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Is there any state of consciousness, normal or extraordinary; any state that we call an “altered state of consciousness”, including those states that we belittle and dismiss with scientific pigeonholes such as hypnosis and trance; any form, experience, or aspect of consciousness that is not in fact a bona fide transcendental mystery? Is not the whole phenomenon of conscious self-awareness itself a veritable and incomparable metaphysical enigma?
Well, the simple truth be told, of course it is, but apparently many of us blockheadedly fail to realize and appreciate this. It seems that whenever someone makes the claim to have experienced or witnessed a religious-mystical state of consciousness granting transcendence of our normal, accustomed limitations that someone, whether or not he wears the hat of a “skeptic”, will observe and opine that nothing terribly special has occurred because it was just hypnosis or mind over matter. The annoyingly amusing thing is that skeptics say this as if uttering words such as hypnosis explains anything, let alone explains anything away! As if the hypnotic state has been thoroughly demystified and resolved into a materialistic explanation by modern science. It has not.
Well, in any case, mundane-minded people do seem to take it for granted that the consciousness that experiences hypnosis, or that enters a trance state and overcomes our normal bodily restrictions is a known quantity whose causes and effects have all been sorted out by no-nonsense, anti-spiritual science. However the truth is that science has yet to fathom and discover the origin of consciousness, all it can do is observe the activity of consciousness in the brain by giving subjects PET scans.
What doctrinaire materialists don’t wish to face is that perhaps the simple reason materialistic science has proven unable to explain mind and consciousness is that they’re only partially a byproduct of gray matter in motion. Perhaps the mystery of the mind is an integral aspect of the mystery of existence. Perhaps it turns out that what we call by the innocent four letter word “mind” is more basic, ontologically speaking, than material substance.
The idea that mind is a fundamental facet of reality, an inherent feature of that sacred-cosmic creativity wondrously and prolifically manifesting itself in the whole wide universe is a hard one to swallow for modern people raised on a steady diet of scientism and its mechanistic theories. But the only reason that materialistic explanations seem more satisfactory and plausible is that they’re in vogue nowadays, they chime in with our modern worldview, they don’t clash with it, but they have not in fact been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be the ultimate explanation of anything! Keep that in mind.
Here then, without any fanfare, is an alternative spiritual view of consciousness. Even in its most everyday states consciousness is nothing less than transcendence between our ears! Say what? Well, if we grant, as I do, that philosophers of science and theologians such as Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb are right, the bottommost bottom line of reality is not gross matter, solid substance, and static being but rather experience, energy, and creativity. Matter and the universe of things made of it are just the perpetual coming together, the ceaseless crystallization of this transcendental creative reality in ever new self-expressive forms. And the same can be said of our consciousness.
For ultimate creative reality is sentient, feeling, and intentional; not senseless, numb, and random. That is, mind is of the essence of the ultimate reality that’s actualizing itself in us; our brains and consciousness reflect this, they are just an intricate weaving together of this creativity-mind into a highly complex and self-aware manifestation of itself. Yes, materialists have it half right, the physical brain does give rise to our individual consciousness, but the rest of the story is that ultimate creativity-mind gives rise to the brain and its cognitive functions.
So then, consciousness is not merely a side effect of biochemical activity occurring in the meat in our noggins, ultimately that meat and what it does is itself a clump of transcendence, of the eternal creative process that is being! This insight covers and accounts for everything from the most splendorous religious states of mind, to hypnosis, to the most pedestrian mental experiences. Ordinary consciousness, trance, moksha, the whole shebang of mind is a spiritual wonder to behold.
Let’s recap and ask the question again here, is there such a thing as “cosmic consciousness”, as transcendental experiences? Can’t they simply be dismissed as mere forms of self-hypnosis? Well, to answer the skeptic’s misinformed question with a gratuitous question, is there in the final analysis any kind of consciousness other than cosmic consciousness! This would appear to be the more pointed question at this stage of the discussion.
