn't there be a connection between sacred sites and exotic electromagnetic/geomagnetic phenomena? Paranormal and electromagnetic activity do often seem to tie up.... so, if you were after some healing, higher power contact, or a miracle, these sites could be worth a pilgrimage for magnetic reasons.

As a magnetic related aside: I recently found out that cracks open up in our magnetic field every year at the vernal equinox (the Russell-McPherron effect).... perhaps this (among other things) could go some way towards explaining our ancestor's fixation with seasonal festivals...... dunno.

I know almost nothing about the Russian/Greek Orthodox Church. I have recently become fascinated with the fact that they are okay with "Yeah. There's mysteries. Meh. Let's get together and do worship." Exotic! Impossible!

Plus cool hats and no original sin . What's not to like?

I also grew up around a lot of charismatic fundamentalist types (though not as intense and far more boring than your locals sound). As a result I had to suffer my way through a never-ending series of atrocious religious education teachers. I think this is where my aversion to looking for occult symbols in pop-culture came from. It also led me to the conviction that I'd rather religion wasn't taught in school at all than it was taught badly (maybe the same goes for science, too :) ).
 
Couldn't there be a connection between sacred sites and exotic electromagnetic/geomagnetic phenomena?

A lot of people suspect that it does, me included.

It's on my to-do list to learn how to speculate in financial markets using spooky stuff like predictable variations in the earth's electrical environment. It's a huge study. Right now I'm collecting websites that track such things.

Next comes the statistical analysis. I'm terrible at math, thus my procrastination.
 
Plus cool hats and no original sin . What's not to like?
What?! I did not know that. Weird.

Right now I'm studying the history of Orthodoxy in comparison to Catholicism and Talmudism, ...working backwards from present day to the old 400 A.D. patristics. It's a lot of work, a long slog.

I haven't actually examined Orthodox doctrinal differences yet. This "no original sin" thing is surprising.

I agree that public schools should not teach religion. That core American ideal would be hard for me to change.
 
What?! I did not know that. Weird.
Sorry, maybe I should clarify, they do believe in original sin Adam and Eve style, but, unlike Catholics, don't believe we carry any guilt/responsibility from this seminal event.

Or did you mean you didn't know about the cool hats?
 
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This quote is from the podcast so it is related to this thread.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: ...I have an option, living here in Hampstead, England, on Sundays I can stay at home and read the Sunday newspapers and I can meditate, which I do anyway, every day, or I can go to a church service on Sunday morning, where I sing beautiful hymns, there’s incredibly beautiful music, there’s a community of people I like and respect. I take part in the communion, that for me is important, the holy communion. I take part in collective prayers for the welfare of local people and people all over the world, and I usually emerge from that experience feeling uplifted and inspired, and I receive a blessing from a priest in beautiful robes. I emerge from that feeling uplifted and inspired and better than if I hadn’t gone.

So, for me, it’s not a question of, is this all totally true and is every word of the Bible literally true? I don’t think it is, but for me the question is, is taking part in these rituals, this communal singing, all of which are spiritual practices, these collective spiritual practices, is this helpful or is it not helpful? I do find it helpful. There are some people who don’t find it helpful, and that’s fair enough, I don’t think it’s necessary for salvation or for connecting with the ultimate. I’m not saying that at all.​

What Rupert Sheldrake is describing is being spiritual. That is the purpose of spiritual practices: being spiritual.



I can't say what this is referring to ...
The only problem with that, is that the internet has given us so much as well. I am not on FB or anything remotely similar, but honestly, I would have failed to develop any distance from naive materialism without the internet.



David

But I will just say there is a difference between knowledge (for example knowledge that contradicts materialism) and being spiritual.


Rupert Sheldrake says it in the podcast:

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: ...I think that actually, at the basis of all spiritual traditions and religions, experience is the primary driver. I think it’s what is in it for most people, not a belief system. I think religions do have belief systems, but I don’t think they’re primary. Most people who go to church are not going to church because they’ve sat down, thought about the Christian creed, and come to the conclusion that every little bit of it is absolutely true, and then go to church. There are people who go to church because they like singing hymns or they feel part of something bigger than themselves, are part of a larger community, open to a spiritual dimension through the sacraments and the creed because it’s part of the service, without often understanding very much about what it’s saying. I think that’s much closer to the reality for most people.

