Dr. Tom Zinser, Clinical Psychologist on Difference Between Darkness and Evil |451|

I’ve never understood “we are all one” as intergration.
Seems unfair that certain souls live in bliss and others hell, if it’s not for individual soul growth.

I understand the appearance of "unfairness" and I do so from the view of this one life and what seems a short span of "time" and so when I consider the possibility of thousands of lifetimes (for example) I can understand how "the mechanism" my actually think it "wise" to present unfairness.

This always leads me to what some "gnostics" chose to believe, which "each of us" (that are here on "Earth plane") are trapped by an evil demiurge, for example. From that perspective, I use the term "mechanism."

Yet of we consider the simulation idea... of someone like Riz Virk, its all just fun and games, yes? We are never really in danger, no?

So I mention these examples not because of a search of mine to find the right one, the real truth because I have passed that stage now.

I am more and more testing the theory that "the truth I wish to explore as true comes alive for me, for better or for worse." Think about that. Imagine the reality is simply a reflective mechanism of our dreams and desires.

Could one of our desires be the desire there's a God?... a God of ultimate good? And so BOOM, we find ourselves in a dynamic where so many either strive to prove this, strive to disprove it or strive to not care either way. Anyways, we seem to be so good at this we have this vast elaborate "extended consciousness realm" all too many seem to interpret as something superior to ordinary consciousness fooled by the thing we call death. How perfect!
 
I’m agreeing with you ;;/?

It’s the opinion that we all just are part of one consciousness that doesn’t logically or emotionally ring true to me.

I see it like this... it is "one" because it is fundamental and thus limitless, so not "one consciousness" but consciousness "itself" is the shared fundamental. This "knowing" (more on calling it that next), can be achieved via things like meditation, ice baths :), randomly occurring acquisition, psychedelics, etc.

The use of the word "knowing" is meant to convey the profound sense that it is actually the only "thing" just beyond the original doorway from the Absolute. And sadly... my attempt to point to the ineffable exposes the trap some might view as spiritual dogma. But some here may also read the words and "see" what they are pointing to... and that, which is well depicted in the movie, "Altered States" - is nothingness (can we say, boring?)
 
I see it like this... it is "one" because it is fundamental and thus limitless, so not "one consciousness" but consciousness "itself" is the shared fundamental. This "knowing" (more on calling it that next), can be achieved via things like meditation, ice baths :), randomly occurring acquisition, psychedelics, etc.

The use of the word "knowing" is meant to convey the profound sense that it is actually the only "thing" just beyond the original doorway from the Absolute. And sadly... my attempt to point to the ineffable exposes the trap some might view as spiritual dogma. But some here may also read the words and "see" what they are pointing to... and that, which is well depicted in the movie, "Altered States" - is nothingness (can we say, boring?)
That’s very elegantly put :)
I’ve always felt that we are connected via experience but not that we are all one consciousness.
 
I see it like this... it is "one" because it is fundamental and thus limitless, so not "one consciousness" but consciousness "itself" is the shared fundamental. This "knowing" (more on calling it that next), can be achieved via things like meditation, ice baths :), randomly occurring acquisition, psychedelics, etc.

The use of the word "knowing" is meant to convey the profound sense that it is actually the only "thing" just beyond the original doorway from the Absolute. And sadly... my attempt to point to the ineffable exposes the trap some might view as spiritual dogma. But some here may also read the words and "see" what they are pointing to... and that, which is well depicted in the movie, "Altered States" - is nothingness (can we say, boring?)
I think the the problem with theories of the afterlife, is that we try to jump from where we are (a state of great ignorance) to a final explanation in one bound. Scientific theories generally proceed stem by step - Newton's laws, then Maxwell's equations, then Special Relativity, then General relativity.

Clearly most of us are still within individual consciousnesses and it is probably better to think in terms of small steps.

As Cyrus Kirkpatrick points out, the idea of merging with the light sounds awfully like the materialistic concept of death - oblivion. That of course, doesn't make it false, but the mere fact that people can be contacted after death makes that idea seem less plausible. CK paints a very interesting and complex picture.

It would be great if Alex were to interview him - he would make a great guest.

David
 
I certainly think it is good that this interview in the 'evil series' is trying to look at what is behind evil, not just cataloguing a mass of evidence of evil activity. I also admire the fact that Dr Zinser has broken out of the materialist paradigm pretty completely, while staying within his profession!