As it turns out all states of mind are experiences of a mystical unexplored ground, those self-induced trance states that we label religious are simply states in which the usual blocks to spiritual perception and awareness, the ego-driven thought activity and anxious concerns that dominate normal consciousness and keep us from tuning into Infinity are suspended, which allows a more numinous and holy state of mind to be experienced.
Of course people who’ve been raised in a certain mythology are going to tend to impose that mythology’s particular interpretation on their transcendental experiences. So, if you believe in spirits or deities you’re likely to think that you’ve been possessed by one. But you’ve really just tapped your consciousness into Ultimate Reality. Again, our consciousness is never really disconnected from ultimate reality, but when we taste spiritual experiences we simply realize this more keenly.
All of this being so, irony of ironies the reductionism of materialists, which crassly boils everything down to the haphazard activity of brute matter, just doesn’t go far enough. To the chagrin of materialists their trusty matter itself breaks down into intangible creativity, which is as good a definition of transcendence as any. All physical reality at the profoundest level is transcendental, as is all consciousness! Every cognitive function, every thought, every perception, no matter how seemingly mundane and profane is “part and particle” of the spiritual and sacred nature of existence. The supreme truth of mind and being that we seek is embodied in but not encaged in our neurotransmitters and synapses, in nuclear particles and chemical elements, it’s the uncreated creativity-mind that religious believers rightly reverence in one way, shape, form, or another.
The scientistic skeptic’s penchant for pooh-poohing transcendence and deriding the religious appreciation of the sublime mentality inherent in the universe gives away the fact that his/her spiritual sensibilities have been suppressed by a negativistic psychological makeup. Those of us who do not suffer from such a counter-spiritual psychological makeup are never satisfied with the glib pigeonholing of spiritual states as self-hypnosis. We may not always know what exactly, but we know that there’s certainly more to this wondrous world than what’s drably dreamt of in the poor philosophies of materialists. And we know that our spiritual states of consciousness are our mind’s opening up to this immeasurable spiritual richness of reality.
If you're interested in exploring this and other related topics further please come visit my new website, Realityhead.com Just copy & paste the web address below.
www.realityhead.com
Well, the simple truth be told, of course it is, but apparently many of us blockheadedly fail to realize and appreciate this. It seems that whenever someone makes the claim to have experienced or witnessed a religious-mystical state of consciousness granting transcendence of our normal, accustomed limitations that someone, whether or not he wears the hat of a “skeptic”, will observe and opine that nothing terribly special has occurred because it was just hypnosis or mind over matter. The annoyingly amusing thing is that skeptics say this as if uttering words such as hypnosis explains anything, let alone explains anything away! As if the hypnotic state has been thoroughly demystified and resolved into a materialistic explanation by modern science. It has not.
Well, in any case, mundane-minded people do seem to take it for granted that the consciousness that experiences hypnosis, or that enters a trance state and overcomes our normal bodily restrictions is a known quantity whose causes and effects have all been sorted out by no-nonsense, anti-spiritual science. However the truth is that science has yet to fathom and discover the origin of consciousness, all it can do is observe the activity of consciousness in the brain by giving subjects PET scans.
What doctrinaire materialists don’t wish to face is that perhaps the simple reason materialistic science has proven unable to explain mind and consciousness is that they’re only partially a byproduct of gray matter in motion. Perhaps the mystery of the mind is an integral aspect of the mystery of existence. Perhaps it turns out that what we call by the innocent four letter word “mind” is more basic, ontologically speaking, than material substance.
The idea that mind is a fundamental facet of reality, an inherent feature of that sacred-cosmic creativity wondrously and prolifically manifesting itself in the whole wide universe is a hard one to swallow for modern people raised on a steady diet of scientism and its mechanistic theories. But the only reason that materialistic explanations seem more satisfactory and plausible is that they’re in vogue nowadays, they chime in with our modern worldview, they don’t clash with it, but they have not in fact been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be the ultimate explanation of anything! Keep that in mind.
