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'What do you know about 'The Urantia Papers'?'


c.s.lewis

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4 hours ago, SHaYap said:

The reputation of institutions for higher education across Australia just crumbled to peanut dust... 

~

Nah.

Only the South Australian institute of Alien Gods. I don't know any others with courses in sky doorways that lead to the great peanut butter god dog in the sky. 

And courses in disguising poop so it can't be decoded. 

It's quite exclusive I hear. 

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6 hours ago, Nuclear Wessel said:

On a scale of 1 to blitzed, how high were these people that you “proved” these abilities to? Asking for science, which you don’t understand. 

All stone sober, respectable citizens :) Many of them had come to me for help 

Because of my profession,  they included several  librarians,  a few teachers, a  couple  of laboratory assistants,  front office staff and  quite few students who spent a lot of time with me.  I've also helped farmers, professionals, and house wives,  as well as retired people  

(and that's just one form of accessing the cosmic consciousness, where I  helped them all find lost or stolen objects)

I also proved my abilty to extend my consciousness, to dozens of people, by describing what they were wearing,  talking about, or doing, when i was miles awy  and fast asleep ( I had to be careful who i spoke to about that sort of thing)

  I described accurately and in detail,  the home of an exchange student who lived in Canada, and asked why there was a classic  Cadillac convertible under a tarpaulin in a big shed on her farm (I didn't know what sort of car it was, but described it in detail, including its colours )  That really shocked her, because no one in Australia knew about it. It was a graduation gift from  her father which they were going to restore when she returned to Canada   There were half a dozen other students in our home group room when this occurred.

lastly,  I won so many school and community  raffles, sweeps,  and  competitions, where, for example, you had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar that i was banned from participating in them, and, in one case, the Easter eggs I won  in the Easter  raffle were given to someone else, because  i had won the 3 previous Easter raffles ( I gave the eggs away to others)(  :) (over 300 witnesses to that,  at a whole school assembly ) 

I didn't mind, because  it is true that I had an advantage over others,  but it was a bit "embarrassing" and added to my local reputation. We were expected to buy some tickets as a money raising exercise, and it wasn't my fault that  I always picked the winning ones :) 

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6 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

I also proved my abilty to extend my consciousness, to dozens of people, by describing what they were wearing,  talking about, or doing, when i was miles awy  and fast asleep ( I had to be careful who i spoke to about that sort of thing)

Funnily enough tho you turned down @Liquid Gardens offer for you to prove your abilities to him. I think all he asked you to do was read something simple on a white board, or describe what he was doing.

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7 hours ago, Nuclear Wessel said:

"Now" is irrelevant--what's important is that it is possible to prove what one ate for breakfast, via technological means. Whether or not it's "now" makes no difference lol

No; the now is important 

Only by setting up, in advance, a laboratory controlled experiment MIGHT you be able to produce transferable proofs.

Even that would depend on the other person accepting the accuracy/  validity of the conditions,  and the integrity of those involved 

This discussion is about how I can prove to you past experiences which i talk about here ,

I cannot, yet they happened, as I describe them  

I have plenty of personal, non transferrable, proofs and evidences, just as you  have for everything which occurs in your life.

  ie you KNOW what you  ate for breakfast.

It is not a matter of  what you  believe you ate. 

This discussion is pointless, basically because you don't believe in such things, yet they  have been  a part of my life for over 60 years    Not a huge part, but a significant one 

We have no common ground to debate. 

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7 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

We have no common ground to debate. 

No, because you live a life of fantasy. I agree.

Quote

ie you KNOW what you  ate for breakfast.

au contraire, i don’t. Maybe you could extend your consciousness and tell me. Or are you chicken? 

Edited by Nuclear Wessel
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17 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Huh?  The above by the way is why I just laugh at your lack of self-awareness when you whine about being insulted here.  I desperately need to believe that I don't 'accept' that you had peanut paste for breakfast, or something, because?  What is your evidence that I desperately need to believe it is, how do you know this?

Yet another thing you are wrong about, but I guess these diversions keep you from having to address points that make you uncomfortable.