I guess I got rather bewildered by the number of different types of entities that Dr Zinser thinks exist. I mean, I counted
a soul
assorted sub-personalities
spirit guides
the higher self

That seems a lot, and I may not have included them all, and I do rather want to apply Occam's Razor here.

I really hope that Dr Zinser will join the forum to discuss with us all.

David

Hello David. I'm responding to your request that I join the forum, which Alex had also invited me to do. I have read many good questions, and want to respond first about the "bewildering number of different types of entities." To start, I would make a distinction between those entities that are part of a person's self/soul energy and those entities and energies that are separate. In this view, the conscious self, the protective part, the higher self, the present- and past-life ego-states are all conscious entities and all are part of a person's self/soul. In the context of healing, there may be entities present with a client that are separate from him or her. Most are discarnate souls. I refer to these as 'spirits,' regardless of their particular state or level of consciousness, from earthbound, to mischievous, to souls in darkness. I have also encountered many entities with clients that are not souls. (Many present in human form, but they can take on many forms). The best I can say right now is that these entities are not souls but are created by souls. These entities have a very limited consciousness and come across as highly sophisticated thought-programs created by a soul for particular purposes or functions. For example, a dark soul that has managed to access a person through an ego-state, may not actually enter the person's energy itself, but create and insert an entity in a form meant to threaten or frighten the ego-state in order to keep it trapped by its fear. There is more that can be said about separate entities, but I'll leave that for now.

What I would add is this: the idea that there may be parts of ourselves that are conscious and active outside our conscious awareness challenges the fundamental assumption in our western culture of a 'unified identity.' This is the ego-centric paradigm I mentioned in the interview. This is why Multiple Personality Disorder (now DID) still meets with some resistance and even hostility in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. You can't have more than one center of consciousness in the body. You cannot have more than one identity. The idea that there are other dimensions of consciousness and being is still largely taboo in our public discourse. The idea of interaction between humans and beings from other levels or dimensions is dismissed out of hand by science, whether we are talking about spirit communication, extraterrestrial contact, or demonic possession.

I can imagine, for many reading this, that claims about all these different entities can be overwhelming and scramble someone's thinking. Like trying to learn astrology overnight. 32 years ago, when I met Gerod, if all these kinds of entities—both parts of the self and separate—were thrown at me all at once, with all its implications, I would be dizzy. I learned about these phenomena and realities from Gerod in a step by step way over fifteen years and hundreds of clients. And it also involved my own conversion from 'matter' to 'consciousness' as the ground of reality. From that point of view, of course, spirits exist. Of course consciousness can exist without a physical body. My first book tells the story of those steps and how they came together to an understanding of ourselves as souls.
 
I don't see anything in RationaWiki about Zinser - which must mean he has slipped under their radar somehow, because his approach most certainly breaks out of the materialist paradigm. Maybe he got away with it by using psychiatrist jargon!

I was interested that he talked about the office where he worked, and how people were discussing OOB's etc. That suggests a lot of people in that subject are beginning to think the unthinkable!

David
 
Hello David. I'm responding to your request that I join the forum, which Alex had also invited me to do. I have read many good questions, and want to respond first about the "bewildering number of different types of entities." To start, I would make a distinction between those entities that are part of a person's self/soul energy and those entities and energies that are separate. In this view, the conscious self, the protective part, the higher self, the present- and past-life ego-states are all conscious entities and all are part of a person's self/soul. In the context of healing, there may be entities present with a client that are separate from him or her. Most are discarnate souls. I refer to these as 'spirits,' regardless of their particular state or level of consciousness, from earthbound, to mischievous, to souls in darkness. I have also encountered many entities with clients that are not souls. (Many present in human form, but they can take on many forms). The best I can say right now is that these entities are not souls but are created by souls. These entities have a very limited consciousness and come across as highly sophisticated thought-programs created by a soul for particular purposes or functions. For example, a dark soul that has managed to access a person through an ego-state, may not actually enter the person's energy itself, but create and insert an entity in a form meant to threaten or frighten the ego-state in order to keep it trapped by its fear. There is more that can be said about separate entities, but I'll leave that for now.

