Art Bell

[WhiteCrow]

If this well respected medical research doctor, who is also a catholic, wanders around public places claiming that his belief system is is more than belief, but somehow based in fact, reality or science, and huffily walks away from anyone who questions his beliefs....then, yeah, I would say he is a fool. 

Ergo, I am trying to convey that Onan does not owe Rosegirl an apology.  Because she is acting like a fool.

Yes yes...  I understand your point about the doctor, and agree he would be a fool.
But still don't understand what Rose did to label her life's work a joke (fool)?

She didn't go around the forum posting her belief system (Astrology) was more than a belief and didn't huffily disrespect anyone that had different believes ( to my knowledge)
Onan is the one that called her particular individual believes a joke, (astrology).

[WhiteCrow]

...
Ergo, I am trying to convey that Onan does not owe Rosegirl an apology.  Because she is acting like a fool.
Such a diplomat... you are extending far to much credit, where none is due.

Why the need to pile on and also label RoseGirl a fool because she is an Astrologer?

This is after all the Art Bell forum, a place where people that are into paranormal and would hopefully find members that have a degree of tolerance and acceptance.

[Amethyst]

Ah, the Martinez, CA school of Internet message boards - act crazy, and ignore the "haters".  Have you considered asking Noory for free glasses?

I effectively have moved away from C2C and no longer hear Jorch, so I'm free of the following, but it always drove me crazy how he would mispronounce Martinez as MART-in-ez instead of mar-TEEN-ez when taking callers from there.

[PB the Deplorable]

I effectively have moved away from C2C and no longer hear Jorch, so I'm free of the following, but it always drove me crazy how he would mispronounce Martinez as MART-in-ez instead of mar-TEEN-ez when taking callers from there.

George has lived in Cali over 10 years now and still can't pronounce the Spanish named places.  I doubt he knows a thing about the history of our state, or that the Spanish were even here.

He's dumb, lazy, and refuses to put in the effort

[zeebo]

The ebbs and flows of BellGab, I just took everyone off Ignore

The triumph of hope over experience!   

[Mind Flayer Monk]

So was there 5 hours of Somewhere In Time on that tunein station?

[WhiteCrow]

They would. Trouble is, that's not truthThat's just keeping the dumb people in line.I agree that such a thing is probably necessary, but it's a really icky thought otherwise.

Bingo
Next time we wonder around in our superiority half consciousness minds, thinking, hey I'm glad I don't need those dumb religious types controlling my life and teaching me moral valves..
.... Think instead, You don't, but they do 

[SciFiAuthor]

Bingo
Next time we wonder around in our superiority half consciousness minds, thinking, hey I'm glad I don't need those dumb religious types controlling my life and teaching me moral valves..
.... Think instead, You don't, but they do 

The way I figure it, if they don't actively try to control me, then I won't bother them. The moment they try to impose their ideas on me, then I get prickly. It seems silly to me that someone would practice lifelong celibacy over the words of a questionable personage from 2000 years ago that we know very little factual information about, but if that floats your boat, great. Seems like a pain to me, but okay, if following that results in good in your life then fine. But the moment that it becomes imposed, that's where I get pissed and it all becomes BS. People should follow whatever path that makes them happy and fulfilled. Sure it's almost certainly delusional, but that's a fact of being human.

[K_Dubb]

They would. Trouble is, that's not truth. That's just keeping the dumb people in line. I agree that such a thing is probably necessary, but it's a really icky thought otherwise.

You don't necessarily have to see it as controlling the dumb people.  Most spiritual traditions have some form of monasticism or other that recognizes there's something about pursuing them fully that's incompatible with a normal life.  It's just specialization.

[SciFiAuthor]

You don't necessarily have to see it as controlling the dumb people.  Most spiritual traditions have some form of monasticism or other that recognizes there's something about pursuing them fully that's incompatible with a normal life.  It's just specialization.

Yeah, but to me monasticism is one of two things. 1. Escaping a world you inherently do not understand and cannot function within or 2. Delusions that you're probably going to regret when you're 80 and thinking back on how fun life could have been.

[K_Dubb]

Like what happened in the Western World when instutional Nazism replaced traditional instutional religions?

