Okay, I'm not going to turn this blog into competition for the esteemed Professor Hex. But even though I like to fancy myself a curmudgeon and a rationalist, I just read a story that I found boggling and baffling. This story is as uncanny as Dick Cheney's sneer and as unnerving as a landlord's knock on the door. And here it is.
If you are one of those science-minded harrumphers (a category in which I usually place myself), I beg you to step in and try to harrumph away this tale. Right now, I could use some nice, calming harrumphing.
More weirdness: We have a new Mary Celeste.
Still more weirdness: We have new evidence in the Maury Island mystery.
I actually met a couple of the individuals named in this lengthy account of that classic enigma. And I used to know people who knew Michael Riconosciuto, a bizarre blowhard who seems to operate in that strange realm where spooks and con artists overlap. Indeed, I was probably the first writer to reject Mikey as the source for a story -- and this was well before Danny Casolaro got himself killed.
Boy, that stuff takes me back. One of these days I'll tell you about it...
16 comments:
as for the past life story, although amazing, i think you're going to find that as science understands more and more about time, quantum activity and the nature of consciousness, these things will eventually be understood, if not commonly experienced. (there may be a percentage of humans with these abilities, just as there is a percentage with talents for languages, or arts, for instance. or a percentage who have certain biological "disorders".) past life? perhaps. but what about a conscious connection across time/space with another's consciousness? how do remote viewers and psychics "tune in" to the emotional bodies of other people in their own timeline? i'm sure there are also other explanations. the explanation for "past life" could be something altogether different than what is currently considered. (and, it may even not be "past".) there is a wealth of scientific experimentation and theory that can be considered by way of explaining the strange. doesn't make it any less amazing, of course.
i guess what i'm saying is that you may remain rational without denying the existence of the amazing or even the mysterious.
thanks for the opportunity to think about these things.
Science is just a type of religious ideology. Most of its fanatical believers can't justify their faith in it. They just mumble something about 'facts', or how it's about 'not fooling yourself'. Yeah, right.
Anyone who thinks the reigning take on things today is more 'rational' than it was, say 500 years ago, or whatever - well, I despair of them.
It also functions as the ideology of the middle ranks of the social hierarchy. The thought of a guy who gets a multiple of the average income in the region where he lives, but at the end of the day, ain't got much influence. The mid-level company man. The organisation man, with the impoverished view of the world (i.e., really, of society) with which he sustains himself in his meaningless existence.
Don't get the idea the top guys believe in it. Everyone knows they surround themselves with astrologers and so on. Look at the wacky symbols they use on banknotes, in company logos, at State rituals, etc. etc. etc.
As a subfunction, it helps the mid-level types to feel cocky when they look down on the 'superstitions' of the lower orders.
Just consider how stuff gets into medical journals and tell me medics are rational, for instance. Rational, my arse.
Not that I am calling for rationalism.
They don't like the idea that people beneath them have subconscious as well as conscious parts of their minds.
Nor do they like recognising the same about themselves. Maybe with the exception of when they go to whores dressed up as nurses or whatever.
Moreover, the very idea that 'history' is about competing ideologies, or some sort of dance of ideologies, is nonsense anyway. Science is really ancient religion gone even crazier. Gone money-mad, because that's what it's all about essentially.
Me, sure I'm superstitious. Most people are. Long live the oral tradition.
This child mentioned in the article is experiencing retrocognitive clairvoyance. Why? I don't know.
I certainly don't go for the 'past life', i.e. reincarnation idea. It's just too clear why rulers have encouraged this deeply reactionary idea throughout the ages in much of the world.
(Aside: many young people in Tibet welcomed the Chinese invasion because they were fed up living under the boot of the monkarchy).
Clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition - they're all common human experiences, and I doubt that anyone reading this hasn't experienced them...
b
three cheers for b in the previous post.
sigh once for science and all its dogmas..Aieeeee.."man somehow accidentally fell out of the apetree and in so doing jarred some wires haphazardly and became what we are surrounded wuth today in cities and in bored rooms".