Your last line is mostly correct (except your continuing errors about 'choosing to disbelieve') and my position is well justified; the statements you made about me above are false so no reason to think you are any more accurate in your assessment of much else.  Your claim wasn't that you know that it exists, you've already shared your faith with us on this many many times.  Your claim, again, was that you have the same evidence for the cc/god as you have for dogs.  Sorry, I know this is tough for you to emotionally digest but you are still wrong - you have no pictures of the cc but probably have some of dogs - thus the evidence is not 'the same' contrary to what you claimed - the end.

this is of course my evaluation  based only on the content of your posts over the years 

You dont believe in such things.

It is not just  that you don't believe my stories it is that you basically don't believe the y are possible  As it happens i know your disbelief is mistaken 

Now  there is  (always) a reason for such a materialist disbelief 

When you defend a belief like yours as strongly as you do,   it means that that belief is important  to you

Personally I suspect that(  like many) the idea of anything nonmaterial unusual, paranormal, supernatural or even spiritual, challenges the castle  of materialism you  have constructed to protect yourself.

Better to deny than defend.

Denial allows for no debate. Defence allows for   your constructs to be  weakened by a strong attack   

But that is just my reading.

I am sure you  have your own justification for why you think as you do  

 

Ive never shared my faith because i have no faith I belong to no particular religion and follow no particular religion through faith

I have knowledge or I am still asking questions.  I suspend belief and disbelief 

I live by certain principles  (largely the secular humanist ones given tome by my parents  but also a mishmash of spiritual ones     which have proven to be constructive and beneficial to me and my community )  A bit of Jainism and Buddhism . A bit of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and quite a bit of gaeanism and paganism. 

 

A picture of a dog is no more proof that  i have a dog than a picture of a god would prove I lived with a form of one 

dogs are easier to photograph than  gods, but  if I had a camera when an avatar of the cosmic consciousness  appeared it would be photographable (after all it does not exist in my mind but in the real world, where all can see it, and usually  hear it .)

It is unlikely that i will ever  get a picture given that i dont carry any device with me that takes photos (no i don't carry a mobile phone with me ) :)  but if i do, I will be interested in what you  make of it. I bet you won't accept that it is a picture of an avatar of the cosmic  consciousness. 

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7 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Walker

Is the the peanut paste and did I eat it for breakfast thread or the Urantia thread? :huh:

Just answering your question However, it goes to the question in the OP 

My take on the UB  is influenced by my own life -long contact with the cosmic consciousness which, i suspect,  tis the source of all human faiths (other than those deliberately constructed by humans  who know they are untrue) 

The point is no one can prove disprove my contact.

Neither can anyone prove /disprove the possible contact t which began the UB

I am a bit more "advanced" than others because  at least i can compare what i have learned and been shown, to that which the author of the UB was shown  But to everyone else it is about the peanut paste. Ie did I, or did I not, eat it?  have  I, or  have I not, lived most of my life in contact  with the cosmic consciousness 

Neither can be proven.

Both have to be accepted or denied on faith

I dont know if the UB is the result of a genuine contact, but a t least i know it is possible,  because I have eaten that particular   peanut paste :) 

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10 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

It is unlikely that i will ever  get a picture given that i dont carry any device with me that takes photos (no i don't carry a mobile phone with me ) :)  but if i do, I will be interested in what you  make of it. I bet you won't accept that it is a picture of an avatar of the cosmic  consciousness. 

Lol

”i don’t carry a mobile phone with me, the avatar is hard to photograph, and even if i did photograph it you wouldn’t believe it”

Giving lots of excuses Mr W.

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7 hours ago, Nuclear Wessel said:

Yet again you demonstrate your Google cut-and-paste prowess

826536594_wheredidpeanutpasteoriginate-GoogleSearch.thumb.png.fa46e5247f7196c7fa22f16c2868da37.png

Thank you.

Of course it was googled 

I said it was a quote  but didn't give the source.

