--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't think this is what Sam is challenging. He is one > of the few skeptics who validates transcendent experiences. > The experience is real, and he has had them too. What he > is challenging is what people conclude after the experience > involving what the experience "means".
Bingo. The experience itself is transcendent, indescribable (if it *is* describable, it cannot be classed as 'transcendent' in the sense in which MMY uses the term). But how do you *interpret* that indescribable experience and *describe* it mentally and in words after the fact? There is a great deal of evidence within the study of the history of religions and spirituality that we ascribe 'meaning' to such experiences *as we have been taught to*. Very, very few approach such experiences (or interpret them later) with what Harris calls a "clean glass." > Experiencing the feeling of being one with the universe > doesn't give anyone the epistemological authority to claim > that they "know" that Jesus died for their sins, or that > the Vedic recitations contain the blueprint of creation. Actually, it does. In the sense that subjective experience is pretty much All We've Got in this domain. They have the "authority" to 'take a stand' (which is what epistemology means) as to what their experiences "mean" to them; that's a matter of personal belief. It's just that they do not have the authority to declare those beliefs cosmic truth and impose them on others *as* cosmic truth. The exception to my last sentence above is...uh... pretty much all of human history. People in every age and every culture have *given* themselves the authority to declare their beliefs cosmic truth and impose those beliefs on others. That is precisely why it is so difficult to approach one's *own* subjective experiences with a "clean glass" -- we've been forced to drink from Other People's Glasses since the day we were born. > He is advocating that we start our inquiry into the study > of human consciousness with humility rather then as a "knower > of complete knowledge." That we know the differences between > what we "know" and what we have decided to believe from stuff > we have heard or read, or even imposed onto our abstract > experiences as their meaning. A noble quest. If it were so, the study of the history of religion and spirituality probably wouldn't be so synonymous with the history of oppression and war. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Nelson" <nelsonriddle2001@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "coshlnx" <coshlnx@> wrote: > > > > > > http://www.tinyurl.com/38mf3l > > > > ++ It is not logical to say something is not so just > > because you have not expierienced it. N. To follow up on what I said on this earlier, I don't believe that "logic" has anything to do with it. I'm a *huge* fan of subjective experience and basing one's beliefs and assumptions about life on it. I personally go so far as to trust my subjective experience more than the theories about it or interpretations of it from any external authority. *Any* external authority. However, I do not for a moment call my beliefs "truth." I don't even know if they're true. And I probably never will. They are just what this particular self chooses to believe at a particular moment in time. They may change tomorrow, or sooner. They have done so so many times that I'm no longer particularly attached to the beliefs. They're just things that come and go, like leaves blowing by on the winds of autumn. You enjoy the leaves as they pass, but they *do* pass. So what's to be attached to? Having such an attitude towards my personal beliefs -- that they come and go and that I have no way of declaring any of these transitory beliefs "truth" -- is in a way a *reliance* on humility. To declare any of them some kind of eternal, cosmic truth would be the opposite of humility.