Science and religion are both cleaver word games that cannot explain our existence, as black holes crash into our vapid computerlike heads.
Inside each of us are those same black holes
(Hermes says "as above so below" a simple axiom that needs to be drilled into each and every head until it becomes an active operative principle)
these so called black holes permeate our material substance, so once you learn to dive deep enough internally, in the present moment only, you will discover who you really are not what science nor religion can comprehend.
Your true self..the elf within..is found only in the present moment..vertical to the time/space thingy. It is sometimes called awareness..sometimes consciousness..sometimes your spirit, sometimes the field, and more accurately "the light".
As an old chinaman once said
"Everything will be all light"
Look up! the sun shares itself..the sun shares its elf.. for free.
interestingly enough, this sort of story is not that uncommon in india. in fact, it provides the criterion for selections of tibetan lamas, as most of you likely know. (and b, your notions that 'many' were glad to be rid of the old rule is highly overstated; moreover,....)
making distinctions between time/space and the past, reincarnation and 'retrocognitive clairvoyance' (as if THAT needs no further explanation!!) is really just a semantics game, exposing the myriad metaphors and lenses through which we can (only) speak about and view reality, like indra's pearls.
but i would caution all against extreme skepticism of science - not the organization but the enterprise and effort, the scientific method, and its place in an observable evolution of human mind - as it is an essential step along the path to return.
for after all, that capacity to find and enter those black holes in each atom, to experience awareness or consciousness or light (what the hell ever), one must actually push the empiricism to its logical end: forget about history's rules and someone else's facts; trust only in this moment your own experience of your own sensations. through this effort, all dogmas are dropped, and the mind becomes open to the only 'ultimate truth,' the unified field reality, the final 'theory of everything': everything changes.
anica.
joe's posting of this fascinating story inspires me to submit something on the points made here by commenters, and what such realizations might mean for how we deal with all the 'facts' and 'truths' we seek and post here. hopefully i can get to that in the next few days. so please stay tuned....
On Maury Island: if they were looking for a piece of the alleged saucer, I believe that Ray Palmer, Jr. has a piece of it still, and will sell it for the right price.
sofla said...
The bizarre and unconventional reincarnation hypothesis is unnecessary, as we can posit the bizarre and unconventional quantum entanglement, Bell's theorem, Akashic records hypotheses as alternative explanations.
When my son was not quite 2 years old he said to me, "Mama, when I was a big man and you were a little girl, I was your Grandaddy, and I used to take you to the park and give you quarters." That was all he could/woud say about it. The thing was, my Grandaddy did do those things, and my son had never so much as seen a picture of him at that point.
sofia, reincarnation is neither bizarre nor unconventional, which are both relative terms. the concept is as ancient as humanity, and remains quite alive in the indian subcontinent and elsewhere. i wrote a paper years ago on the evidence of the doctrine in the old testament.
moreover, it's no more - or less - unnecessary than akashic records (which actually speak directly to reincarnation), Bell's theorem, or quantum entanglement.
each is a metaphor that gives us one angle on the phenomenon, which, by any other name, would still occur.
thanks for your story, laura; it's wonderful!
We now have 2 tramps accounted for. Who is the third tramp?!!
Hi Dr E,
you say:
"making distinctions between time/space and the past, reincarnation and 'retrocognitive clairvoyance' (as if THAT needs no further explanation!!) is really just a semantics game"
Passing quickly over the irony of the fact that recently in the comments here I was accused of a similar thing ('intellect running amuck') by a Christian contributor...
...I hardly implied that I thought retrocognitive clairvoyance needed no further explanation :-) Indeed I asked 'why?' and said 'I don't know'. I didn't mean there wasn't a good answer somewhere.
A start can be made by pulling together some concepts describing features of the overall area, or at least trying to.
