Acceptance Of Belief

To anyone who believes in a hereafter, I ask the following. You are confident that, if you travel west across the Atlantic, then you will arrive in North or South America. Can you be equally confident that, after death, you will find yourself in some particular version of a hereafter? How can you be certain? If you merely believe what you have been brought up to believe, then consider the fact that many other people have been brought up to accept very different beliefs. How can you be certain that, of all these different beliefs, the one that you have been brought up to accept just happens to be the one that is true if indeed any of them is? 

The One, Part Two

Molecular motion causes fluidity.

Molecular cohesion causes solidity.

Neural interactions cause consciousness.

These effects are properties, not discrete objects.

"We know consciousness by being conscious" means that subjects of consciousness are conscious of consciousness by being conscious.

"We observe conscious behaviour" means that subjects of consciousness are conscious of the behaviour of other subjects of consciousness.

Thus, consciousness is irreducible.

Any newly discovered cellular, molecular or subatomic process is objective.

An objective process is neither subjective nor intermediate between objectivity and subjectivity.

Empirical observation is consciousness, not an object of it.

Subjects empirically observe objects but not consciousness.

A spirit would be an invisible subject, thus a subject but not an object.

The One is a mostly invisible subject and its own object.

To be an object, the One must become partly visible or audible, tangible etc.

My House Of Lords

When I spontaneously say or pray "Oh, Lord...," Whom or What do I address?

First, the source of all things. I do not think that it can be a person but it set everything and everyone else in motion.

Secondly, Indra whom the Buddha would have known as the chief god of the Vedic pantheon.

Thirdly, Krishna who taught Arjuna karma yoga on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

Fourthly, the Buddha who taught meditation.

Fifthly, Vishnu whose avatars include Krishna and the Buddha.

Sixthly, the early Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom, not the later Jesus who let Peter convince him that he was the Messiah, then interpreted the Messiah as the Suffering Servant.

Three Kinds Of Trotskyism

Orthodox Trotskyism inside the Labour Party.

Orthodox Trotskyism outside the Labour Party.

Unorthodox Trotskyism outside the Labour Party.

When the first group was expelled from the Labour Party, some of its members remained inside but have more recently come out. Thus, there is an apparently new group in Universities and on the streets but this is its history. This probably means little to most of the few people that read it but, while we are here and to express a personal opinion, I advise anyone who is interested to give some consideration to unorthodox Trotskyism. 

The One (revised; then expanded and further revised)

(This post has been endlessly revised to try to get it right.)

Reality is differentiated and dynamic.  (Or: The single reality is neither homogeneous nor static but internally differentiated and dynamic.)

Scientific cosmogony replaces creation myths.

A quantum fluctuation in a vacuum released rapidly expanding energy.

Expanding hydrogen and helium gravitationally condensed into stars.

Stars fused heavier elements.

Stellar explosions dispersed heavier elements through space. 

Heavier elements entered later stars and planets.

Energized complex molecules changed randomly.

One molecule became self-replicating.

Self-replication, mutation and natural selection generated multi-cellular organisms.

Organisms were selected for sensitivity to environmental alterations.

Quantitatively increasing sensitivity qualitatively changed into conscious sensation.

Complex brains transformed bodily sensations into perceptions of discrete objects.

Cooperative manipulation of environments generated speech.

Speech is internalized as thought.

Linguistic interaction generates individual self-consciousness.

Names individuate children.

The One becomes conscious of Itself by appearing to Itself as other and many.

The single continuous reality perceives Itself as many organisms and their environment.

Self-preservation and species propagation impede realization of oneness.

However, realization requires consciousness which requires organisms. 

Human beings can both conceptualize and realize oneness.

The One is present in every particle but conscious only in organisms with central nervous systems.

It knows Itself as animals and human beings but not in any pre-, trans- or post-cosmic state.

Its internal relationships are spatiotemporal and physical or psychophysical.

Levels of consciousness are sensation, perception, thought, self-consciousness and realization.

Gods are personified natural and social forces.

"God" is unified personified external forces.

Science de-personifies reality.

Events are instances of laws which are instances of more general laws.

Scientists cannot explain the most general laws.

They observe consensually objective properties and processes.

Objectivity is abstracted from concrete experience.

Concrete experience is individual and subjective.

Empirically observable phenomena are objective.

We know consciousness by being conscious and by recognizing conscious behaviour.

But we do not observe consciousness.

Scientists detect only neuronic causes of consciousness.

Even a sub-atomic or quantum mechanical cause would not be identical with its effect.

Therefore, consciousness cannot be defined as anything observable.

But definitions of consciousness as synonyms like "awareness," "experience" etc are tautologous.

Therefore, consciousness is indefinable.

Mobile marine organisms became conscious because pleasure and pain have survival value and because the qualitative transformation of unconscious sensitivity into conscious sensation was possible.

Sensation is conscious sensitivity.

Unobservable levels of consciousness are non-empirical properties of organisms, not of "souls."

"Soul" is objectified subjectivity.

Objective organisms generate subjectivity by becoming subjects.

Every subjective experience is unique.

However, aspects of experience can be compared and classified.

Thus, numinous experience is of an awesome presence.

Mystical experience is of inner oneness.

Visionary experience is of projected visions.

Experiences are interpreted either theistically or non-theistically

Theists personify ultimate reality.

Persons are self-conscious individuals.

Self is recognized as such only by contrast with other.

Therefore, the One incorporates all persons but is not Itself a person.

It is "God" as the object of numinous and mystical experience but not as a transcendent person.

The One imagines that It is us.

We imagine the gods.

They are in us.

We are in It.

All is One.

(This much revised version is more succinct. See here.)

Subjectivity

 A psychophysical organism is s conscious material object.

Therefore, it is both a subject and an object of consciousness.

Consciousness generates the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity.

Rising temperature is objective.

Feeling hotter is subjective.

Consciousness is a property of a psychophysical organism.

Therefore, it is not an independent substance.

"Soul" is objectified subjectivity.

The Universe And Consciousness

The universe becomes conscious of itself through psychophysical organisms.

Every conscious organism is both an individual self and the universal self.

Human beings usually identify with the organism or with a self-image but not with the universe.

Thus, the universe becomes conscious of itself but does not realize itself.