What I would add is this: the idea that there may be parts of ourselves that are conscious and active outside our conscious awareness challenges the fundamental assumption in our western culture of a 'unified identity.' This is the ego-centric paradigm I mentioned in the interview. This is why Multiple Personality Disorder (now DID) still meets with some resistance and even hostility in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. You can't have more than one center of consciousness in the body. You cannot have more than one identity. The idea that there are other dimensions of consciousness and being is still largely taboo in our public discourse. The idea of interaction between humans and beings from other levels or dimensions is dismissed out of hand by science, whether we are talking about spirit communication, extraterrestrial contact, or demonic possession.

I can imagine, for many reading this, that claims about all these different entities can be overwhelming and scramble someone's thinking. Like trying to learn astrology overnight. 32 years ago, when I met Gerod, if all these kinds of entities—both parts of the self and separate—were thrown at me all at once, with all its implications, I would be dizzy. I learned about these phenomena and realities from Gerod in a step by step way over fifteen years and hundreds of clients. And it also involved my own conversion from 'matter' to 'consciousness' as the ground of reality. From that point of view, of course, spirits exist. Of course consciousness can exist without a physical body. My first book tells the story of those steps and how they came together to an understanding of ourselves as souls.
Thank you for this deeper explanation :)
 
I don't see anything in RationaWiki about Zinser - which must mean he has slipped under their radar somehow, because his approach most certainly breaks out of the materialist paradigm. Maybe he got away with it by using psychiatrist jargon!

I was interested that he talked about the office where he worked, and how people were discussing OOB's etc. That suggests a lot of people in that subject are beginning to think the unthinkable!

David

I thought I would respond before starting lunch. After meeting Gerod, I did not practice as a psychologist or advertise as a psychologist. I practiced as a hypnotherapist and spiritual healer. What I practiced in my work with Gerod was too far out of the mainstream, and that became clear early on.

The conversation overheard was between myself and another psychologist who also practiced hypnosis. I wouldn't say OOB's were a popular topic at that time.
 
Hello David. I'm responding to your request that I join the forum, which Alex had also invited me to do.
Hello Tom, and welcome to our forum - I didn't immediately realise who you were!

We obviously come to this subject from vastly different, but overlapping perspectives. I started as a chemist and reached post-doc level before I decided (about 45 years ago) to go into software development primarily because I thought the scope was greater in that subject. At that time I was rigidly materialistic, and I remember attending a lecture by Francis Crick, in which he described how AI would basically develop and become totally conscious. This entranced me at the time, and I tried to imagine how computers (which I understood pretty well by that time) could actually become conscious! I decided that I couldn't imagine that, but since I also couldn't imagine how space could be curved (as in General Relativity) this just added to the grandeur of science! Over time I have come to realise a number of things:

1) Science since about 1960 has become less and less reliable unless it produces something tangible - such as microchips that reach a higher clock speed or greater component density, or whatever.

2) There are certain areas of science where it is permissible to bend the truth! My first inkling that materialism might be wrong was when I heard a scientist (unfortunately I don't remember who it was) explain on television that there was no scientific evidence for ESP. This was a claim that I knew to be false - there were a number of papers that demonstrated ESP pretty convincingly.

3) Science has progressively excluded certain viewpoints without justification. For example Pauli, one of the pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, was deeply interested in mystical interpretations of that subject.

4) Consciousness is super hard to explain on any physical basis - I am impressed by David Chalmers' concept of the "Hard Problem", which seems to crystallise the problem - how does a physical device have any inner life - how does it feel pleasure , or pain, or love, or hate. This makes me feel that consciousness is crucial to the universe, or that it is the universe (Idealism).

5) I have also become convinced that life on earth did not start, or evolve by natural selection. I agree with the Discovery Institute that life must have been designed by an entity of some sort - even though I am not a Christian (to be fair, not all DI members are Christian).

From that perspective, I guess the first step beyond the physical is to acknowledge that entities beyond the physical realm exist (discarnate conscious entities or entities that have never been incarnated) - Dualism, if you prefer. To someone who will never meet a patient with a set of symptoms, that is the key issue - labelling the different kinds of entity seems of lesser importance. I fully recognise that someone who has to help patients right now, will have a vastly different perspective.

Some people here would like to jump to Idealism - the idea that everything is a manifestation of consciousness, and that consciousness runs the universe. I am have sympathy with that theory, but I do feel that science works best when it does not take enormous leaps - which is why I prefer to start with Dualism.