It wasn't hard to find  was it ?

it was a 30 second  moment of humour in repose to the humorous question 

The background on Kellogg, however, came from my own knowledge about him and his history. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Mr Walker said:

Just answering your question However, it goes to the question in the OP 

My take on the UB  is influenced by my own life -long contact with the cosmic consciousness which, i suspect,  tis the source of all human faiths (other than those deliberately constructed by humans  who know they are untrue) 

So far as I know, and maybe @Will Due can comment directly on this so we're all on the same page, there is no claim about the origin of the UB involving anything called "the cosmic consciousness."

Cosmic consciousness (without the definite article) became a phrase as the title and subject of a book by Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902). The phrase refers to a private interior mental state, not some person, place or thing in the cosmos external to the person whose mental state it is. It is characterized by a radical change of perspective and ideation, acute both in its rapid onset and brief duration. It can recur, but often is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Tennyson, however, was able to induce the state by what seems to be a kind of mantra meditation focused on his name.

Quote

I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of waking trance -- this for lack of a better word -- I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words -- where death was an almost laughable impossibility -- the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?

Bucke himself had had the experience (hence his interest in the phenomenon), and in our time, secular novelist Philip Pulman seems to have had it a few times, too.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/06/church-experiences

As have I, once, although something similar but less intense has happened sometimes during meditation.

Bucke thought that some founders of revealed religions (e.g. Mohammed and Jesus) may have had the experience. Indian guru Osho, who was a kind of religious leader late in the last century, reports having had the experience.

The "consciousness" in cosmic consciousness is the person's own, not something that exists outside of us, and cosmic refers to the perspective in the sense of "universal order and harmony," not cosmos in the sense of outer space as a place, or whatever space aliens might live out there or any of that stuff.

Presumably, although the experience seems always to be episodic, the capacity for experiencing that state is persistent. So, in some figurative sense, you might say that Tennyson or Pullman or Bucke "contacted" the cosmic consciousness. There is nothing about the experience, however, that compels the conclusion that is a "contact" in anything like the sense of one mind contacting some other person's mind or personality. Rather, it seems to be one mind temporarily slipping its moorings.

As to its role in religion, I'm with Jung on this, that organized religion in some ways protects people against having "religious experiences," or when they do have them, gives them a safe outlet for reflection and recovery afterwards. Protective mechanisms can include rituals, but also, I think, lengthy discourses upholstered with mind-numbing irrelevancies.

I am trying to think of a book like that.

 

Edited by eight bits
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34 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Would this cosmic consciousness and collective unconscious be similar?

As a devout Jungian, I almost have to say yes. To the extent that there is "content," it is remarkably similar in "theme" across different individuals, which is a hallmark of the collective unconscious. Also, it's "high concept" content, worthy of the archetypes who haunt the collective.

The thing is, though, how little form there is compared with other, clearer cases of the emergence of unconscious contents into the field of consciousness. For example, Jung's "red book" experiences were, to him, just as if there was somebody else there with him, notably Philemon, who behaved like a separate person. If you look into the bicameral mind (searchable), it's supposedly like hearing someone else's voice. Or that thing where some people in distress perceive a "helper" or companion who gets them out of trouble, maybe even physcially pushing them out of harms way, or so it seems to them.

But no, it's more that the world "looks different" or feels different. Very different. Thinking feels different, too. There's a real sense of conviction that comes with this. Not conviction for some reason (like weighing evidence or doing a math proof), just naked conviction. You can see where (1) that could be dangerous, but (2) it feels marvelous.

I've never done psychotropic drugs, but some of what people report with ayahuasca sounds similar (but there's no physical distress in any of the cosmic consciousness reports I've read, unlike ayahuasca which apparently often involves a lot of throwing up).

Hey, if Tennyson, an elite writer, throws up his hands and says "Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?" then I haven't got a chance. The above is the best answer I've got to a very good question.

 

Edited by eight bits
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Thanks eight bits. I'm not well versed in Jung. From what I gather (and could be wrong) archetypes are cultural models or just ideas of things. Seeing you mention Philemon reminds me of the Holy Guardian Angel in magick. An inner guide, I suppose this might be similar to the greek daemon.