Here then, without any fanfare, is an alternative spiritual view of consciousness. Even in its most everyday states consciousness is nothing less than transcendence between our ears! Say what? Well, if we grant, as I do, that philosophers of science and theologians such as Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb are right, the bottommost bottom line of reality is not gross matter, solid substance, and static being but rather experience, energy, and creativity. Matter and the universe of things made of it are just the perpetual coming together, the ceaseless crystallization of this transcendental creative reality in ever new self-expressive forms. And the same can be said of our consciousness.
For ultimate creative reality is sentient, feeling, and intentional; not senseless, numb, and random. That is, mind is of the essence of the ultimate reality that’s actualizing itself in us; our brains and consciousness reflect this, they are just an intricate weaving together of this creativity-mind into a highly complex and self-aware manifestation of itself. Yes, materialists have it half right, the physical brain does give rise to our individual consciousness, but the rest of the story is that ultimate creativity-mind gives rise to the brain and its cognitive functions.
So then, consciousness is not merely a side effect of biochemical activity occurring in the meat in our noggins, ultimately that meat and what it does is itself a clump of transcendence, of the eternal creative process that is being! This insight covers and accounts for everything from the most splendorous religious states of mind, to hypnosis, to the most pedestrian mental experiences. Ordinary consciousness, trance, moksha, the whole shebang of mind is a spiritual wonder to behold.
Let’s recap and ask the question again here, is there such a thing as “cosmic consciousness”, as transcendental experiences? Can’t they simply be dismissed as mere forms of self-hypnosis? Well, to answer the skeptic’s misinformed question with a gratuitous question, is there in the final analysis any kind of consciousness other than cosmic consciousness! This would appear to be the more pointed question at this stage of the discussion.
As it turns out all states of mind are experiences of a mystical unexplored ground, those self-induced trance states that we label religious are simply states in which the usual blocks to spiritual perception and awareness, the ego-driven thought activity and anxious concerns that dominate normal consciousness and keep us from tuning into Infinity are suspended, which allows a more numinous and holy state of mind to be experienced.
Of course people who’ve been raised in a certain mythology are going to tend to impose that mythology’s particular interpretation on their transcendental experiences. So, if you believe in spirits or deities you’re likely to think that you’ve been possessed by one. But you’ve really just tapped your consciousness into Ultimate Reality. Again, our consciousness is never really disconnected from ultimate reality, but when we taste spiritual experiences we simply realize this more keenly.
All of this being so, irony of ironies the reductionism of materialists, which crassly boils everything down to the haphazard activity of brute matter, just doesn’t go far enough. To the chagrin of materialists their trusty matter itself breaks down into intangible creativity, which is as good a definition of transcendence as any. All physical reality at the profoundest level is transcendental, as is all consciousness! Every cognitive function, every thought, every perception, no matter how seemingly mundane and profane is “part and particle” of the spiritual and sacred nature of existence. The supreme truth of mind and being that we seek is embodied in but not encaged in our neurotransmitters and synapses, in nuclear particles and chemical elements, it’s the uncreated creativity-mind that religious believers rightly reverence in one way, shape, form, or another.
The scientistic skeptic’s penchant for pooh-poohing transcendence and deriding the religious appreciation of the sublime mentality inherent in the universe gives away the fact that his/her spiritual sensibilities have been suppressed by a negativistic psychological makeup. Those of us who do not suffer from such a counter-spiritual psychological makeup are never satisfied with the glib pigeonholing of spiritual states as self-hypnosis. We may not always know what exactly, but we know that there’s certainly more to this wondrous world than what’s drably dreamt of in the poor philosophies of materialists. And we know that our spiritual states of consciousness are our mind’s opening up to this immeasurable spiritual richness of reality.
If you're interested in exploring this and other related topics further please come visit my new website, Realityhead.com Just copy & paste the web address below.
www.realityhead.com
