Post by April Johnson on Jun 8, 2015 21:07:30 GMT
Why is Faqir Chand's experiences important in understanding the projective nature of religious visions and miracles?
In the book The Unknowing Sage, it states “The visions are only because of the impressions and suggestions that a disciple has already accepted in the mind. These impressions and suggestions appear to him like a dream. No body comes from without. This is the plant truth” –Baba Faqir Chand. The idea behind this is that religious visions and miracles are tricks of the mind so to speak. People who report having religious visions usually are having a vision that either confirms their own beliefs, or is related to something they have recently seen or heard. I have not read or heard of any case of a person who has no idea who Jesus is, reporting to have seen Jesus during a religious vision. If there were only one true spiritual realm, you would expect all religious visions to include the same religious notions.
A good example of this would be the prevalence of near death experiences. The only thing we know for sure about all people who report NDE is that they did not die. In the book The Cerebral Mirage it states “It may well be that whenever the body-brain is under severe stress (such as when one has a heart attack or is in a car accident), consciousness elicits an ultimatum package of pattered meanings, draw specifically from one’s own unique biographical/psychological history, to encourage one to live and resists dying”. In a Darwinian since, this would be an amazing survival tactic. That your own brain would trick you into believing that there was some deeper meaning, cause, purpose, or reward for you to keep on living and not die.
What is meant by the phrase, "philosophy done well is science; philosophy done poorly remains philosophy."
When philosophy can be tested and proven, then it is science done well. Without that ideas remain philosophy. Eliminative materialism has led to the expansion of scientific views of mystical or mythical views of the world that we live in today. In the book Matter vs Spirit it says “if the phenomena cannot be explained fully and comprehensively by mathematics, then one turns to physics, and if that too is incomplete, then to chemistry, then to biology, then to psychology, then to sociology, etc. The old joke is that if none of these academic disciplines can explain it then it is perfectly okay to say, ‘Well, God did it.”
In the book The Unknowing Sage, it states “The visions are only because of the impressions and suggestions that a disciple has already accepted in the mind. These impressions and suggestions appear to him like a dream. No body comes from without. This is the plant truth” –Baba Faqir Chand. The idea behind this is that religious visions and miracles are tricks of the mind so to speak. People who report having religious visions usually are having a vision that either confirms their own beliefs, or is related to something they have recently seen or heard. I have not read or heard of any case of a person who has no idea who Jesus is, reporting to have seen Jesus during a religious vision. If there were only one true spiritual realm, you would expect all religious visions to include the same religious notions.
A good example of this would be the prevalence of near death experiences. The only thing we know for sure about all people who report NDE is that they did not die. In the book The Cerebral Mirage it states “It may well be that whenever the body-brain is under severe stress (such as when one has a heart attack or is in a car accident), consciousness elicits an ultimatum package of pattered meanings, draw specifically from one’s own unique biographical/psychological history, to encourage one to live and resists dying”. In a Darwinian since, this would be an amazing survival tactic. That your own brain would trick you into believing that there was some deeper meaning, cause, purpose, or reward for you to keep on living and not die.
What is meant by the phrase, "philosophy done well is science; philosophy done poorly remains philosophy."
When philosophy can be tested and proven, then it is science done well. Without that ideas remain philosophy. Eliminative materialism has led to the expansion of scientific views of mystical or mythical views of the world that we live in today. In the book Matter vs Spirit it says “if the phenomena cannot be explained fully and comprehensively by mathematics, then one turns to physics, and if that too is incomplete, then to chemistry, then to biology, then to psychology, then to sociology, etc. The old joke is that if none of these academic disciplines can explain it then it is perfectly okay to say, ‘Well, God did it.”