Twenty five hundred years ago, Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, had some deep insights and created powerful techniques that would allow major reductions of human suffering. Traditionally the Buddha is said to found a total end to all suffering. Perhaps that’s true, perhaps it’s not. I don’t know, but certainly Buddhist meditation techniques and related [...]
Continue reading about Meditation, Monasticism, Buddhism, Materialism – Preliminary Thoughts
(Following is adapted from an item I wrote for the interesting new blog WhatMeditationReallyIs.com. I think it will be of interest here) When I become the Czar of Worldwide Words, I’m going to abolish the word “meditation.” Isn’t that an odd way to start a blog on meditation? Gets your attention, though. I will write [...]
Continue reading about That Word “Meditation:” What Does it Mean?
A colleague of mine was inspired hearing about the Brian Green show (Nova: The Fabric of the Cosmos) this week on the universe, especially the parts about “dark matter” and “dark energy.” He tended to see it as validating religion. I’m all for validating or reinforcing the best aspects of religion and spirituality – after [...]
Continue reading about Do Mysteries in Science Point Us to God?
A colleague of mine, Jim Tucker, M.D., psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, wrote this excellent review of reincarnation. Tucker is one of the far too few scientists in the world actually looking at evidence for reincarnation, mainly studying young children who spontaneously recall another life. With his permission, I am circulating it. Charles T. [...]
There is a beautiful film in the works, scheduled to come out next February, about activities centered around Esalen Institute for building bridges between science and spirituality. I just got the info on it this morning from the producer, and it’s reproduced below. Feel free to pass it on. I found watching this trailer very [...]
Some years ago I spoke, as did a number of my friends and colleagues, at a parapsychology related conference in one of our beautiful but wild Northwest states. I was reminded this morning of an amusing incident at this conference. One of the speakers, a local and, I guess, probably politically influential Rancher, talked about [...]
One of the folks on a discussion list I’m on was talking about her difficulties in accepting the reality of death as she got older, and asked how other people coped with death, especially hoping to hear how personal experience cast some light on the issue. I thought I’d share here what I wrote her. [...]
Recently my colleague Ed Kelly circulated a set of bullet points summarizing some consensus arising from the Esalen invitational Sursem conferences on the possibility of postmortem survival. The focus at these conferences had slowly widened from how do we scientifically investigate the possibility of postmortem survival per se to questions about the ultimate nature of [...]
Continue reading about What I Understand about Mind and Reality – 50 Year Perspective
My wife Judy and I have just completed a 6-day retreat on Dzogchen approaches to liberation with lama Tsoknyi Rinpoche, held at Mt. Madonna Conference Center. Now it’s a couple of days of camping in a redwood park to cool down, before jumping fully back into ordinary life, but I’ve been reflecting a lot and [...]
As readers of this blog or my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together know, I have long been concerned with the psychological and spiritual damage the world view I call Dismissive Materialism does to people. The idea that there is no inherent meaning or purpose [...]