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5 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Thanks eight bits. I'm not well versed in Jung. From what I gather (and could be wrong) archetypes are cultural models or just ideas of things. Seeing you mention Philemon reminds me of the Holy Guardian Angel in magick. An inner guide, I suppose this might be similar to the greek daemon.

Yes. Jung was very careful to avoid anything that would support the charge that he was founding a religion, so it has become a taboo to describe Philemon as an angel. But Jung was always candid how much of an influence Christianity was on all of his thinking. I mean he must have noticed the resemblance between a guy with wings and a conventional angel.

Archetypes are ultimately ideas, but they are ideas that take on forms, often human or human-like forms (mythical characters, dream characters, other real people who are targets of psychological projection ...). And they can "clump," that is, different ideas can come together in the same form (so, Zeus isn't just a big shot who shoots lightning bolts, but a father, husband, philanderer, a trickster when it suits him, ... much more interesting than a "cardboard character" who embodies some single simple idea).

The forms that archetypes take are often culturally mediated, but the underlying ideas seem to be the common heritage of humankind. The wise elder is found everywhere and always, but the wise and elderly Philemon is the fantasy of a cultural Christian.

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1 hour ago, eight bits said:

I am trying to think of a book like that.

Always a nice lot of pages to start with... 

Quote

51CGS5WBTBL.jpg

Or download the MP3 audio book here ->

Quote
Mysticism: · A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness · Evelyn Underhill ...

~

 

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5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

It is not just  that you don't believe my stories it is that you basically don't believe the y are possible

I think it's more that you are just clueless on how other people think.  As well as not listening or not remembering when they've corrected you previously.

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

When you defend a belief like yours as strongly as you do,   it means that that belief is important  to you

Ya ever notice how all of your 'just my reading' faith claims about others' state of mind just happen to be exactly what you would like to believe?

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

challenges the castle  of materialism you  have constructed to protect yourself.

Protect myself from what?   Most of your claims actually seem to most closely mimic young children who have imaginary friends, nothing there that is threatening at all even if it was true.

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Denial allows for no debate

Hahaha, a 'debate' would be great (as well as short), unfortunately you don't ever show (as opposed to 'tell') that you know how to do that.    Debate involves addressing points made by your opponents.  You on the other hand just provided a post where you never even mention the word 'evidence'.  You're not debating, or at least you're not debating anything I said, you are sermonizing.  

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

I am sure you  have your own justification for why you think as you do  

Yes, it's called evidence-based reasoning along with a big dose of skepticism and doubt that what I believe is true, and definitely what I want to be true, is actually accurate.  You should try it some time and broaden your horizons, it's sad how this is keeping you from reaching your full potential and capacity.

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

A picture of a dog is no more proof that  i have a dog than a picture of a god would prove I lived with a form of one 

And all you are overlooking there is the obvious - there are many pictures of dogs and no pictures of gods.  Until you acknowledge and incorporate that fact your reasoning is always going to be biased and incomplete.

5 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

but if i do, I will be interested in what you  make of it. I bet you won't accept that it is a picture of an avatar of the cosmic  consciousness. 

I have trouble keeping track of all your imaginary beasties but wasn't your previous excuse on this that even if you took a picture it's just going to look like a normal person, or I think you even mentioned a tree?  Maybe that was your angel, if that is different than the cc.  No, if all your picture shows is a tree I'm probably not going to accept that it is really an avatar of the cc, and of course no one should.

So to finish up on the point you were wrong about, it's false that you have the same evidence for cc as you do for dogs as we've shown.  What you meant to say is that the evidence you think you have for the cc proves the reality of the cc to you as much as the evidence for dogs proves there are dogs.  The actual evidence is vastly different of course, a kindergartener could out-debate you on that it's so obvious.

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2 hours ago, SHaYap said:

Always a nice lot of pages to start with... 

Or download the MP3 audio book here ->

~

 

I started reading this...

Thanks for link.

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21 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

I started reading this...

From experience, it's much easier to "experience" the read instead of trying to "learn/study" the pages... 