Because most of us are not Christian (I was until age 20) some of us baulk at the words 'soul' and 'God' because they inevitably draw in some Christian baggage.
I have read many good questions, and want to respond first about the "bewildering number of different types of entities." To start, I would make a distinction between those entities that are part of a person's self/soul energy and those entities and energies that are separate. In this view, the conscious self, the protective part, the higher self, the present- and past-life ego-states are all conscious entities and all are part of a person's self/soul. In the context of healing, there may be entities present with a client that are separate from him or her. Most are discarnate souls. I refer to these as 'spirits,' regardless of their particular state or level of consciousness, from earthbound, to mischievous, to souls in darkness. I have also encountered many entities with clients that are not souls. (Many present in human form, but they can take on many forms). The best I can say right now is that these entities are not souls but are created by souls. These entities have a very limited consciousness and come across as highly sophisticated thought-programs created by a soul for particular purposes or functions. For example, a dark soul that has managed to access a person through an ego-state, may not actually enter the person's energy itself, but create and insert an entity in a form meant to threaten or frighten the ego-state in order to keep it trapped by its fear. There is more that can be said about separate entities, but I'll leave that for now.
Wow - and I guess that for the conventional psychotherapy community all these entities are supposed to reside in the brain, and die when the person dies? I suppose I would tend to think that all things conscious lie outside the physical - so all these entities are non-physical. Is that how you see it?

I guess all of those might best be represented in a diagram of some sort?

I take it the higher self is the part of us that is aware of all our incarnations (there is remarkably solid evidence that people reincarnate, as you know).

How do you define an entity that is not a soul? Indeed, how do you define a soul?
What I would add is this: the idea that there may be parts of ourselves that are conscious and active outside our conscious awareness challenges the fundamental assumption in our western culture of a 'unified identity.' This is the ego-centric paradigm I mentioned in the interview. This is why Multiple Personality Disorder (now DID) still meets with some resistance and even hostility in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.
I think the existence of MPD is crucial. I conceive of the brain as vaguely analogous to an analog radio - it is supposed to tune to one station (i.e. conscious entity) at a time, however, if the stations are weak, or the radio is in poor condition, it will flip from station to station or present one station with another in the background. My FM radio will do these tricks if the batteries are in need of a recharge!
You can't have more than one center of consciousness in the body. You cannot have more than one identity. The idea that there are other dimensions of consciousness and being is still largely taboo in our public discourse. The idea of interaction between humans and beings from other levels or dimensions is dismissed out of hand by science, whether we are talking about spirit communication, extraterrestrial contact, or demonic possession.
I always wonder when people say this sort of thing, whether they literally mean dimensions as in the dimensions of space or space-time?
I can imagine, for many reading this, that claims about all these different entities can be overwhelming and scramble someone's thinking. Like trying to learn astrology overnight. 32 years ago, when I met Gerod, if all these kinds of entities—both parts of the self and separate—were thrown at me all at once, with all its implications, I would be dizzy. I learned about these phenomena and realities from Gerod in a step by step way over fifteen years and hundreds of clients. And it also involved my own conversion from 'matter' to 'consciousness' as the ground of reality. From that point of view, of course, spirits exist. Of course consciousness can exist without a physical body. My first book tells the story of those steps and how they came together to an understanding of ourselves as souls.

Entities like Gerod always raise one question with me. What is the purpose of being alive, and if it is to test us, are these entities helping us to cheat!

I'm also fascinated to know how other practitioners see your ideas. Maybe psychotherapy will be the first science to embrace the non-physical, and will displace physics as being the queen of sciences.

Thanks for an extremely interesting podcast, and I hope that you enjoy this forum enough to stay for some time.

David
 
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Tomz,

I wonder what you think about the fact that from the evidence of Stevenson and Tucker, many of the kids who remember previous lives, also have birthmarks that are closely related with the way the previous person died. For example, a child might have a birthmark that looks like a bullet wound and an mark corresponding to the corresponding exit wound. How do you interpret this? To me it suggests that the conventional mind body separation is somehow a bit simplistic.

David
 
Another interesting question is what is the rest of your higher self doing while part of it is in this reality? Is it just sitting offline, like we are when sleeping? Isn't this what Newton says in his past lives books?
 
Another interesting question is what is the rest of your higher self doing while part of it is in this reality? Is it just sitting offline, like we are when sleeping? Isn't this what Newton says in his past lives books?
I think it's evolving too...there's still "work" to be done.
 
