SP5 - Phillips Comments to Bruce and Eric

As I said privately this A.M. to both of you via E-mail - TCI is starting to bring something new to the internet - possibly.

And, I'd like to respond to both of your feedbacks and continuations of the `discussion'. Eric first.

Thank you for your respective comments. Research in parapsychology opens many philosophical doors, and it would take quite a while to do a complete tour of them, as C.D. Broad noted many years ago.

Lots to say even with this brief opening snippet - first, indeed, TCI WILL be respectful to each writers points of view and no one ever needs to be defensive as NONE of us have the `answers'. Next, and, that said, I do indeed believe that the research into parapsychology - especially if we consider Radin and Rhine - do give `number proof' beyond any possible refute (other than the Trickster perhaps) to thinking humans. And, because of that - indeed - a whole can of philosophical worms is opened. Worms that can't be put back in and that have no home.

Bruce touched on the question of eternity, a concept that we can described but that we cannot fully comprehend. The potential cyclical, or self-referential, nature of reality is a way for us to make this more comprehensible by removing the linearity of time. Although this is something foreign to our mundane experience, a phenomenon like pre-cognition is also as old as shamanism, the first mystical system on Earth. Mystical experience was and is also part of mundane experience, except for us, children of the Enlightenment

Holy Mackerel - where to begin with my Phenomenology instincts --- Eternity -- to me - as crazy as this may sound - the bigger question - which is only asked indirectly and always about God - is - `How Could Time Have Ever Begun'? --- And, believe it or not, in a similar state to the Phenomenology that came to me in the mid 70's - to me - the answer to the Time question  - CAME to me in an altered state - my answer in the 70's was. `The limitation of Space Gives Time.'

Now this `TLOSGT' answer - may also apply to `eternity' - indeed, it may also just be the `result' of `starting it' to begin with. Meaning, the `time' bulb - never goes out. (as long as matter exists in some positive energy state) - time - to me - is a `quality' of space. (much like color is a quality) (BTW - have either of you ever heard something that I only seem to have heard once or twice before the internet age and haven't found since - that being - was the color BLUE ever mentioned in ancient times - meaning the earliest writings?)

I also enjoyed, what I assume, to be sarcasm talking of us as Children of the Enlightenment - and - not to be `funny' but - I think mankinds consciousness level is virtually unchanged from the Roman Lions eating people days OR - from pre-history of very ancient times. That's just my opinion, of course.

and the Trickster is about the ones related to misbehaviour when we BS ourselves, coming in the form of slip of tongue for instance.
Although the Enlightenment brought many good and useful things, it also pushed away the mystical component of the human experience, and it is in this context that the paranormal plays the role of the Trickster, at the social level. In spite of our best efforts to create a rational world, “annoying” and “surprising” events like pre-cognition keep tricking us and reminding us of the mystical realm that we collectively, but unconsciously, know to be central to the human experience.

To me, I'd have to parcel this and not really agree (or disagree, really) - as to me - the slip of the tongue does not need such a reason - and my personal opinion on human's `lost' mystical element is only partly true - to me. I will admit that it is more likely that the mind of the majority of humans when living day to day was a real issue and it was survival of the fittest - might have had more internal silence while also having flights of fantasy that we can only imagine - and, if that is one definition of Mystical - I can agree. That said, somehow, I doubt they had any great PK powers or frankly even mind reading. I guess it is the skeptic in me. Perhaps it is that I find the descriptions of some drug states to be of comparable modes of understandings.
That said, I can see that we seemingly, as humans, have a built in advantage compared to other creatures to dominate the planet - and perhaps that is a `meaning' we all share in comparison to `the vastness' that we are able to comprehend.

Rick, for his part, opened a number of philosophical doors, from Kant to Husserl to Sartre. They share this notion that reality is what we are making of it, with the means available to us (once again, none of them ever implied that reality is totally plastic, far from it).

Agreed. The `matter', the `space', we `see', is THERE.

The strength of phenomenology, in my opinion, is that it is capable to listen to the Trickster because it accepts that the symbolic meanings we attribute to reality have “a life of their own,” i.e. meanings evolve over time and so our understanding of reality.

Respectfully, I have a different line of thought. To me, phenomenology permits a concrete view of the process of actualization - be it of the reality we see - the reality we remember - or a imagination reality of fantasy on rare occasion. To me, it would/could even fill the void of a meditative state too with structure. (or is that the reality of fantasy). Phenomenology would also apply to the external phenomenology we share with other spaces in our common now of perception. (Perception not limited, agreed, to only our local sensory data.)

Now, interestingly, I AGREE that it is these symbolic meanings (of the very definition of space and time) that have lives of their own - indeed, these `lives' directly relate to the actualization's I mentioned above (at least in my own Phillips Phenomenology - pp). That said, I don't think the core definitions evolve - but - the perceptions of those within the timecone - perhaps.

How we define psi, the central concept of the discipline, will have a direct impact on what we see as psi effects

True IMO - and could account for ranges of perception structures.

The case of the parapsychological neglect of UFOs is one of the most ostentatious illustrations. (I would go as far as saying that the limited progress in 60-plus years of ufology is in great part due to this unwillingness to consider UFOs as psi effects, in spite of the Trickster archetype being identified, indirectly, in the writings of people like Vallée and Keel).

Don't you dare bring up UFO's in this manner - LOL. Remember the worms.

The main difference was that the participants were fully aware that they were the ones producing the effect, not any non-human entity.

Thanks for describing the Philip experiment - I do remember reading about it, probably a few times -- THAT said, I have a different take --- it was the intentionality's of the participants which DID evoke a real non-human `space' to occur. (I'm all about spaces Eric - you will find.)

What they showed is that collective psi is real and empirically demonstrable, and they also showed own a collective unconscious can be created, a necessary component for such psi effects to occur.

Does this mean your opinion would be that the Noosphere `events' are `collective unconscious'?

(Three weeks till the Noosphere is the seed post.)

Eric, thanks for the stimulating thoughts.

========== I'm mentally played, I'll get to Bruce next post ---