I’ve recently been in correspondence with a young graduate student who has been dismayed to find out how much subjectivity can occur in her life when she is supposed to be a scientist, training in a hard, respected physical science. I think many people in general, who are overly impressed by science, as well as [...]
Continue reading about Ideal science and Real Science: Don’t You Dare Question My Objectivity!
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
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?
I’ve been having a discussion with some spiritual people working toward a “trans-traditional spirituality,” and we’ve been talking about miracles. Do they discourage even trying to develop a science, even a partial science, of spirituality, or can we fit them in somehow. Since one of my main scientific interests, parapsychology, is about “miracles,” this is [...]
Continue reading about Miracles, Science, and “My Religion is Truer than Yours!”
All of you know one of my main goals in life is to help genuine science and genuine spirituality interact in ways so each helps the other. An interesting aspect arose in discussion with colleagues recently, that I wrote my friend Shinzen Young, meditation teacher, about. Some of you might find this interesting, it’s about [...]
Continue reading about Sutta to the Kalamas: Mind Opening or Mind-Manipulating?
I have been involved in a discussion on a professional list of “spiritual leaders” about the evidence for reincarnation and, more generally whether science has any value in casting light on spirituality and religion. One of the list members, an ordained Christian minister, wrote that he had a difficult time understanding my mentality. Where was [...]
Continue reading about Science and Spirit: Where I’m Coming From and How I’m Doing It:
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 [...]
Some interesting correspondence on world views, altered states, animism, materialism, suppression of the bright shadow, Dismissive Materialism, etc. that, with Matt Colborn’s permission, I’m sharing. 3-17-11 Hi Charles – I’ve just been doing some corrections to the manuscript of my book Pluralism and the Mind and as a result been thinking a lot about different [...]
Continue reading about World Views, Animism, Dismissive Materialism