Hello David. I'm responding to your request that I join the forum, which Alex had also invited me to do. I have read many good questions, and want to respond first about the "bewildering number of different types of entities." To start, I would make a distinction between those entities that are part of a person's self/soul energy and those entities and energies that are separate. In this view, the conscious self, the protective part, the higher self, the present- and past-life ego-states are all conscious entities and all are part of a person's self/soul. In the context of healing, there may be entities present with a client that are separate from him or her. Most are discarnate souls. I refer to these as 'spirits,' regardless of their particular state or level of consciousness, from earthbound, to mischievous, to souls in darkness. I have also encountered many entities with clients that are not souls. (Many present in human form, but they can take on many forms). The best I can say right now is that these entities are not souls but are created by souls. These entities have a very limited consciousness and come across as highly sophisticated thought-programs created by a soul for particular purposes or functions. For example, a dark soul that has managed to access a person through an ego-state, may not actually enter the person's energy itself, but create and insert an entity in a form meant to threaten or frighten the ego-state in order to keep it trapped by its fear. There is more that can be said about separate entities, but I'll leave that for now.

What I would add is this: the idea that there may be parts of ourselves that are conscious and active outside our conscious awareness challenges the fundamental assumption in our western culture of a 'unified identity.' This is the ego-centric paradigm I mentioned in the interview. This is why Multiple Personality Disorder (now DID) still meets with some resistance and even hostility in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. You can't have more than one center of consciousness in the body. You cannot have more than one identity. The idea that there are other dimensions of consciousness and being is still largely taboo in our public discourse. The idea of interaction between humans and beings from other levels or dimensions is dismissed out of hand by science, whether we are talking about spirit communication, extraterrestrial contact, or demonic possession.

I can imagine, for many reading this, that claims about all these different entities can be overwhelming and scramble someone's thinking. Like trying to learn astrology overnight. 32 years ago, when I met Gerod, if all these kinds of entities—both parts of the self and separate—were thrown at me all at once, with all its implications, I would be dizzy. I learned about these phenomena and realities from Gerod in a step by step way over fifteen years and hundreds of clients. And it also involved my own conversion from 'matter' to 'consciousness' as the ground of reality. From that point of view, of course, spirits exist. Of course consciousness can exist without a physical body. My first book tells the story of those steps and how they came together to an understanding of ourselves as souls.
thanks Tom. as I mentioned to you in a recent email, I've bouncing this paradigm/model off of some of my recent Skeptiko guests and in an interview I did with Gordon on Rune Soup. the lack of pushback has been interesting :)
 
I really enjoyed the interview, it had a very Robert Monroe-esque feel. The sub-personalities reminded me of the Ultimate Journey's book when Monroe reunited and merged with all his previous soul incarnations.

I couldn't help but think of all the accounts of demon attachments, spiritual parasites, whatever you want to call them. They all seem to be describing the same phenomena with a different approach on removing them.

Dr. Zinser, are there others doing similar work as you? Have they found similar results? Also, what would you recommend for someone who wants to seek this kind of treatment?
 
Yes. And you find that problematic because "game" implies that it isn't serious?

What makes something serious? Pain or threat of loss makes something serious. You can also choose how serious you're going be when playing a game...etc.

Hurm, my friend, when we try to talk about anything we have to use language, and language is essentially metaphorical. So when I use a phrase like "somewhere along the line", I'm not automatically implying that time is a real thing: I'm just using a colloquialism. I feel quite a lot of your comments (no offence intended) are semantic nitpicking; I suppose if I'd made my longish post twice or three times longer in an attempt to accurately express my thoughts, I might have been a tad more faithful to them -- If not to the actual truth, which of course I can't say I know for sure. In general, I try to convey my uncertainty by fairly liberal use of words and phrases like perhaps, would, could, might, seems, in my opinion, and so on.

You yourself use an engaging phrase (maybe a neologism; at any rate, I've never heard it before) like baby God, which on one level seems humorously mocking, but on another does convey fairly accurately the idea that M@L isn't the finished product, but is constantly evolving.

Notice how right there I have implied time. Indeed, the present participle, a verbal root ending in "-ing", as in "evolving", is the product of language, which is saturated in the experience we all have of mass, distance and duration. As (my reading of) Don Hoffman implies, the various elements of language aren't in an of themselves literal representations of what actually is. They're more iconic representations of something that we experience in a certain way. Note how something is itself a metaphorical expression: but how else could I refer to anything (there I go again) without using words predicated on how we perceive the world? We perceive it as concrete, comprising all sorts of things and events (there I go yet again, implying time) that seem to be exactly as they appear.

