Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality by David Lorimer

Author:David Lorimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, religion, consciousness studies, physics, neuroscience, psychology, theology, moral philosophy, cosmology, quantum mechanics, self, yoga, spirituality, transpersonal psychology, soul, mind and body, theism, naturalism, cognitive science, faith, values
ISBN: 9781845408787
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

Proximal Spirituality: Why the Brains of Angels are Different from Ours - Guy Claxton

‘It’s Simple To Be Happy. It’s Just Hard To Be Simple’

Do you want there to be angels? And if so, in what sense do you want them to be real? Is it inconceivable to you that the world of Newton, Lavoisier and Darwin, even of Bohr and Einstein and Feynman, is the only world there is, and utterly obvious that there must be another parallel world, or perhaps many such worlds, which transcend the mundane laws of matter and biology: worlds which contain the supernatural spirits, forces and entities - angels and astral bodies, gods and morphic fields, aliens and ‘the power of evil’ - that are needed to underpin your deepest beliefs and most profound experience? Is ‘evil’ as real as ‘gravity’; is Heaven almost as substantial as Harrogate? Or are the Devil and ‘telepathy’ merely real in the way that the Bogeyman, Cinderella and The Holy Grail are real: as powerful mythic figures and numinous symbols that point to or encapsulate vital, mysterious aspects of human existence, but without causing any worry that the Theory of Relativity has been breached?

‘The heart has its reasons of which reason itself knows nothing,’ said Pascal, and our pre-rational hopes and beliefs tilt the surface of our rationality, so that, without noticing, we deploy our credulity and our scepticism partially. If we want the supernatural to be real, we are readier to accept a professor’s word that the study demonstrating the power of prayer was well-conducted; and readier to accuse the sceptic of a wilful refusal to accept ‘the facts’. If we want the Book of Common Prayer to be poetry, and the Voice of God to be a powerful, meaningful, beautiful hallucination, then we shall challenge the professor’s claim more robustly, and work harder to make the psychological explanation stick. Even Tibetan Buddhist lamas fight about whether reincarnation is to be taken literally or figuratively, so if we think we are fighting fairly, when it comes to the supernatural, we are deluded. ‘May the best man win’, we say, smiling, as we slip the tiny capsule of Rohypnol into the opponent’s tea.

Peter Fenwick and I rig the scales so that the same weight of evidence tips them in different ways. His apparent even-handedness masks his wish that the Out of the Body experiencer really does float up to the ceiling, and can thus see the secret message scrawled in the dust on the top of the high cupboard. I want it not to be so, and will ferret out the flaw in the experiment that allows my pretheoretical commitment to escape. Neither of us is innocent, and we would be better employed meditating on what we each need to be true, and why, than on trying to establish the impersonal truth, for we shall never agree on what is sufficient proof.

Such introspection, however, is a protracted and a private business, and the chapter has to be written. So

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.