Took me three copies (first two was... uhmmm never returned to me from friends) and many years to really come to terms with what Ms Underhill was actually "telling me" as it were, don't let the title mislead you, it is defined as it was back in 1911 and prior, nothing to do with what the word is defined as today... 

~

21 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

Thanks for link.

No worries... 

~

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5 hours ago, eight bits said:

So far as I know, and maybe @Will Due can comment directly on this so we're all on the same page, there is no claim about the origin of the UB involving anything called "the cosmic consciousness."

Cosmic consciousness (without the definite article) became a phrase as the title and subject of a book by Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902). The phrase refers to a private interior mental state, not some person, place or thing in the cosmos external to the person whose mental state it is. It is characterized by a radical change of perspective and ideation, acute both in its rapid onset and brief duration. It can recur, but often is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Tennyson, however, was able to induce the state by what seems to be a kind of mantra meditation focused on his name.

Bucke himself had had the experience (hence his interest in the phenomenon), and in our time, secular novelist Philip Pulman seems to have had it a few times, too.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/06/church-experiences

As have I, once, although something similar but less intense has happened sometimes during meditation.

Bucke thought that some founders of revealed religions (e.g. Mohammed and Jesus) may have had the experience. Indian guru Osho, who was a kind of religious leader late in the last century, reports having had the experience.

The "consciousness" in cosmic consciousness is the person's own, not something that exists outside of us, and cosmic refers to the perspective in the sense of "universal order and harmony," not cosmos in the sense of outer space as a place, or whatever space aliens might live out there or any of that stuff.

Presumably, although the experience seems always to be episodic, the capacity for experiencing that state is persistent. So, in some figurative sense, you might say that Tennyson or Pullman or Bucke "contacted" the cosmic consciousness. There is nothing about the experience, however, that compels the conclusion that is a "contact" in anything like the sense of one mind contacting some other person's mind or personality. Rather, it seems to be one mind temporarily slipping its moorings.

As to its role in religion, I'm with Jung on this, that organized religion in some ways protects people against having "religious experiences," or when they do have them, gives them a safe outlet for reflection and recovery afterwards. Protective mechanisms can include rituals, but also, I think, lengthy discourses upholstered with mind-numbing irrelevancies.

I am trying to think of a book like that.

 

Excellent post, the nuerologist I worked for when I asked her about my few experiences, the two hallucinated angels when my mom was dying and when I went through my divorce I had an instant personal internal perspective shift, anyhow for me both were triggered by stress or what is called a psychotic break it sounds worse than it is but the brain will aid in calming and comforting in times of great stress. Dr. CC advised me to always err on the side of some organic cause to things such as like this. She is also a Psychiatrst and basically sanity is determined in part by how one concludes. Also, Not getting enough sleep can trigger things too.  Great add too Paul I enjoyed your thoughts immensely. 

Edited by Sherapy
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4 minutes ago, SHaYap said:

From experience, it's much easier to "experience" the read instead of trying to "learn/study" the pages... 

Took me three copies (first two was... uhmmm never returned to me from friends) and many years to really come to terms with what Ms Underhill was actually "telling me" as it were, don't let the title mislead you, it is defined as it was back in 1911 and prior, nothing to do with what the word is defined as today... 

~

No worries... 

~

Thank you for the guidance. So far it is interesting. 

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4 hours ago, eight bits said:

As to its role in religion, I'm with Jung on this, that organized religion in some ways protects people against having "religious experiences," or when they do have them, gives them a safe outlet for reflection and recovery afterwards.

Is the theory that organized religion also protects non-believers?  I'm not sure but it seems like when you mention Tennyson's experiences it doesn't seem to be focused on religious ideas or concepts, and regardless we at least know that these experiences are not restricted to just the religious.

4 hours ago, eight bits said:

There's a real sense of conviction that comes with this. Not conviction for some reason (like weighing evidence or doing a math proof), just naked conviction. You can see where (1) that could be dangerous, but (2) it feels marvelous.