Here are the practices he discusses in his book:
Meditation
Gratitude
Connecting with nature
Relating to plants
Rituals
Singing and chanting
Pilgrimage and holy places.​

These are not intellectual pursuits.

Being spiritual is not something that comes from the analytical mind. It comes from the intuitive mind.

Analytical thinking blocks intuitive thinking and vice versa.


https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/humans-cant-be-empathetic-and-logical-same-time
Humans Can't Be Empathetic And Logical At The Same Time
Brain scans find that the two modes are mutually exclusive.

And if Sheldrake is interested in the role of spiritual practices in our secular society, I think he is missing the elephant in the living room if he doesn't discuss the unmentionable overwhelming forces in our society that have the opposite effect of spiritual practices.
 
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From the excerpts;

So, we’ve got a situation where quite a lot of atheists are now taking up spiritual practices. Another one is Alain de Botton, the British philosopher, who wrote a book called, Religion for Atheists. He’s trying to reinvent religion for atheists, and here in Britain there’s now an atheist church called The Sunday Assembly, where there’s at least 70 branches so far, where atheists meet together on Sunday mornings to sing hymns together, or songs, and hear uplifting stories and so on. So, they’re, sort of, reinventing religion.
Do they sing materialist hymns like this:

 
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But I will just say there is a difference between knowledge (for example knowledge that contradicts materialism) and being spiritual.

This is a good point. The book is about spiritual practice, not philosophy, theology, history, ontology, etc. Although I suppose the attempted pursuit of metaphysical truth could count as a form of spiritual practice, couldn't it?
 
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This is a good point. The book is about spiritual practice, not philosophy, theology, history, ontology, etc. Although I suppose the attempted pursuit of metaphysical truth could count as a form of spiritual practice, couldn't it?

It is not really my place to tell another person whether or not their activity is a spiritual practice, so if you are going to try to pin me down I will decline to answer. Words get their meaning from how people use them. But for myself I agree with Rupert Sheldrake as I explained above. I think being spiritual does not come from the logical analytical part of the mind. It comes from the intuitive empathic part of the mind. The fact that you can't be both at the same time says to me that being spiritual is not an intellectual pursuit. My own experiences meditating and taking classes in mediumship are consistent with this view. But I also think people should develop both aspects of their mind and not fall prey to mistaken belief that your dominant hand determines your mental capacitiies (left brain vs. right brain). And for some people learning intellectually about spiritual phenomena can lead them into spiritual practices. Because of that, and because the pursuit of truth is natural, and because I think spiritual knowledge helps people develop morally, I do not denigrate learning intellectually about spiritual phenomena.

But if someone wants to have a spiritual experience, I think they ought to try something beyond the intellectual pursuits of reading books and debating on the internet.

And intellectual knowledge is not necessary for spirituality. If atheists who deny any knowledge of, or truth about, their spiritual nature can engage in the kinds of spiritual practices Rupert describes, I think that is pretty good evidence that spiritual practice is not dependent on intellectual knowledge that materialism is false. But I think in our current society there are very many people who have a well developed analytical mind and an underdeveloped intuitive empathic mind. Getting off the internet couch and meditating can help develop the intuitive empathic mind.
 
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You didn't get my point, that's why it sounds "stupid" to you (thank you for your kind words, btw.....).
If the mere fact that something works for someone implies that the believers' claims about it are real (eg: Christian rituals work for Sheldrake and Co; hence Jesus actually existed, was resurrected by God the father etc), then we end up with an approach whereby any beliefs that work, albeit just for some (including Unicorns and Scientology, say) have to be accepted as truthful, too, even if all these beliefs are 100% in contradiction with each other (eg: Jesus never said one should try to establish a spiritual connection with Unicorns).

This cannot make sense from an intellectual point of view.

The fact that religion/spiritual beliefs work tells us nothing about their truth content, only show us how our beliefs can have an effect on our feelings, state of mind and even bodies. This is interesting in itself, but cannot be considered a truth test.
I didn't miss your point, I got your point and went on to talk about a different component of placebos, unicorn are symbolic, the horn represents the pineal gland, but no one here is versed in occult knowledge the bridge between this to half truths we know as religion and materialist science
 
And I wasn't calling you stupid, the whole notion of (it worked as a placebo) is a stupid notion.....it WORKED! I'm healed!
 
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