Religion/Spirituality 101

I’ve been wanting to say something about religion for awhile but I’ve been reluctant to do so because I just don’t know enough about the topic and am sure to expose my ignorance of it if I do, but at the same time I do think I know something about religion which many people don’t, though that is changing fast, so let’s have a go at it shall we.

To many westerners religion has something to do with unverifiable facts about the nature of this and other worlds, it’s about blind faith in God and eternal damnation if you don’t, and something called Buddhism with something called enlightenment which seams to have nothing to do with western religions.

Though there is some truth to some of these statements I don’t think it is a very informed view of the matter, so let’s start with the basics.

In all major languages we have something called pronouns, 1st person (I), 2nd person (We) and 3rd person (It), the reason for this is that language has adapted to express very real dimensions of reality and our being, philosophers call these three dimensions The Beautiful (I), The Good (We) and The True (It)

“I” deals with self, self-expression, art, beauty, etc. “We” deals with how we can treat each other, justice, decency, honesty, respect, etc or “The Good”. “It” deals with objective truth which is dealt with by science.

“I” and “We” are internal realities of the individual and the collective, and are therefor subjective realities, subjective and intersubjective, while “It” is objective reality, we also talk about interobjective but we’ll leave that out for now.

First there was the premodern world, here is where all the major religions where created and here is a major point about religion, religion deals with “The Beautiful”, the subjective reality of the individual (the kingdom of God is within you). So with Buddhists for example, they are the experts of the subjective world, they are not the experts of the objective or intersubjective, for how can they be? There was no way for them to know about atoms or DNA, the premodern world therefor excelled in internal reality studies.

Then came modernity, and out of that, science which ruthlessly denied internal reality and premodernity and made “It” absolute and then postmodernity which denied modernity, said we are all slaves to our cultural conditioning, there is no absolute truth (no one objective truth), “you believe your thing and I believe my thing, you do your thing and I’ll do my thing”.

What’s happening here is that modernity is denying an essential part of reality and same with postmodernity, while the reality of the matter is premodern, modern and postmodern are all explaining different dimensions of reality, The Beautiful, The Good and The True, The Big 3, each has a partial truth, not the whole truth, which language has so neatly adapted to. What we want to do here is integrate these three dimensions of reality, not choose one and banish the rest. So the point being in terms of religion is that religion is explaining and working with a very real dimension of our being and reality (The Beautiful/I/Subjective/Internal), like for example not the behavior of neurons (objective/science) but the internal reality of the brain.

So now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s explore the commonality of various religions, cause really they are all working for the same end point using various means, doesn’t really make sense to choose one right religion cause it’s like saying there is buddhist math, jewish math, christian math, and so on, it’s all just math.

(click to enlarge)

The above image shows various religious phenomena from different religions lined up next to each other, I mainly show it to make a point, which would be that all major religions are explaining the same things using different combinations of words.

So for example in Christianity we have union with the Godhead which is the same as enlightenment in Buddhism, so enlightenment is knowing God, but when I say God I don’t mean an old man in the clouds, that’s only the religious view of atheists who copied it from, I don’t know, mythomaniacs? Which is nothing like how mystics explain it and most theist explain it, though I am a bit confused with the personification of God in the bible, as far as I can tell one should deal with it the same way you deal with mythology, however you deal with mythology. I also suspect it’s an interpretation of God through the mythic stage of development, the one belove the rational stage of development, and yes there is a developmental stage above rational.

So what is the aim of religion exactly? The aim of religion is enlightenment, union with Godhead, it contains psychological tools, methods, exercise or experiments that lead to enlightenment or realization of the infinite, it teaches you to inquiry the internal workings of your self, and as we’ll see the “self” is a major issue in religion.

So what exactly is enlightenment or union with the Godhead? As far as I can tell it means reevaluation of the Self or more precisely the end result of studying the nature of the Self, religion claims that what you consider your Self to be is actually a very limiting view, you put up fake boundaries on it that have no bases in reality, in reality there are no boundaries, boundaries are artificial constructs of language, in reality you are everything, God, the infinite, the All, and it’s not some conceptual realization, it’s an actual experience of that being reality which you can not actually touch or fully understand by reading this or any other text, it’s a non-verbal understanding and a developmental thing, so you can’t just say “I am everything!” to experience God.

But what is God or Spirit? This I’m most confused over and therefor this is the section where you’ll probably find the most errors, anyway one way to slice up the hierarchy of complexity in the kosmos, sometimes called the great chain of being, would be like this: matter->life->mind->soul->spirit or physics->biology->psychology->theology->mysticism. Godhead is spirit, at the top of the hierarchy and therefor transcends the manifested world like molecules transcend atoms and cells transcend molecules.

Godhead is given the following qualities: timeless, deathless, unchanging, eternal and infinite.

You can also explain it by saying Godhead is the one and the many, the one being which transcends the manifested world and the many being the whole of manifestation, but in practice Godhead is first realized as the one and then both as one and the many, emptiness and form.

