Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902) was a Canadian psychiatrist. He is best known for his 1901 book Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, in which he explored higher forms of consciousness as they have been expressed throughout human history. In 1872 Bucke had a mystical experience of his own, which he later recorded.
I listened to a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris in Vancouver on June 23, 2018, where Harris asked this seemingly simple question (which had been previously asked of Peterson): "Was Jesus literally resurrected?" Peterson said it would take him 40 hours to answer that question. Harris offered his own succinct answer: "Almost certainly not."
The previous blog post marks 200 entries on ThyMindOMan.com that I have written over the past year and a half. I thought I'd take this occasion to reflect a bit about what I have done here, and introduce a new feature of the website.
It sounds like a pretty woowoo thing to say, really smacking of the "New Age." But this seems to be the skeleton in the closet that even physicists don't want to admit. But some have.
Language often constructs our perception of reality. As the philosopher William H. Gass once said, "The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words." Or so they try.
There seems to be an ongoing discussion on the nature of the ego in mysticism and mystical transcendence. On the one hand, some say that the ego-self does not die, but is transformed. On the other hand, some say that ego-self does die, and something else emerges in its place. Which is more accurate? Or could they both have truth?
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, writer, and philosopher. He often explored questions of psychology, philosophy, and religion. He wrote many acclaimed novels.
An addition to the BHT, where "Paul" writes about the mystery of God found in Christ, and the resulting relationship to philosophy, tradition, teachers, and law.
Over the past several months I've explored the nature of the human ego as it relates to spirituality in many of the major religious and spiritual traditions, as well as in science. As I noted in a series of posts, it seems that a recurrent theme throughout many of them is the idea of sacrificing ego, overcoming ego, transcending ego, even experiencing a kind of "death" of the ego, so as to realize the true nature of the self, of reality, and of God. We might ask then, what good is the ego? Is it all bad? Do we want to destroy our ego? Is that true spirituality?
A friend recently shared a video clip with me from an event on June 23, 2018, which was a public conversation and debate between psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson and philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, moderated by biologist Bret Weinstein. It's an interesting discussion between a theist (Peterson) and an atheist (Harris) on the nature of God, which I think begins to get at the heart of the issue from both sides.