One of the things I notice on this board, in particular, is that much of this material is categorised, or should I say stereoptyped, as religious dogma, therefore superstitious, anti-rational and unscientific. — Wayfarer
Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke. — Wayfarer
it is possessed by a very few individuals, and it provides a radically transformative understanding of the nature of existence. — Wayfarer
much of this material is categorised, or should I say stereoptyped, as religious dogma, therefore superstitious, anti-rational and unscientific — Wayfarer
This may throw a question mark on any who claim to have experienced 'enlightenment.' I am partly thinking of Krishnamurti, who was believed to be a future spiritual leader, and he had to step back from this and look at the nature of such a quest, rather than being drawn into the inflated ego consciousness of spirituality. — Jack Cummins
But many people just don't do those practices, don't develop those virtues — baker
any people just don't do those practices, don't develop those virtues, but instead believe that all it takes and all it should take is a syllogism, or the right mantra, regardless of what one otherwise does, how one behaves, or what else one knows. — baker
I wonder too how this transformative understanding might impact upon the behavior of such a person. Are they more likely to be in harmony with others, eschew violence, have affairs? In other words and an enlightened one, do you get a humanity bypass? — Tom Storm
Some of Harris' stuff prompted me to ask the question. — Tom Storm
Sam Harris is also socialized into a soulless, physicalist world, only from the point of view of an experienced meditator who studies cognitive science.
He helps dismiss the metaphysical crap thereabouts. — Banno
That is more typical of those who dabble rather than just rejecting them outright which is more typical of straight-ahead secular culture. — Wayfarer
In your view, what do those rejectors hold as proper epistemological standards? What do they believe that it takes in order to know something? — baker
Should the term enlightenment be reserved solely for use by spiritual traditions? It seems so connected to particular expressions of metaphysics. — Tom Storm
They are part of a system of virtue epistemology, where it is assumed that by doing certain practices and developing certain virtues, one will come to realize that a particular claim is true. — baker
The provenance of the term is that it was used by Thomas Rhys-Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society, which translated the Pali Buddhist texts into English, as the translation for 'bodhi'. Bodhi is one of those many Buddhist terms for which there is no real English equivalent, but it's often also translated as 'wisdom'. — Wayfarer
And this article, which depressed me hugely when it came out. — Wayfarer
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
― C.G. Jung — Tom Storm
Considering that it would be impossible to know anything without such a grounding it’s really not that unreasonable. — praxis
Dawkins said in the preface to TGD that his aim was that Christians who picked up the book should put it down atheist. I thought it was such an appalling piece of undergraduate nonsense it had rather the opposite effect on me. — Wayfarer
Suffice to note that in classical (i.e. pre-modern) philosophy, rationalism was concerned with arriving at, shall we say, a cosmic truth, without recourse to experience - classical examples being Parmenides and Plotinus. — Wayfarer
My very first lecture in philosophy was about the distinction between empiricism and rationalism. Took me a long while to grasp that distinction, and I'm still working on it. — Wayfarer
For me, enlightenment, in the way we are discussing it, is self-awareness. I know that I have become more and more self-aware as I've gotten older. Somewhere along the line, that became my path. To become as self-aware as I can in as many ways as I can. — T Clark
knowledge can only be grounded in what can be experienced by the senses
— Wayfarer
Considering that it would be impossible to know anything without such a grounding it’s really not that unreasonable. — praxis
For Plotinus, man "is in some sense divine, and the object of the philosophic life is to understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or Good". Plotinus's philosophy is difficult to elucidate, precisely because what it seeks to elucidate is a manner of thinking that precedes what one terms 'discursive thought'.
Discursive thought is the sort of thinking we do most often in a philosophical discussion or debate, when we seek to follow a series of premises and intermediate conclusions to a final conclusion. In such thinking, our minds move from one point to the next, as if each point only can be true after we have known the truth of the point preceding it. The final point is true, only because we have already built up one by one a series of points preceding it logically that are also true. In the same way, the meaning of the sentence I am now speaking only builds itself up by the addition of each word, until coming to its conclusion it makes a certain sense built of the words from which it is constituted. Because discursive thinking is within ordinary time, it is not capable of thinking all its points or saying all its words in the very same moment.
But Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it 1. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, meaning its thought is no longer chronological but eternal 2. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together. — Plotinus, Lecture Notes
Henosis for Plotinus was defined in his works as a reversing of the ontological process of consciousness via meditation toward no (discursive) thought (nous or demiurge) and no division (dyad) within the individual (being). As is specified in the writings of Plotinus on Henology one can reach a tabula rasa, a blank state where the individual may grasp or merge with The One. This absolute simplicity means that the nous or the person is then dissolved, completely absorbed back into the Monad.
Parmenides’ poem began with a proem (i.e. prose-poem) describing a journey he figuratively once made to the abode of a goddess. He described how he was conveyed on “the far-fabled path of the divinity” (fr. 1.3) in a chariot by a team of mares and how the maiden daughters of Helios, the sun-god, led the way. These maidens take Parmenides to whence they themselves have come, to “the halls of Night” (fr. 1.9), before which stand “the gates of the paths of night and day” (fr. 1.11). The maidens gently persuade Justice, guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himself may pass through to the abode within. Parmenides thus describes how the goddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:
And the goddess received me kindly, and in her hand she took
my right hand, and she spoke and addressed me thus:
“O young man, accompanied by immortal charioteers
and mares who bear you as you arrive at our abode,
welcome, since a fate by no means ill sent you ahead to travel
this way (for surely it is far from the track of humans),
but Right and Justice.” (Fr. 1.22–28a)
Parmenides’ proem is no epistemological allegory of enlightenment but a topographically specific description of a mystical journey to the halls of Night. In Hesiod, the “horrible dwelling of dark Night” (Th. 744) is where the goddesses Night and Day alternately reside as the other traverses the sky above the Earth. Both Parmenides’ and Hesiod’s conception of this place have their precedent in the Babylonian mythology of the sun god’s abode. This abode also traditionally served as a place of judgment, and this fact tends to confirm that when Parmenides’ goddess tells him that "no ill fate" has sent him ahead to this place (fr. 1.26–27a), she is indicating that he has miraculously reached the place to which travel the souls of the dead. — Parmenides, SEP
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