The only reason, as far as I can tell, that people are usually not fully aware of Godhead is because their consciousness has not developed this greater complexity yet, meditation being one of the main tools to increase this complexity or encourage growth.

Notice though that I never actually say directly what Godhead is, this is because it’s totally beyond words, it’s the unspeakable Tao, “no one can tell you what The Matrix is, you have to see it for your self”.

“The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation.“

Ken Wilber Stops His Brain Waves (10min)

A little McKenna and my spin on his words

This video hit a cord in me, firstly “no one understand what is happening“, this isn’t only a logical conclusion for me but an experience I have all the time, “what the fuck is going on!”, which I think is way more important then a logical conclusion. It doesn’t seam to be a common understanding though, people walk around like they know exactly what is going on, that this whole situation we are in doesn’t reek of uncomprehensibility, wonder and so on, if it did people would be asking questions beyond “where are my keys?” and “why does my job suck?”, not that they have to, I just think it’s a very limiting experience of life. I think this is caused partially from telling your self it’s other peoples job to know what’s going on and that they do know, while it’s of course your job and you don’t know.

“Trust your self, nobody is smarter then you are, and what if they are, what good is their understanding doing you?” Take responsibility for your own reality tunnel, your belief system, your models of reality, your understanding of the world, is religious understanding meant to be sitting with priests and occult figureheads and nowhere else? Is it someone else’s job to know scientific truths? Should philosophy only be argued in academia? You should get that understanding, you should be getting those truths,  philosophy, religion, science, art or whatever, knowledge, experience or acting systems, these are tools and are meant to be used for the right purposes, it’s a very limited set of tools if you just include hammers, screwdrivers, cars, houses and mathermatics, and what good does it do you to let everyone else know the facts? “So they can teach me?”, well that’s the point, if someone is teaching you then that means your going after the information and it becomes your understanding also, other internal realities are externalities to you until you “download them”. It’s your responsibility to build up an understanding of the kosmos, not to leave it to someone else, everyone can have a go at it, not just some “geniuses”. Knowing just enough to function is not knowing it all, it’s a fantasy.

“Go for direct experience” Construct beliefs, ideas, knowledge, models, out of direct experience, “what the universe is telling you”. “I’ve learned that this job is important and good by seeing that other people consider it important and good, yet I hate it, so there must be something wrong with me”, this is not a healthy way to go about life, your overriding direct experience, a model does not override reality, reality overrides the model, models can be lies, raw data can expose them, stop talking about hawai, go to hawai and see for your self, have you seen the Futurerama movie? In it the scientist witnesses time travel but still claims that time travel isn’t possible because his models of reality don’t fit reality, which is a great example of models overriding direct expirience.

Multiple Intelligences

I’m reading the book Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber and man it’s an eye opener, or a good way to become deluded, anyway I’m not going to go into what this book is about or it’s major points but I’ll go into one thing, part of the integral model is that there are lines or streams of development or as Gardner would say, multiple intelligences, there are different aspects of our being that largely development separately, that’s why you can be really smart but a also a complete jerk, some of the more important developmental lines are cognitive, self, values, moral, interpersonal, spiritual, needs, kinesthetic, emotional and aesthetic.

Now the developmentalists have certain questions for each developmental line to study a pattern of development in them, and those questions I found especially interesting cause we can use them to extract information from all of your intelligences and possibly even use that information to see how developed we are in them.

Cognitive: What am i aware of?
Self: Who am I?
Values: What is significant to me?
Moral: What should I do?
Interpersonal: How should we interact?
Spiritual: What is of ultimate concern?
Needs: What do I need?
Kinesthetic: How should I physically do this?
Emotional: How do I feel about this?
Aesthetic: What is attractive to me?

Now the cognitive intelligence is something to take extra note of, for all other intelligences depend on it, if your not aware of peak oil you wont need to learn how to grow food for example, the point is if your not aware of something then how can you value it, be moral about it, interact with it, identify with it and so on.

Anyway I think it would be interesting to answear all of these questions (except kinesthetic) and contemplate the results.

Ubuntu & FOSS 101

Most people have probably heard of the operating systems Windows(Microsoft) and Mac OS X(Apple), but there also exist an alternative to them called Linux or GNU/Linux, one of the leading Linux operating systems right now is Ubuntu, which I’m going to be covering here. If you use Firefox then you might be interested to hear that Ubuntu is created using the same strategy and philosophy as Firefox.

Before I go into some of the features Ubuntu has to offer I’ll go into why you should not use Ubuntu.

If you are into gaming then Ubuntu is probably not a good choice, at least not for the games you buy in stores, they are all made for Windows and some for Macs, there are allot of games though on the web for Ubuntu but the quality of most of them is questionable, you can find some good games though if you look well enough, but mainly Ubuntu just plays real life.

Another reason not to use Ubuntu is if your using some special software that is only available for Windows or Macs and there is no replacement for it on Ubuntu.

