Newsgroups: alt.paranormal
From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Subject: Re: a couple of questions
Reply-To: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 16:43:54 +0000

murphyg@Software.Mitel.COM (Gary Murphy) writes..

>In article <1992Aug10.153242.1250@irscscm.UUCP> cwilkins@irscscm.UUCP (Charlie Wilki
nson) writes:

>   rfrazier%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Robert Frazier) writes:
>   :
>   :    I agree that there is a sort of collective conscience out there, and
>   : that people are more or less capable of tapping into this knowledge.  This
>   : idea is quite common, actually it can be found in many religions and
>   : philosophies.

>I don't see where you find this "idea is quite common" in the following:
>Buddhism (at least Tibetean and Zen),

Very much so: At least in Taoist and Tibetan.

"The one mind, omniscient, vacuous, immaculate, eternal, the
unobscured Voidness......in itself that Thatness"

All is a Vast Mind is very much at the mystical root of Buddhism and
Hinduism.

It seems not inconsistent with many reports of 'A GREAT SPIRIT'
(Amerindiam) GOD (christianity) Allah (Islam) The astral plane
(Theosophy) Ain soph aur (Judaism etc).

The underlying concetp of a world in connection with itslef - more a
vast organism, and a conscious one at that, is behind nearly all
human thought - except of course scientific rationalism, which sought
to turn it into an enormous mechanism...the ultimate computer :-)

>slam, Christianity (gnostic or otherwise), or Judaeism (I'm not sure
>here Rastafari fits in there ;-) and these account for an alarming
>percentage of humanity! What I do find, in all those and shamanism,
>is the ability for any person to "see things as they are" (which I
>now Minsky abhors as a concept ;-)) and thereby to appear to have
>extended their reach, but none of the religions I've listed would say
>you would be doing anything special; the closest you might find are
>those occurances in the African religions (i.e.
>Christianity/Judaeism) where an individual is _chosen_by_God_ to be
>given special visions, visions which _that_one_person_ is charged to
>personally distribute through the standard media.


I think you have really chosen to interpret what you have read of
religions in a particularly strange and narrow way. I certainly think
that if you examine the mystical traditions of all these religions
you will find that at worst, they are (given the problems in
description of early languages, and the inevitable mangling due to
translation) NOT INCONSISTENT with such an underlying reality: At
best they can all be inetrpreted in this way, with virtually no
anomaies.

>In fact, the only 'religions' I've ever heard expouse such an idea as an
>'aether of consciousness' that can be used for information gathering is
>the New Age and the psychotheology of Jung from which it grew. (although
>Jung felt only Aryans had access --- see his wartime editorials)

Thats right: bring Nazism in to discredit Jung! maybe it was just the
Politically Correct thing to say at that time. Right now of course
only Ethnic minorities, homosexuals and women have access to the
astral planes :-)


>   :    What exactly is human intuition?
>   :
>   :    My personal experiences have first gave me the feeling that there
>   : is some sort of underlying low-level link between everything, and further
?
>   : experience is strengthening this belief.

>How can you tell if a 'belief' is 'strengthened'? What exactly are
>you measuring?

Strong Intuition is, I believe, a philosophically acceptable term:
The feeling that the organism gets when it begins to perceive a
pattern: apprehension of a high correlation factor. A useful tool we
have inside of us which is actually how we learn things. Usually
discredited by those who have decided that it is simpler to stop
learning.

>hat sort of point-gain do you get and which experiences are causing
>is gain? Certainly there is much evidence, and testimony from even
>those religions I cited to suggest all things are hopelessly
>intertwined, that in any one 'thing' are all the elements of every
>other (which is NOT the same as some cosmic WAIS server, but more
>like a fractal of the self-similarities)

Its not quite like either of those two things:

>   I think intuition is a sub-conscious and/or conscious use of the link that
>   you mentioned above.

>My bet is intuition is the subjective experience of letting the brain
>tissue do its work without conscious interference, like when a woman
>giving birth for the first time finally gives up control and lets her
>body do what it already knows how to do. Intuition is letting the
>experientially gained 'facts' settle in the network and 'insight' the
>result of recognizing and using the local minima that occur. This
>does not require any conscious logic, but is the complement of
>logical deduction, which itself is something we have all _forced_ our
>brain-tissue to do (and not very well, I might add ;-), so you can
>consider my logic here suspect)

What you don't seem ready or willing to accept, is that although the
process we are talking about is a bit like dropping the application
software and letting the operating system (firmware?) do its job, you
actually find that there are more peripherals attached to a wider
network than you average application makes use of - thats all.

>   What does everyone else think?  I sense that some of you agree.   ;-)

>What? Does everyone else think I sense that some of you agree?
>Logically, then , some don't, right? In any proposition (or bet) it
>is always best to cover both sides ;-). Here's the kicker: what
>evidence would you require (occam's razor aside) to demonstrate that
>the collective conscious (unconscious though it may be) is no more
>than a figment of a consciousness uncollected?

Look here sonny, if the collective unconscious is a figment of our
_collective subconscious_ you can stuff your logic up your AUI
connector, because our collective subconsious has defined the reality
that your precious logic has to deal with.

So There. Bleaggh and rasberries to you to.

Netslinger



Newsgroups: alt.paranormal