Yeah and the various communist state cults.  The value of an individual human life tends to suffer.

[RoseGirl]

It’s interesting that so few people ever question the ontological supremacy of this state of consciousness, and therefore presume that any state of consciousness other than this one must be an intrinsically inferior form, such as delusions, dreams, or hallucinations.

The truth is that the thought process is just another form of dream, and we’re all walking around half-asleep, dreaming in words all day long every day.  The fact that we’re not fully conscious at this moment is evidenced by the fact that, like the audiovisual dreams that we experience in our sleep, we can’t consciously turn off the thought process for more than a few moments before it grabs us by the throat and we’re enthralled again, lost in thought, dreaming our lives away.  So in a sense, the perpetual sequence of words and memories flowing through our attention right now is a kind of drug, or perhaps mesmerism, which keeps us servile and fearful and sometimes even irrationally hostile.  All of those characteristics are very useful to the kind of people who enjoy exerting control over many others.

The esoteric tradition of ancient mysticism isn’t about inducing hallucinatory dream states or the like.  It’s about waking up from the dream-thought state, which is halfway between the sleeping dream state and full consciousness.  Very few of us ever experience full consciousness, so in a sense we die in our sleep before we ever wake up.  I think that’s tragic.  But I don’t think that anyone has a moral imperative to fully wake up: consciousness is a gift â€" if you don’t want to open the box and see what’s inside that’s your prerogative.

The consequences of us all living our lives half-awake are truly horrific though:  global human society is more like a raving insane asylum than a genuine civilization.  The petty and gross horrors that we inflict upon one another are as chilling as they are pervasive, as individually and collectively we stumble forward blindly, confused and erratic, from oppression to uprising and slaughter without any meaningful or enduring sense of purpose, over and over again throughout our lives and throughout history.

This could all change if we as individuals were to experience full waking consciousness, even for a moment.  But first we need to grow so dissatisfied with the state of our existence that we’re earnestly willing to entertain the possibility that we are not fully awake.  Honestly, and sadly, I see no sign of that happening.

Chronaut, I have to say...it's is good to hear from someone else who has walked the path.

[K_Dubb]

Yeah, but to me monasticism is one of two things. 1. Escaping a world you inherently do not understand and cannot function within or 2. Delusions that you're probably going to regret when you're 80 and thinking back on how fun life could have been.

Have you met many monastics?  Hard core.

The point is, though, it doesn't have to always be about control.  It's analogous to doctors and lawyers in a lot of ways.

[K_Dubb]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Eleusis-Unveiling-Mysteries/dp/1556437528

Thanks Aldous I bought.  I thought all those old Greeks were hopped up on ephedra.  Or maybe that was the Vedas.  I get them confused.

[BellBoy]

The ebbs and flows of BellGab, I just took everyone off Ignore

Now your seemingly rambling disjointed psychotic random posts make sense! It was all one inexplicably long monologue. You sir, are an artistic genius!

[Meister_000]

Art, . . . I noticed that every time you tried to press her on the notion of 'what is power' or asked her to explain such things, she went into her canned explanations. And I can tell you for certain....what she put out there in the interview led me to think she knew NOTHING about power or how it works. And I think that is the biggest lie she told all night.

...all people who are serious about learning will one day end up studying mysticism. Mysticism is the study of power.

Rose-unit, methinks your fixation on "power", and its figuring so prominently in your "chart", would preclude the possibility of understanding, let alone recognizing or being initiated into, any adult expression of Spirituality, Mysticism, or Magic whatsoever -- and in any land, or in any age, for that matter.

[SredniVashtar]

I don't know how you could call the career of a Catholic priest a 'joke'. Let's leave aside all the molestation stuff, I think spending your life trying to drum into vulnerable people that they will face everlasting pain if they don't follow a set of arbitrary rules is actively wicked. Astrology is merely risible. The only reason we accord established religions a sort of reflexive respect is because they have been around a certain amount of time and we have grown up around them. It makes it harder to see through the BS, just as it is difficult to shake off feelings of bigotry if you grew up in a racist family. If you knew someone who told you they were a follower of Mithraism, for instance, I think you would have fewer qualms about telling them that they were under a terrible misapprehension. Likewise all of the other worshippers of long-forgotten cults.