But I doubt they are exactly as they appear - which I think is one of the predicates of Bernardo's idealism. We're constantly trying to express the ineffable using concrete terminology. I'd have to do that even if I could perceive dinge an sich (things in themselves, as Kant put it, not even trying to avoid the concretisation of things) as they actually might be. Language is all I have, for better or worse.

I can have some approximate inner sense of what mass, distance and duration might mean, but can I express that in an accurate and meaningful way? Probably not, especially with a picky reading of my semantics, but what the heck, I'll take a stab at it.

Suppose that matter, time and space don't exist in the way that naive realists assert they do. Then what might these words actually represent? Matter could be just a word used to describe apparent objects that we can perceive with the senses. Time and space may be just words we use to denote degrees of familiarity with such apparent objects. Tables and chairs are very familiar; mountains are less familar unless we live next to, or are climbing, one; the planet Mars, the sun and so on even less so.

That which is more familiar than something else seems easier to get to, either sensorily or pyschologically (or maybe some combination of both). Hence perceived distance might in a way be related to the degree of difficulty of getting up "close and personal" so to speak. In psychological terms, don't we often figuratively use distance as a metaphor? I've just done it with the word "close", and the word "distant" is frequently used to describe those who, for whatever reason, tend to keep themselves to themselves.

Then again, don't we often say things like: "he wants to be a doctor, but he's still got a long way to go"? Here we're describing something in terms of distance when time might be just as appropriate. In fact we often use the concepts of time and distance interchangeably: but when we want to distinguish the two explicitly (as in science), we are careful to make distinctions. But still, the two concepts do seem intimately associated. Distance makes little sense without time, and vice-versa. The light-year or -second implicitly combines the two: how far light travels in a year or second.

Our models of the world are, really, built on metaphors that rely on how we perceive it. The fact that we can quantify such perceptions seems to reinforce their concrete reality; that's often very useful, of course, but usefulness may not actually be the standard in play -- it puts an anthropomorphic spin on things.

Psychology and perception are also intimately associated. Don't we often say things like: "Newton perceived the mathematical relationship between mass and gravity"? Actually, Newton didn't actually perceive any such thing: he hypothesised it, and that turned out to be a useful: but is F=G(M1.M2)/D^2 a literally accurate description of what might be going on? Or , for that matter, is Einstein's curved time-space cause for gravity? This, of course, despite the fact that Newton's idea is good enough to get a man to the moon, and Einstein's to be able to predict what happens to starlight during a solar eclipse.

What the heck is gravity? As far as I'm aware, no one knows, and still less knows why it seems to exist ("curved space-time" isn't a reason: it's a model). People go about giving names to concepts and thereby seem to make them concretely exist. People (me included) blithely accept the terms and bandy them about as if we knew what we were talking about. We paint the world using verbal colours based on what we perceive, but this is quite probably not what's actually there. It could well all be an illusion, not in the sense of entirely fictitious pink elephants, but more akin to a stick in a certain light that looks like, and is interpreted as, a snake.

Good and evil are, likewise, anthropomorphic concepts. We feel so sure that they actually exist and are in opposition. But maybe, as Idries Shah said, good and evil intertwine. What seems to be for the good might actually turn out to be for the bad, and vice-versa. People can suffer, regardless of whether or not evil is intended. And even if evil is intended, in the bigger scheme of things, it might be for overall good depite the evil intentions of a proximate actor.

Was the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a good or evil act? Lots of people suffered horribly, of course, but in the overall context of WW2, were more lives in the long run saved because of it? What about WW2 itself? Was it worth fighting to combat Nazism? Then again, what about war in general? Is it ever valid and moral to fight a war? One can and does have opinions about such matters, but opinions are often neither here nor there in relation to actuality.

If by reading what I wrote earlier, or here, you get at least some idea of where I'm coming from, that'll have to be good enough for me, but please, do try to remember that language is always only approximate, and to a greater or lesser extent straitjackets us all.
 
Alex, I hear a much different word than what your transcript says and it is a critically important word - here's the quote -

"So it was my first attempt to engage and communicate, in a way with what appeared to be a separate entity, and I felt that I received enough confirmation, enough back and forth communication with this entity, and the information we finally had is that it was willing to leave." (I highlighted the word I think I hear differently).

