Papus79 wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 10:05 am
Gee wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 8:52 am
I like your "mythic bucket" terminology. I have used that "bucket" idea when explaining instincts, feelings, and other ideas that are related to the unconscious. The "supernatural" is also related to the unconscious, and like the other ideas, it is simply categorized and dumped rather than studied. I think this is partly because it scares the bejeebers out of people.
I ended up reading Jason Reza Jorjani's 'Prometheus and Atlas' recently and he did a great job on all of the reasons why people are terrified of it - and it's justifiable in a lot of the ways that the authors of the X-Men franchise often touch on.
I am not familiar with that book, but my children and grandchildren are enamored of the X-Men, whom I do not find very terrifying -- probably because I don't accept the validity of their "powers" -- or you could say I don't believe the story. Although the X-Men seem to work in a group, the "powers" belong to individuals and are controlled by individuals -- which is not the way the supernatural works. imo
The supernatural works through the unconscious, so there is little control over it, and little power when trying to direct it intentionally. Intentionality is a product of the conscious rational mind. This is why the government agencies and universities that were studying the supernatural in the 1960-70's quit their research. It was not because they found the concepts invalid, it was because they found they could not control it at any power that was useful. Telekinesis is mostly bending spoons and throwing books around; telepathy is more the sharing of emotion than the sharing of thought and is usually between people, who share a bond. Claravoiance requires familiarity with the "spirit" world, so it is most definitely involved in the unconscious. There is little power here, and nothing terrifying.
"Gods", ghosts, angels, and demons -- now that is terrifying. Most people simply deny the possibility of them, but history tells a different story. We have no control over the unconscious and when we reach old age, we start looking back at our lives and wondering about the balance of good and evil in our lives. This is why many rich people have been accused of trying to "buy" their way into heaven. They are trying to balance the scales before they die and lose all control of their destinies.
Papus79 wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 10:05 am
Gee wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 8:52 amThe only thing that I find mythical about supernatural is the term. In my view things are natural, or they are man-made. The unconscious is natural, but it is also weird. It relates things more (or as much) through bonding of thoughts and emotion than it does through time or matter. So I had no objection to the various "Santa Muerte" representatives that were noted through time and space in the article you quoted. I found the same thing when researching the concept of "Lilith", who was the snake in Eden, or Adam's first wife, or the devil, or a demon, and was represented in many different cultures and countries throughout many years. When studying Lilith/s, I found that most of them had similar names, they all represented the same kinds of ideas and had similar behavior, but there were cultural differences. I suspect the same can be said of the Santa Muerte concepts.
I've noticed that a lot of magicians who get deep into working with these entities, not always but often, give up on calling them distinct entities and end up referring to them as 'currents', for example some might consider many of the western dark goddesses as being of the Tiamat current.
This is interesting. I don't study religions, cults, or "magicians" for their own sake, but I do end up reviewing them for information that is ancillary to my studies of consciousness. Using the term "currents" to describe a distinct entity is brilliant and shows a true understanding of the "entity" and the unconscious.
The concept of a "God" is difficult to explain to people who do not understand the unconscious, but I will give it a shot. We tend to think of things that are solid as things that are real -- like a rock. A rock is real; a thought may be real. But science tells us that rocks are not really solid, they are made up of atoms, molecules, quarks, particles, waves? and whatever -- which are bonded together to produce a rock. So are all of these little things (particles and waves) real, causal, or does the bonding make the rock real?
Thought and emotion make up the unconscious. Are thoughts and emotions real? What if we bond them together along with millions of other thoughts and emotions over time? Is there a chance this bonding would make the emotion and thought real enough to be an entity? Just as matter is created out of the bonding of particles, waves, and whatever, could spirit be created out of the bonding of thought, feeling, and emotion? Maybe.
If this happened, would they be solid? No, they would not be solid, nor would they be static. The unconscious is analogue, it is motion, so any "entity" that is established through the unconscious would be fluid, motion, and well described as a "current". Anyway, this is my understanding of how this works through the unconscious.