Someone a few pages back called Metaphysics a 'subjective science'. That's a total oxymoron. If you want to believe something absurd then that's your prerogative, but if you want to extend that into the physical world then you need more than your own assertion to back it up. Art 'saying' he had an out of body experience is just that. There is no reason for believing it is true. We know so little about the mind that we can't conclusively say that it is a delusion, of course, but I don't think we can take it much further than seeing it as any other hallucination until more evidence comes in. I once (several weeks after her death), saw my dead mother looking down at me while I was in bed. Do I regard that as conclusive evidence of life after death? No, I regard it is a natural consequence of someone who had barely slept for a month and was under severe stress.

It's only in discussions like this that respectable words like 'reason' and 'logic' are used as pejoratives. Why is it that faith healers are almost always (unless you are insane or a Jehovah's Witness) a last resort? How many people say, 'well, I have pancreatic cancer, but I think I will let some weirdo lay hands on me for a few months, then if things don't work out I will try the doctor'? In anything that really matters, people put their trust in the principles of the Enlightenment and evidence-based thinking. I exclude RoseGirl from this - who no doubt flies on Metaphysical Airways, using nothing but a crystal and a sacrifice to Zeus - but the rest of us would find life very difficult if we didn't approach life logically. Saying 'science is all wrong, because I have seen it happen' doesn't cut the mustard. You are still relying on evidence (in this case your lying eyes) to form an opinion. I don't see how this sort of thing is different from believing anything that your average magician can pull off.

The ability to think and gradually lift ourselves out of ignorance and superstition is what distinguishes us as a species. I don't know how people can justify not using their brains when they are all we have.

[SredniVashtar]

If you taste a glass of wine, and it's delicious, but no one agrees with you, was it delusion?  Or is it something you know as your own truth?

It's a personal preference, that's all, not something so grandiloquent as 'your own truth'. I don't know what point you are trying to make here. You could privilege the feelings of child molesters on that basis as well. The peculiar interaction of someone's taste buds and brain chemistry is not the same thing as saying that you can also leave your body and whizz around the Earth. In one you are talking about an entirely subjective experience, but in the other you are trying to have it both ways - that is both subjectively and objectively true. It doesn't work unless you can offer some evidence.

[PB the Deplorable]

... Someone a few pages back called Metaphysics a 'subjective science'. That's a total oxymoron. If you want to believe something absurd then that's your prerogative, but if you want to extend that into the physical world then you need more than your own assertion to back it up. Art 'saying' he had an out of body experience is just that. There is no reason for believing it is true. We know so little about the mind that we can't conclusively say that it is a delusion, of course, but I don't think we can take it much further than seeing it as any other hallucination until more evidence comes in...

Even after all the shows on the subject, it wasn't until I read this post that I realized people thought OBE's were something other than a creation of the mind.  I knew mine were simply that (I had a handful as a kid).  I thought they were an interesting phenomenon that I later found many experienced, but not physically real, so I must have breezed over that part during the interviews.

People think they are something other than a kind of interesting dream?

[FightTheFuture]

The way I figure it, if they don't actively try to control me, then I won't bother them. The moment they try to impose their ideas on me, then I get prickly.

Interesting. Are there people trying to impose their ideas on you? Who are they, and in what prison are they now serving a lengthy sentence?

[PB the Deplorable]

Now your seemingly rambling disjointed psychotic random posts make sense! It was all one inexplicably long monologue. You sir, are an artistic genius!

Thanks!  That's def what I was going for, but not everyone sees it

[SredniVashtar]

Even after all the shows on the subject, it wasn't until I read this post that I realized people thought OBE's were something other than a creation of the mind.  I knew mine were simply that (I had a handful as a kid).  I thought they were an interesting phenomenon that many experienced, but not physically real, so I must have breezed over that part during the interviews.

People think they are something other than a kind of interesting dream?