Like telepathy and precognition, retrocognitive clairvoyance, i.e. picking psychically up on past feelings or events, is something most of us have consciously experienced. E.g. going to a room and picking up on a feeling. And probably all of us have experienced it whether consciously or not.
I thought 'retrocognitive clairvoyance' was a neutral term we could all, or most of us, accept.
'Reincarnation' is an interpretation thereof - an utterly false one, in my opinion. I think to put the two concepts on the same level is to be heading towards category-error territory.
It's one of those ideas like 'natural hierarchical order', the origins and functions of which are very clear. The selection of kids for grabbing and heavy-duty indoctrination by lamas operates within the overall meaning, which boils down to 'the hierarchy and existing landownership and production system will always be with us'. It's not surprising that reactionary celibate monk-priests obsessed with the naturalness and longevity of their hierarchy, have some sort of system for taking kids. Nor that they find the idea of reincarnation useful. Buddhism is...a religion.
Some Buddhists talk about religion without God. I find the idea of God without religion, God as the poor in struggle, to be much more preferable!
Now I've probably upset everybody, so...sincere good vibes to everyone who's reading this :-)
b
b, the whole notion of a category error is relative. so to say that reincarnation is such continues to beg the question....
a friend of mine tried to pass off my skills with astrology as my being psychic, which to me sounds very similar to what you're trying to say here. either way, you still have to explain what you're replacing reincarnation with. and you can't; the phenomenon occurs outside the normal, 'conventional' parameters of our existence and so will not submit to empirical investigation. so all we're left with are these semantics. you say tomahto, i say tomato.
we're also left with the circumstantial evidence presented in the article joe linked to, james 3. though you may feel the child was 'merely' psychic or clairvoyant, but you must then explain why THIS individual, and apparently nothing else. these sorts of stories are at least compelling, if not proof in the scientific sense.
you may feel it somehow cruel or weird that the tibetans take this handful of young boys to maintain their tradition. that's fine, but i would ask you to consider first that you clearly know nothing of life in their part of the world or of their culture. i highly suggest you read some thurman before you pass judgment. their tradition is simply different from what is familiar to you; walk in their shoes before you judge. just how horrible can that 'indoctrination' be for it to produce an individual as dedicated and wise and kind as the current dalai lama? for my money, the results seem far superior to what our culture has wrought.
the actual buddhist teaching you reference is not really that it's religion without god; it is conscious life without god OR religion. living in that state, there is desire is actively minimized, so 'poverty' is the natural state.
yes, one can live in poverty without desire, and without suffering. much harder to live outside poverty, in wealth, without desire or suffering. this is why every wise man who ever walked the earth followed the sage advice of the carpenter: give up your things and your burdens and follow.
b, you have not ticked me off (don't know about anyone else), but you do risk that reaction from some when you speak with such confidence about cultures you have not lived in, and about the beliefs of others regarding things that can never be proven in our empirical world. these matters are best left with respect and compassion.
You're losing me. Does classing the 'notion' of category error as relative or absolute get us anywhere? If we accept all the alleged facts of the story, they do not point to reincarnation. There are many psychic manifestations or realities or relations which I cannot explain.
'A friend of mine tried to pass off my skills with astrology as my being psychic, which to me sounds very similar to what you're trying to say here.'
Maybe they are. I don't know. Surely they aren't purely analytical? What is?
'either way, you still have to explain what you're replacing reincarnation with. and you can't;'
Why should I accept what other people believe, just because I can't prove an alternative? I said I wasn't a rationalist :-)
One thing I can explain is why these stories are most common in cultural conditions where opinion formers instil mass belief in reincarnation.
Similarly, apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary are more common in Ireland than in Denmark.
the phenomenon occurs outside the normal, 'conventional' parameters of our existence and so will not submit to empirical investigation. so all we're left with are these semantics. you say tomahto, i say tomato.
I accept that only up to a point :-)
'you may feel it somehow cruel or weird that the tibetans take this handful of young boys to maintain their tradition. that's fine, but i would ask you to consider first that you clearly know nothing of life in their part of the world or of their culture.'