Papus79 wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 10:05 am
Gee wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 8:52 amThis is slightly off topic, but I think you have done some work on NDE's. Don't remember why I think so. Have you started a thread on that subject? I would be interested to read it as I have done a lot of work on that subject and believe that I finally understand it. Let me know.
I don't think I've started an NDE thread expressly but I've often chimed in on them.
The best short way for me to encapsulate some of my thoughts in short order:
1) They either lead down a rabbit hole into a sort of deep plurality in the universe where the kinds of solidity and sense-making that can be made here can't be made from there because there isn't a solid 'commons'.
2) The possibility that NDE's are something like a gaslighting mechanism by a system that actually has us here for its own biology-like or predatory purposes (a bit like a farm).
3) It could indeed be the case that many people here planned this life out, that this is some sort of garrish school room run by an administration that feels the ends justify the means even if enough people might be put through so much that they end up praying either occasionally or every day to be unmade, to cease to exist forever, even for God to commit suicide, based on the horrors/absurdities they've either endured or seen around them.
It appears that we study different aspects of the NDE problem. You seem more interested in the purpose of NDE's, whereas I study what causes NDE's. I look at the mechanics of the experience, or why we have it, and have concluded that NDE's are part of most deaths, we just are not aware of it because few people can tell us of the experience.
People do not often consider that death, like birth, is a process -- there is no off/on switch. Birth is nine months after conception, and most people believe that one of those events is what starts a human life. But a baby is six to eight months old before it realizes that it is physically separate from it's mother. It is two years old before it starts to refer to itself as "I". It is seven years old before it has a fully developed rational aspect of mind, which is supposed to be what separates it from other "lower" species. When does it physically and mentally become a human? At seven years old? We can argue that till the end of time, but the truth is, birth is a process. So is death.
Most of us assume that when the breathing and heart stop, the body is dead, but often this is not true. We now know that we have six or seven minutes, maybe more under some circumstances, before the brain dies. Then there can be hours or days, again depending upon circumstances, when the rest of the body dies -- each cell dying and giving up it's need to survive or its consciousness. Since the discovery of pheromones and a better understanding of hormones, it is entirely conceivable that since consciousness is stimulated by chemistry, a breakdown of the chemistry in the body might have to happen before true final death occurs.
The time between brain death and true final death is when NDE's happen. It is interesting to note that many religions that believe in an afterlife, heaven and hell, try to preserve the body in death -- to preserve its's spirit? But religions that accept reincarnation are happy to dispose of the body -- to release it's spirit?
A person can argue the above points till the end of time, but I don't think many will deny that death is a process. We are more aware of NDE's because we have learned to interrupt the process.
Papus79 wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 10:05 am
I'd add - there's also the whole genre of psychedelic entities, and there's someone I talk to occasionally who vlogs a lot on their experiences. I'm still trying to figure out what to make of the distinctly powerful non-overlap between such psychedelic entity encounters, what they have to say, and that there's no acknowledgment of angelic or demonic hierarchies, gods and goddesses, jinn, etc.. If that's not a sign of deep plurality then it's a signal that these forms of intelligence don't exist in anything like the media that we do and that their closure to other chains of being are a result of that. What some people might think of as the most screamingly obvious solution - that none of them exist and that they're just psychological images running around on human neurons - would be blessedly simple but it runs out of explanatory power when this stuff leaps off the brain and starts doing things in the physical world that it shouldn't otherwise be doing (and if we just care about the simplest explanation for everything - we could hang up the whole scientific endeavor with 'God did it!', I'm personally glad that we weren't obtuse enough to let simplicity get in the way of accuracy on that one).
Well, I don't know how to respond to the above. You are apparently talking about a lot of different things, but not dealing with any of them specifically. Since they are indeed different things, there is a distinct possibility that they are caused by different things and have different properties.
Generally speaking, these questions are usually addressed to religion. I don't know why you would expect that science can answer these questions. Most scientists honestly believe that consciousness comes from the brain; and therefore, it is not possible to have any other "entity" without a body and brain. Most scientists are clueless on this subject.
Papus79 wrote: ↑April 28th, 2020, 10:05 am
People aren't fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, we're fundamentally trying to survive. It's the environment and culture which tells us what that's going to be.
Fundamentally, this is true.
Gee