Oh yes, they often claim to back this up by saying that they saw something while they were in hospital under anaesthetic (a particular object that would not be easily guessed, for example, that they couldn't possibly have known about) when they were floating around. I think it is, just like NDEs, a function of the brain that we do not understand. The other lot take it at face value however.

[FightTheFuture]

Even after all the shows on the subject, it wasn't until I read this post that I realized people thought OBE's were something other than a creation of the mind.  I knew mine were simply that (I had a handful as a kid).  I thought they were an interesting phenomenon that many experienced, but not physically real, so I must have breezed over that part during the interviews.

People think they are something other than a kind of interesting dream?

I can`t speak to OBE`s, but NDE`s seem to be somewhat similar. This is one of hundreds -- if not thousands -- documented by Dr. Habermas. It`s quite compelling.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7QtGQ0uT5A

[Mebee]

? ? ? ? ? (Question marks to be added for each sentence, even if it isn't a question)

Heh. Yeah, that too. I deal with the public and sometimes I tell a 12-year-old to ask me their question without using the word "LIKE". They are mostly unable to do so. They cannot speak for 10 seconds without "LIKE" coming out of their mouths. It's epidemic, sadly.

[SredniVashtar]

This could all change if we as individuals were to experience full waking consciousness, even for a moment.  But first we need to grow so dissatisfied with the state of our existence that we’re earnestly willing to entertain the possibility that we are not fully awake.  Honestly, and sadly, I see no sign of that happening.

Although there is a certain sense about trying to separate the thinker from the thoughts in meditation, if you start to think that this world we live in is just an inferior form of dream state then you are going to run into all sorts of problems. People who decry logic aren't usually shy about enjoying the benefits of it, which we see all around us. If you start to believe that we are all just dreams of the Godhead then what is the point of opposing evil, for example? Or trying to improve the world for yourself and those around you in a way that doesn't involve sitting on your ass going 'Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ'?

I think we ought to be able to distinguish between looking at the world critically and asking 'is this it all?', and believing the sort of fairy-tale claptrap that some people on here want us to hornswoggle us with.

[Lilith]

Just because someone doesn't buy what your selling, doesn't mean they don't respect you, or enjoy listening to you.  One mans truth, is another mans comedy.  That's what makes the world go round.  What a dull world it would be otherwise IMO.  Just throwing that out there, for what its worth.

[Meister_000]

Oh yes, they often claim to back this up by saying that they saw something while they were in hospital under anaesthetic (a particular object that would not be easily guessed, for example, that they couldn't possibly have known about) when they were floating around. I think it is, just like NDEs, a function of the brain that we do not understand. The other lot take it at face value however.

And what's more, many of "the other lot" believe that they can "train" themselves to recognize when they are "having" an OBE, and then elect to control and travel "at will" to virtually any physical destination of choice, and either observe or perform "works" whilst so journrying. And "you can too", if only you'd, believe, apply yourself, and take my DVD course, of course.

[SredniVashtar]

Some people take comfort from Catholicism or Astrology or metaphysics in general, therefore it's worthwhile from a human point of view.

That sort of Consequentialism doesn't work. You could defend human sacrifice on that basis by saying it gave comfort to the Aztecs. I have never been convinced that telling lies - however well-intentioned - is defensible. That's religions biggest crutch and someone ought to have kicked it away by now.

[Lilith]

That sort of Consequentialism doesn't work. You could defend human sacrifice on that basis by saying it gave comfort to the Aztecs. I have never been convinced that telling lies - however well-intentioned - is defensible. That's religions biggest crutch and someone ought to have kicked it away by now.

I think SiFiAuthor, is trying to say that its their crutch. Without it they would fall into despair.  Sadly, I fear this to be true.  Worse than any drug IMO, in many ways, including withdrawal.

[SredniVashtar]

And what's more, many of "the other lot" believe that they can "train" themselves to recognize when they are "having" an OBE, and then elect to control and travel "at will" to virtually any physical destination of choice, and either observe or perform "works" whilst so journrying. And "you can too", if only you'd, believe, apply yourself, and take my DVD course, of course.

I haven't yet managed to train myself to recognise an OBE, but I have managed to train myself to spot being baffled by bullshit from a bunch of woolly-headed crystal slingers.