Not weird - cruel and exploitative, done by people who have a crazy, arrogant, and extreme belief in their right to get their own way.
How many times do they actually fail to 'find' the lama's new incarnation?
You must think that what I said was ignorant somehow... But how?
Thurman is a Buddhist propagandist. I will not suggest that you read some neocreationism before you pass judgement on it, or for that matter the autobiography of the Buddhist dictator Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Kalmykia.
Like I said, I'm not into all this clash of ideologies stuff. Useful ideas come from proletarian reflection.
There's only one humanity. There's only one truth. No religious leader or hierarch anywhere has an interest in laying bare these things. Such a laying bare conflicts with their material interests.
walk in their shoes before you judge.
Who always does that before they judge something?
just how horrible can that 'indoctrination' be for it to produce an individual as dedicated and wise and kind as the current dalai lama?
He is a US/Chinese stooge. His hotel bill for a day probably amounts to a year's average wage in Tibet. He is also a guy of so little ethical fibre that when he came to Britain he ate a bacon sandwich with the Archbishop of Canterbury. What a hypocrite. Just as big a hypocrite as Mahatma Gandhi or Joseph Ratzinger.
'for my money, the results seem far superior to what our culture has wrought.'
I don't support either of them, nor do I consider there to be a big contradiction between them.
'the actual buddhist teaching you reference is not really that it's religion without god; it is conscious life without god OR religion.'
living in that state, there is desire is actively minimized, so 'poverty' is the natural state.
Which might make more sense if one recites mantras rather than thinking.
Poverty is enforced by privative appropriation.
Who are these hierarchs who tell people what is natural?
The 'me' obsession of Buddhism, wrapped in all the schizoid clothes that it is (who DOES the 'losing' of the 'self'?) fits in very well with the me-ism of Amerika - not just in California - and the west.
The idea of 'compassion' hardly sits well with the reactionary and anti-poor idea of 'karma', e.g. that the disabled and victims of large-scale tragedies had it coming to them.
It doesn't matter how many bowls of soups the Buddhist rank and file hand out in western cities. Good that they do, because people need soup. However, the vile idea of karma is deeply anti-compassion. And anyway the notion of compassion itself, the way it is constructed, functions to obscure social realities.
b, you have not ticked me off (don't know about anyone else), but you do risk that reaction from some when you speak with such confidence about cultures you have not lived in, and about the beliefs of others regarding things that can never be proven in our empirical world. these matters are best left with respect and compassion.
There is the trap of inverted racism. I have no respect or compassion for any hierarchy. I certainly don't respect something just because people who believe in it mostly eat different food or wear different clothes from me, or have a different skin hue.
The thing about everyone being 'who they are' in terms of 'their own' identity and culture, is just so Amerikan! :-)
b - race traitor, culture traitor, and proud! :-)
b, your rantings veer so far afield of anything resembling the 'truth' of what you rant against, it's impossible to know where to begin.
so i'll just begin and end with this one: you condemn the dalai lama for eating meat, exposing your ignorance (one of many, it appears) of the fact that tibetan buddhists are not really in a position to adhere to a vegan diet. the thought is laughable (in fact, he laughs at it, so he is not a hypocrite); what grows at 16000 feet???
from the tone and text of your arguments, it appears you don't respect anything or anyone, and have no compassion, either, while seeming to claim a hold on THE truth that no one else even approaches.
so please help me understand why, exactly, anyone would engage in argument or even discourse with you?
Guys, this has been an interesting discussion, but I really don't want there to be any more arguments here about reincarnation. Save it for the next life.
Well, I'll add this : I've always had a soft spot for the Gnostics, many of whom -- as you probably gnow -- believed in reincarnation. The Cathars felt that this world was Hell, so to be reincarnated is to be damned.
Thus, in their view, reincarnation is real, and it STINKS.
