Felix wrote:Consul: In the fantasy world of psychedelia and spiritualism people are dancing with angels. I'm talking about the real world. Nevertheless, I'm a curious person, so if you can explain how it's possible for me to (directly) experience or perceive your experiences, please do so!
One man's fantasy is anothers reality. Not everything has a rational explanation and even what does can't necessarily be taught. If you do not possess a faculty or have little or no aptitude for it, explanations will not help you acquire it.
In the case of transpersonal awareness, you could think of it as a spectrum of empathy: on one end of the scale are those who have little or no capacity to empathize with others, and on the other end are those who can empathize completely with another individual, to the point where they can totally identify psychologically with them. It could be compared to the difference between possessing an average memory and having a photographic memory.
The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines "empathy" as "the capacity to understand and enter into another person's feelings and emotions or to experience something from the other person's point of view." Unfortunately, this formulation is imprecise and not quite accurate, because it is not
literally possible "to experience something from the other person's point of view";
for in order for me to be able to do so I would have to be the other person. So all I can do is
imagine experiencing something from the other person's point of view. Empathy or sympathy consists in
empathetic or sympathetic imagination. To feel compassion for someone in pain is not to feel
her/his pain. Whatever I feel while feeling compassion for other persons, it's
my feeling in
my mind and not their feelings in their minds. To have fellow-feelings for others is not to have the feelings of fellows but to imagine having them.
"Empathetic Imagination
Traditional moral theories have almost entirely ignored one of our most important moral capacities—the capacity for empathy. Hume's treatment of what he called 'sympathy' or 'fellow-feeling' touches on this issue, but it does not go to the heart of imaginative empathetic projection into the experience of other people. ' As a limiting case, it requires the ability to imagine ourselves in different situations and conditions at past and future times. Unless we can put ourselves in the place of another, unless we can enlarge our own perspective through an imaginative encounter with the experience of others, unless we can let our own values and ideals be called into question from various points of view, we cannot be morally sensitive.
…
This 'taking up the place of another' is an act of imaginative experience and dramatic rehearsal of the sort described by Nussbaum and Eldridge in their accounts of narrative moral explorations. It is perhaps the most important imaginative exploration we can perform. It is not sufficient merely to manipulate a cool, detached 'objective' reason toward the situation of others. We must, instead, go out toward people to inhabit their worlds, not just by rational calculations, but also in imagination, feeling, and expression.
Reflecting in this way involves an imaginative rationality through which we can participate empathetically in another's experience: their suffering, pain, humiliation, and frustrations, as well as their joy, fulfillment, plans, and hopes. Morally sensitive people are capable of living out, in and through such an experiential imagination, the reality of others with whom they are interacting, or whom their actions might affect."
(Johnson, Mark.
Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. pp. 199-200)
-- Updated April 18th, 2017, 8:23 am to add the following --
Tamminen wrote:Consciousness is the starting point of philosophy because it is the precondition of all being, and by studying the structure of consciousness we will get closer to the meaning of the world, matter and time, for example.
Of course, if the physical universe reduces to ideas (percepts and concepts) in nonphysical minds/souls/spirits, then you're right.
-- Updated April 18th, 2017, 8:38 am to add the following --
Felix wrote:One man's fantasy is anothers reality.
I know that Grof and his friends from the MOS (mysticism-occultism-spiritualism) community reject (what I think is by far) the scientifically most probable and philosophically most plausible assumption regarding the relationship of consciousness and matter: The brain is the organ of consciousness, and consciousness is a property or state of the brain (or, more broadly, the animal organism); and as such it is generated by, realized in, and confined to the brain (or, more broadly, the animal organism).