The third and final main reason is if you are using some special hardware that only has drivers available for Windows or Macs and therefor can’t be used on Ubuntu.

But as Ubuntu and GNU/Linux in general become more popular all these problems should start to vanish, and some of them have already vanished to a great extent. But now to the good part.

Free As In Beer

Ubuntu costs nothing, it’s completely free (yes you pay for Windows when you buy your computer), you can buy it though if you want to, nothing that says someone can’t sell it to you, but most people get it for free for obvious reasons. It’s not freeware though, it’s free software or open source software, which is created in such a way that it can be distributed freely.

Free As In Speech

Ubuntu is Free Software, sometimes called Liber(Freedom) Software or Open Source software, so not only doesn’t it cost money but your free to do whatever you like with the software, you can run it for any purpose (the software doesn’t put restrictions on what you can and can’t do with it), if your a programmer you can study and modify the software as you please and you can copy the software and give it or sell it to whomever you please without being called a pirate and so on.

Bundled Applications

When you buy Windows you have to buy many or some applications separately, and yes there do exists applications for Ubuntu that you have to buy but the majority of them are both Free As In Beer and Free As In Speech and the essential once come installed with it.

No need to buy or install an office pack, OpenOffice.org comes with the operating system which includes things like a word processor and a spreadsheet application (like Excel) and is compatible with Microsoft Office formats. A image editor called GIMP (like Photoshop) is also present and a mail client, CD/DVD burner, music extractor (copy music from CDs to the computer), photo management and allot of other applications to help you do what you want to do.

Installing More Applications

To get new applications using Windows you ether have to go to a store and buy it or find the applications web site, maybe pay for it, download it and then install. Ubuntu has something called a package manager, so you just open that, write in what application you want and tell it to set it up, then it will both download and install it for you automatically and it’s all free, you can also browse applications by category if your not exactly sure which application you want and currently there are about 23000 software packages available.

No Viruses

Most people, almost all of them, who use Ubuntu have never gotten a virus and there is close to no news on virus infections on Linux in history. Basically it’s very unlikely that you will get a virus if your running Ubuntu, it’s possible but way harder to do then on Windows for example.

These are the five main reasons I use Ubuntu but there are many more, like complete customization, works on older hardware, upgrades for all your software in a single location, allot of small useful features here and there that make life less difficult and so on, there is actually a site called Why Linux is Better which covers more features.

So if your interested in trying it out, go to ubuntu.com and download it, if you have any problems then you can ask for help at the ubuntu forums or ubuntu community chat.

Compiz Fusion (3min)

Documentary: Revolution OS (1hour, 25min)

Engineered Immortality 101

Immortality has been a fantasy of man for a long time, actually if I remember correctly the oldest written text in the world deals with immortality, but now with the advances in technology it might start to become reality in the next 30 to 50 years, you need to look no further then The Immortality Institute, SENS, Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil to see the details behind it and that this is a most probable outcome of technological advances. We’ve already identified seven causes of aging (The Seven Deadly Things) and we are in the process of fixing them, we could become the first generations to gain indefinite lifespans.

Now there are a number of things that pop up in peoples heads when they hear about this that troubles them, “who wants to be old and frail for thousands of years?”, overpopulation, boredom, unnatural, etc.. I don’t want to go into to much detail on these things here because there has been so much said on them, but I’ll tell you one thing, curing aging is more about, in the long run, to extend a healthy life, if you live to be a thousand you wont be laying in a bed all day sustained at the edge of oblivion, you’ll have a body of a 20-30 year old perhaps.

Some people say becoming immortal or wanting to become immortal is being greedy, I don’t think so really, I think it only becomes greed when you deny other people the same technology, it’s somewhat like saying wanting a million dollars is being greedy, which doesn’t make sense, there is a great difference between “I want a million dollars so I can fund schools, help starving children and just in general make the world a better place” and “I want a million dollars to tweak the universe so to direct more energy into my ego”, if you function as a compassionate, loving human being you will extend that love. If your computer stops working, is it being greedy to fix it? No? Then why of all things should it be greedy to fix one of the most important parts of our lives (our body)?

There is also some concern of immortality as a tool to indefinitely hold something in static form, to save the ego from change, I’m pretty sure that’s what allot of people are doing, they’ve identified something called the self and want it to live forever, I don’t really understand this whole self/ego discussion, but I for one would not want to be immortal to become static, I would evolve through my manifestation and turn into something that doesn’t resemble “me” at all, just like we do through reproduction, it’s just a new way for life to evolve, this might turn the whole point of immortality on it’s head but I don’t mind.

There seams though to be some kind of mental block in people to this idea which I don’t fully understand yet, it seams to have something to do with death as some sort of “holy” thing that can not be tampered with and the age old teaching that you must die, no way around it, might called this way of thinking “deathism”, there might be something to it though, but I’m not convinced yet.

TED 2006 Conference Presentation: Aubrey de Grey (23min)

Documentary: Do You Want To Live Forever? (1hour, 17min)