The RCs just deep-sixed my personal fave among proposed afterlifes: Limbo.
I mean, what are the alternatives? Heaven strikes many people as being a bit dull. And as for Hell -- well, the Devil gets all the best tunes, so the music's probably cool, but I understand that the smell is TERRIBLE. As mentioned above, reincarnation means dealing once more with THIS lousy planet -- at some future point when things will no doubt be even WORSE.
(Can we be reincarnated into the past? Dibs on Mahler or Colonel Josh Chamberlain!)
When you think about it, the best eternity yet conceived by the mind of man is Limbo. And all you have to do to get there is to stay unbaptized and remain an infant, which I have managed to do. At heart. "At heart" is what counts.
I'll betcha that Mel Gibson's breakaway Catholic Church still recognizes Limbo. Mel...! Forgive me for everything I ever said about ya, big guy! I want IN!!
You keep calling me ignorant, Dr E. I think you'd do well to look at why you are well-disposed towards Buddhism, which I doubt is wholly because you know something about it, whereas those who take a different approach don't know as much as you do.
Perhaps you are not used to hearing criticisms of it.
Choosing to eat meat when there is an alternative (and this exiled, servant-attended moneybags was in London, where it is easy to get hold of vegetables, beans, lentils, etc. - even for someone who is spending most of his time pressing the flesh of the rich and powerful in pushing for a monarchist or crypto-monarchist restoration), at the same time as presenting himself as the personification of 'compassion', is obviously hypocritical.
The Dalai Lama is not poor. He is a rich operator whose use of this or that notion is expedient only. He is Shirley Maclean in robes and sandals.
Eating meat when you can choose not to is supporting suffering, pure and simple. It doesn't matter if the meat eater's uncle's auntie came from Tibet, Siberia, or anywhere else. Nor does it matter that they share genes with some people who may possibly have been in conditions where they had no choice - or may even still be in such conditions. He most certainly does have a choice.
He chooses to play a part in prolonging animal suffering. And like everyone else, he is responsible for the choices he makes. Saying he's a monarch or a living saint, or however these are said in the local language (or with individual words taken from said language for exotic and brand-building effect), is no defence.
I can criticise an individual's choices, and will do so, if I want. He doesn't get off the hook because he's Tibetan. That would be racist. Nor does female genital mutilation does become acceptable when it's done by someone from Sudan.
His fans write about him as if he were an actor who they believe in real life has the same personality characteristics as the characters he usually plays. What else is new? This perhaps goes some way to explaining why Buddhism does better in the US and western Europe than it does in eastern Europe or Africa.
What could have been an interesting and mutually respectful discussion about psychic matters was derailed into a slanging match about what we think of this celebrity figure.
It is irrelevant that he is Tibetan or has any other local identity - which, of course, in this case, it is in his financial interests to play up to, among his fanbase.
It is true, but again irrelevant, that a lot of meat is eaten in Tibet, a country this guy hardly spends a lot of time in.
Fortunately there appear to be a lot of people with real compassion in Tibet, because as vegetable consumption rises fast in that region (why didn't you check?), one assumes that meat consumption is falling.
Incidentally, to answer your question, potatoes, turnips and some kinds of cabbage have long been grown at that altitude; many edible fungi grow too; and people are increasingly using greenhouses to grow various kinds of vegetables and plants.
Meanwhile the exiled monarchist pretender of Tibet munches on dead pig in the company of an archbishop probably just back from blessing the army barracks of the west. Give me a break!!
Do you want the Habsburgs to get the Hofburg Palace back too? :-)
b
PS To complicate matters, there are Buddhists who would be as rude about the Dalai Lama as I am (!). I have encountered some in that category in the New Kadampa Tradition. But this isn't the point.
Sorry Joe, I didn't read your post before I posted the above. It's your blog, and I want to continue to post here, on the numerous topics on which most commenters and yourself have a broadly similar take - so I'll shut up about this topic now.
b
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