I hear the word "wasn't." I watched his mouth too... it really seems like he says "wasn't."

The difference is HUGE.

Hello Chester. The word is "was." (Sounds like a Clinton quote, doesn't it.) The spirit did leave.
 
Hello Chester. The word is "was." (Sounds like a Clinton quote, doesn't it.) The spirit did leave.

Thank you... hahaha, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

agreed. thx. I have changed the transcript.

[UPDATE: Dr. Zinser verified the word he used was "was."] - here

Apologies, Alex... but you gotta change it back to "was."

And, good... the spirit left!
 
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Hurm, my friend, when we try to talk about anything we have to use language, and language is essentially metaphorical. So when I use a phrase like "somewhere along the line", I'm not automatically implying that time is a real thing: I'm just using a colloquialism. I feel quite a lot of your comments (no offence intended) are semantic nitpicking;"

I agree, we have to paint pictures with words and if we get too literal... well it is like you've painted a picture with words, but the picture you've painted is one of those illusions where if you turn it upside down it is a picture of something completely different. So I'm turning your picture upside down to see what other truths lie in your picture.

"I suppose if I'd made my longish post twice or three times longer in an attempt to accurately express my thoughts, I might have been a tad more faithful to them -- If not to the actual truth, which of course I can't say I know for sure.

No that would just give me more to nitpick at. :) Forgive me for nitpicking, and it is not you... I have the same internal dialogue with myself... whenever I posit one thing, I try to negate it another way.

You yourself use an engaging phrase (maybe a neologism; at any rate, I've never heard it before) like baby God, which on one level seems humorously mocking, but on another does convey fairly accurately the idea that M@L isn't the finished product, but is constantly evolving.

I'll appeal again to the polarity of stationary/firm/static/rock-like/immutable vs. dynamic/fluid/changing/evolving. God must contain both polarities, so in some sense he/she/it is evolving and in some sense God never changes.

The static aspect of God means there can be memory retention, stability, and order. The fluid aspect of God means there can be novelty, chaos, destruction, and creation.

To enter into time requires splitting into polarities. It requires forgetting so that there is a known and unknown.

So there is an aspect of God that is evolving... call it the Self or the Spirit... and there is an aspect of God that never changes.

But I doubt they are exactly as they appear - which I think is one of the predicates of Bernardo's idealism. We're constantly trying to express the ineffable using concrete terminology. I'd have to do that even if I could perceive dinge an sich (things in themselves, as Kant put it, not even trying to avoid the concretisation of things) as they actually might be. Language is all I have, for better or worse.

Yes, in regards to ontology or the ineffable or the Oneness: all we can do with words is orbit around it because the essence of being is circular, so trying to make profound statements in ontology results in artistic self-contradictions and circular logic.

Suppose that matter, time and space don't exist in the way that naive realists assert they do. Then what might these words actually represent? Matter could be just a word used to describe apparent objects that we can perceive with the senses. Time and space may be just words we use to denote degrees of familiarity with such apparent objects. Tables and chairs are very familiar; mountains are less familar unless we live next to, or are climbing, one; the planet Mars, the sun and so on even less so.

That which is more familiar than something else seems easier to get to, either sensorily or pyschologically (or maybe some combination of both). Hence perceived distance might in a way be related to the degree of difficulty of getting up "close and personal" so to speak. In psychological terms, don't we often figuratively use distance as a metaphor? I've just done it with the word "close", and the word "distant" is frequently used to describe those who, for whatever reason, tend to keep themselves to themselves.

Then again, don't we often say things like: "he wants to be a doctor, but he's still got a long way to go"? Here we're describing something in terms of distance when time might be just as appropriate. In fact we often use the concepts of time and distance interchangeably: but when we want to distinguish the two explicitly (as in science), we are careful to make distinctions. But still, the two concepts do seem intimately associated. Distance makes little sense without time, and vice-versa. The light-year or -second implicitly combines the two: how far light travels in a year or second.

Our models of the world are, really, built on metaphors that rely on how we perceive it. The fact that we can quantify such perceptions seems to reinforce their concrete reality; that's often very useful, of course, but usefulness may not actually be the standard in play -- it puts an anthropomorphic spin on things.

I agree. Everything real is a metaphor.