Concerning the 'marvelous' part I wonder if there are similar experiences where it is the opposite.  I'm not sure if we'd be able to tell though because a negative experience of similar high intensity to these marvelous 'religious experiences' may be indistinguishable from a mental illness or syndrome.

4 hours ago, eight bits said:

I've never done psychotropic drugs, but some of what people report with ayahuasca sounds similar

I think the experiences from all of these do share the same inability to provide anywhere near an adequate description of what you were thinking.  For me the one or maybe two non-intoxicated 'religious experiences' I've had were quite a bit different and more memorable than the forays with chemicals.  My primary one occurred while I was driving on the highway but I didn't feel like 'wow, I really need to pull over'; there's a danger in that it could be distracting of course but it's not like my sensory perception or motor skills were impaired, it was much more 'the doors of perception were cleansed'.  Take enough of certain drugs I think you may be able to get to the same place but impairment I think is a big difference between these two experiences; my 'all is one' experience in my car was not accompanied by synesthesia or brightening colors or motion trailers or any profound sensory changes, just a radical change in cognition and outlook.

To that extent I think I do understand the possible need for 'protection' from these kind of experiences.  My marvelous non-tripping religious experiences unfortunately only lasted a matter of minutes but if they lasted longer I can see how it's scary to come to the same realization that you can on psychedelics:  'if my brain always worked like it is right now, I couldn't function and might be insane'.  At least with one you can say to yourself that you're on drugs and it's going to wear off, can see how it could be disturbing to have an experience like this if you have no clue what is going on.

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3 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Is the theory that organized religion also protects non-believers?  I'm not sure but it seems like when you mention Tennyson's experiences it doesn't seem to be focused on religious ideas or concepts, and regardless we at least know that these experiences are not restricted to just the religious.

Concerning the 'marvelous' part I wonder if there are similar experiences where it is the opposite.  I'm not sure if we'd be able to tell though because a negative experience of similar high intensity to these marvelous 'religious experiences' may be indistinguishable from a mental illness or syndrome.

I think the experiences from all of these do share the same inability to provide anywhere near an adequate description of what you were thinking.  For me the one or maybe two non-intoxicated 'religious experiences' I've had were quite a bit different and more memorable than the forays with chemicals.  My primary one occurred while I was driving on the highway but I didn't feel like 'wow, I really need to pull over'; there's a danger in that it could be distracting of course but it's not like my sensory perception or motor skills were impaired, it was much more 'the doors of perception were cleansed'.  Take enough of certain drugs I think you may be able to get to the same place but impairment I think is a big difference between these two experiences; my 'all is one' experience in my car was not accompanied by synesthesia or brightening colors or motion trailers or any profound sensory changes, just a radical change in cognition and outlook.

To that extent I think I do understand the possible need for 'protection' from these kind of experiences.  My marvelous non-tripping religious experiences unfortunately only lasted a matter of minutes but if they lasted longer I can see how it's scary to come to the same realization that you can on psychedelics:  'if my brain always worked like it is right now, I couldn't function and might be insane'.  At least with one you can say to yourself that you're on drugs and it's going to wear off, can see how it could be disturbing to have an experience like this if you have no clue what is going on.

Thank you for sharing. Very interesting. 

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51 minutes ago, Sherapy said:

Excellent post, the nuerologist I worked for when I asked her about my few experiences, the two hallucinated angels when my mom was dying and when I went through my divorce I had an instant personal internal perspective shift, anyhow for me both were triggered by stress or what is called a psychotic break it sounds worse than it is but the brain will aid in calming and comforting in times of great stress. Dr. CC advised to always err on the side of some organic cause to things like this. Not getting enough sleep can trigger things too. Great add too Paul I enjoyed your thoughts immensely. 

Psychotic break would (I think) be more like the dark side of these things. From a variety of people who've recorded and published their experiences, it seems to be the opposite of stress. If any thing, it often comes at "Miller Time." Bucke had his while riding home at night in a cab after an evening visiting friends. Mine was after running on the beach at night and cooling down, then looking up at the moon. Osho's was more or less literally Miller Time, it came after he drank his first beer :D. Tennyson's regular ones were during mantra meditation sessions ...