Consciousness implies perception. Perception implies the polarity of similarity and difference. Similarity and difference create dimensions (including spatial) on which patterns are imposed. Patterns imply boundaries. Boundaries imply choice. Choice implies will and purpose. Will implies desire for change. Desire for change implies time and evolution. Change and evolution imply growth and decay. The spirit of life desires growth. The spirit of death desires decay. There is an oscillation of power between the two which creates rhythm. To exist in synch with the prevailing existing rhythms creates harmony.

It (gravity) could well all be an illusion, not in the sense of entirely fictitious pink elephants, but more akin to a stick in a certain light that looks like, and is interpreted as, a snake.

I don't think it is useful to label patterns that we interact with as illusions. I think it is more useful to consider them to be just that: patterns. ...which imply choice on the part of the pattern creator as well as choice on the part of the pattern perceiver. Truth is a function of usefulness of our interaction with the pattern we have created/perceived.

Good and evil are, likewise, anthropomorphic concepts.

I don't know... "the gods" said that the knowledge of good and evil made us like them. We were formed "in the image" of the gods... so in that sense we were illusory... not a real boy... but when we gained knowledge of good and evil we gained an additional aspect of divinity beyond a mere image... we became real boys and girls.

If by reading what I wrote earlier, or here, you get at least some idea of where I'm coming from, that'll have to be good enough for me, but please, do try to remember that language is always only approximate, and to a greater or lesser extent straitjackets us all.

"When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words that I may speak with him?"
-Zhuangzi
 
I would make a distinction between those entities that are part of a person's self/soul energy and those entities and energies that are separate. In this view, the conscious self, the protective part, the higher self, the present- and past-life ego-states are all conscious entities and all are part of a person's self/soul.

I think this is a very useful way to look at it.

I'm curious to hear your perspective on the nature of this "self/soul energy". I'm an engineer so loose definitions of this etheric/chakra/chi/soul energy or casual conflations of this energy with electricity have always bothered me. But lately I've been thinking of this energy in terms of desire/will/purpose and drawing the analogy to electricity. When there is no desire or will, there is no "voltage". Or similarly, when will/desire is instantly manifest, there is a short circuit and so no voltage. Only when there is a separation between the object of desire and the manifestation of it, through a time lag between will and manifestation, only then can there be "voltage" or "etheric energy potential". And this voltage when channeled creatively through a complex circuit can do useful creative work. Or when released haphazardly can cause explosive destruction.

I recently had the thought that maybe we could think of egregores as little robots powered by "willithium" batteries going out to do our work. And that seems to be in line with what you're saying here:

I have also encountered many entities with clients that are not souls. (Many present in human form, but they can take on many forms). The best I can say right now is that these entities are not souls but are created by souls. These entities have a very limited consciousness and come across as highly sophisticated thought-programs created by a soul for particular purposes or functions.

...

What I would add is this: the idea that there may be parts of ourselves that are conscious and active outside our conscious awareness challenges the fundamental assumption in our western culture of a 'unified identity.'

This is a conclusion I am coming to in my own thought process analyzing "reality", so thank you for providing some confirmation.

With this worldview, the arcane practices of magic begin to make more sense.

I can imagine, for many reading this, that claims about all these different entities can be overwhelming and scramble someone's thinking. Like trying to learn astrology overnight.

I think of it like classifications in biology. It is useful to assign names and hierarchies to the forms of life.

The difficulty is that we are not merely assigning names, but simultaneously trying to determine the boundaries of our selves. So a lion is a lion, but can you insert yourself into the lion and become it? We can train dogs to do our will... some are more obedient than others. Can we do the same with spirits/sub-personalities/egregores/angels/daemons?

Thank you for the interview. I enjoyed it.
 
I think we do get to experience our individuality, even in the next realm(s). The book I mentioned earlier, discusses how in the heavenly realms we get to create and experience all the things we love and there are less limitations than we experience here. I've struggled with this topic for a long time...I don't want to lose my individuality but why does it have to be an either/or? This book gave me a new P.O.V....maybe we get to have our individuality until it loses its grip on us and then we merge. Maybe all the "time" in these lesser realms actually starts to push us closer to Oneness because of the restlessness of being separate?

Whether it happens sooner or later, the end result is still the same: annihilation.

If the heavenly realms have less limitations than we experience here, then logically there shouldn't be any limitations on individuality.
 
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