For people who are interested in the psychotic break aspect, a classic case report is that of the artist Jesse Watkins, written up by R.D. Laing in The Politics of Experience, chapter 7, "A Ten-day Voyage," New York: Pantheon Books (Random House), 1967. It's probably floating around online in whole or part.

Although Bucke liked the idea of religious pioneers having "cosmic consciousness" episodes, my money would be on psychotic breaks. For example, Jesus having a visionary experience followed immediately by "40 days" wandering in the desert, comforted by angels and confronting Satan (Mark 1:9-12) ... that's simply not a 10 minute +/- overwhelming experience of an extraordinary perspective on life.

 

47 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Is the theory that organized religion also protects non-believers?  I'm not sure but it seems like when you mention Tennyson's experiences it doesn't seem to be focused on religious ideas or concepts, and regardless we at least know that these experiences are not restricted to just the religious.

Gallup has been asking adults about religious experiences (using a variety of ways to call them) in the US and UK for about two generations now. Although not all of them are Bucke Experiences (might as well name 'em for the first scientific report of them), they seem to be very common. Gallup has from time to time done the cross-tabulations, and no, they aren't just for religious people. (Anecdotally, Pullman is surely a secular person, and I am, too.)

Jung's idea would, however, cover the full spectrum of "religious expereinces," which include psychotic breaks (see Sheri's post), temporal lobe epilepsy (Karen Armstrong, the religion writer, is a sufferer of that), and some even less pleasant mental and neurological health possibilities.

47 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Concerning the 'marvelous' part I wonder if there are similar experiences where it is the opposite.  I'm not sure if we'd be able to tell though because a negative experience of similar high intensity to these marvelous 'religious experiences' may be indistinguishable from a mental illness or syndrome.

It felt marvelous. I don't think I could live a normal life if it lasted for a long time. And you mentioned driving!

(However, several years ago, I corresponded with a person online who, so far as I could tell, did manage to stretch a Bucke experience into several weeks' duration. She seemed to be functioning well enough. I'd be willing to try for the record :P because it really feels great.)

 

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9 minutes ago, eight bits said:

It felt marvelous. I don't think I could live a normal life if it lasted for a long time. And you mentioned driving!

It was an open highway thankfully, on a route I was taking many times a week for work while at college and was very familiar with.  That's interesting about the Miller Time comment also, my driving experience seemed to be triggered by the sunset.  And yes, 'Bucke experience' is a much better term than 'non-psychotropic-drug-induced religious-like experience', thanks.

I definitely agree it felt marvelous but it was a lot more than that, the thought content was a huge part for me, and was definitely different than the few experiences with serious opiates I've had at the hospital; that felt marvelous also, but that was partly because of numbness and lack of thought.  I'm not sure but I think mine started with a general thankfulness and recognition of being young at the time, admiring the sunset, and then took a step back and thought, 'wait, you never think about it but that's a freaking star right over there', and then for some reason I found the elusive entrance in my mind to the slide and away I went.  As ineffable as it was mine was accompanied by a realization of everything being connected, death lost all its bite and was nothing to fear and just an obvious natural part of a much bigger reality and cycle, and most of all that indeed everything is alright and good.  It is remarkable despite not being able to describe it how similar what is described in these experiences is;  everything is connected and relaxing about death seem pretty common.

Part of the interesting thing is indeed the conviction, but I've been wondering if that really conflicts with skepticism.  There wasn't anything in my experience that really posited something else existing that I don't have any evidence for (although it didn't preclude it either).  It was much more a radically changed perspective on the way things actually are; reality could be limited to the most conservative depiction that science offers and the 'connectedness' and such still applies, it's an alternative viewpoint of the same data.  I don't have an answer though for why it's any less valid or evidenced a viewpoint than any other, but would have to acknowledge that part of that is because of the inability to define much since it is so indescribable.

 

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17 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

Based on the last couple of pages I am compelled to ask did peanut paste originate on Urantia?

Good question.  I assumed it was what australians call peanut butter.  Assumptions usually mislead, though.  

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