Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Soul

[Dicky Underpants]

I'm posting this with Alan Burns particularly in mind. Perhaps it has been touched upon in the endless postings in which Alan attempts to explain how the 'soul' interacts with the material body (and is continually rebutted by the non-believers). This distressing psychological condition seems to be related to extreme abuse in childhood, which results in the mind splitting off into separate personalities, each with their own 'free will', and with each personality being aware of some of the others, and sometimes totally ignorant of their existence.
The chances of being cured of this condition seem remote, and the best that can usually be expected is that each will acknowledge the others' existence and that they will learn to get on together. However, there doesn't appear to be any single controlling personality in these cases. Maybe all that can be hoped for is that a single sublimated and integrated individual would appear in an afterlife, but how would such a being have anything to do with these totally differentiated personalities inhabiting one body?
Alan, the floor is yours.....

[torridon]

And there's the similar problem for soul advocates with the case of split-brain patients.  These are people who have had corpus callosotomy surgery in an effort to deal with epilepsy.  The procedure leaves them with literally two distinct brains and a consequence of this is that the two hemispheres tend to develop their own thought patterns and distinct personalities over time and there have been reported cases where one hemisphere became religious whilst the other one became atheist. 

So, maybe half the soul goes to heaven whilst the other ends up burning downstairs 

[ekim]

Unless somebody defines what they mean by 'soul', I doubt whether this discussion will get very far.  You will be inviting a straw man argument based upon the concept of 'personality'.

[Dicky Underpants]

Unless somebody defines what they mean by 'soul', I doubt whether this discussion will get very far.  You will be inviting a straw man argument based upon the concept of 'personality'.

The Christian concept of the 'soul', at least involves the idea of individuality, the 'essence' of a person, which directs the conscious actions of the body (not sure how it's involved in the unconscious ones). And of course, this 'true essence' is supposed to survive death.
I understand that the Hindu concept of soul 'Atman' is different, since it is supposed to be  commensurate with Brahman, the universal spirit. This does away with any meaningful concept of individuality, and consequently personality, and is even more confusing than the Christian idea. However, it is perhaps closer to the reality of the situation - which is that 'personality' is a construct, and that we are all to a greater or lesser extent, very 'dividual' indeed - or so it appears to me.

[Sriram]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-explain-life-the-universe-and-everything/

************

a newly published paper by one of us posits that dissociation can offer a solution to a critical problem in our current understanding of the nature of reality.

A key problem of physicalism, however, is its inability to make sense of how our subjective experience of qualities—what it is like to feel the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple, the bitterness of disappointment and so on—could arise from mere arrangements of physical stuff.

Physical entities such as subatomic particles possess abstract relational properties, such as mass, spin, momentum and charge. But there is nothing about these properties, or in the way particles are arranged in a brain, in terms of which one could deduce what the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple or the bitterness of disappointment feel like. This is known as the hard problem of consciousness.

constitutive panpsychism has a critical problem of its own: there is arguably no coherent, non-magical way in which lower-level subjective points of view—such as those of subatomic particles or neurons in the brain, if they have these points of view—could combine to form higher-level subjective points of view, such as yours and ours.

The obvious way around the combination problem is to posit that, although consciousness is indeed fundamental in nature, it isn’t fragmented like matter. The idea is to extend consciousness to the entire fabric of spacetime, as opposed to limiting it to the boundaries of individual subatomic particles. This view—called “cosmopsychism” in modern philosophy, although our preferred formulation of it boils down to what has classically been called “idealism”—is that there is only one, universal, consciousness. The physical universe as a whole is the extrinsic appearance of universal inner life, just as a living brain and body are the extrinsic appearance of a person’s inner life.

You don’t need to be a philosopher to realize the obvious problem with this idea: people have private, separate fields of experience. We can’t normally read your thoughts and, presumably, neither can you read ours. Moreover, we are not normally aware of what’s going on across the universe and, presumably, neither are you.

And here is where dissociation comes in. We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.

Insofar as dissociation offers a path to explaining how, under idealism, one universal consciousness can become many individual minds, we may now have at our disposal an unprecedentedly coherent and empirically grounded way of making sense of life, the universe and everything.

*************

[ekim]

The Christian concept of the 'soul', at least involves the idea of individuality, the 'essence' of a person, which directs the conscious actions of the body (not sure how it's involved in the unconscious ones). And of course, this 'true essence' is supposed to survive death.
I understand that the Hindu concept of soul 'Atman' is different, since it is supposed to be  commensurate with Brahman, the universal spirit. This does away with any meaningful concept of individuality, and consequently personality, and is even more confusing than the Christian idea. However, it is perhaps closer to the reality of the situation - which is that 'personality' is a construct, and that we are all to a greater or lesser extent, very 'dividual' indeed - or so it appears to me.

That's the problem with using the language of mythos.  It is not meant to lead to concepts but more to give an analogy of the experience or 'inperience' being communicated.  I suspect that this is what the 2nd Commandment is about, which I would paraphrase as 'There is to be no idols nor images of the Divine nether earthly nor subconsciously'. As regards the relationship of 'essence' and 'survival', an analogy might be to consider the essence as water and the totality as an ocean and an individual form as a wave.  Even though all wave forms 'die' the essence continues. The Spirit analogy is from the Latin for breath which is seen as air breathed in (inspiration).  When the body dies it expires (breaths out) and the air (spirit) continues to survive.
Essence is from the Latin for 'Being' and some Vedanta school use the word 'Sat-cit-ananda' (Being/consciousness/bliss) to try to describe the experience of Brahman.  Bliss, bless, blessedness, I believe are related so 'Blessed are the pure in heart'.  Be very aware if you decide to become a Christian though.  I have seen a lot of gravestones recently with the inscription ' He fell asleep on ....' and can you believe it, they buried him!?!

[Dicky Underpants]

And there's the similar problem for soul advocates with the case of split-brain patients.  These are people who have had corpus callosotomy surgery in an effort to deal with epilepsy.  The procedure leaves them with literally two distinct brains and a consequence of this is that the two hemispheres tend to develop their own thought patterns and distinct personalities over time and there have been reported cases where one hemisphere became religious whilst the other one became atheist. 

So, maybe half the soul goes to heaven whilst the other ends up burning downstairs 

Hi torridon

The two phenomena do indeed have similar implications, and for both there seems to be little that can be offered by way of a 'cure' - just a compromise is all that can be hoped for. However, the western scientific and philosophical approach does seem to strive towards some kind of ideal, whereby the whole personality is integrated, with one controlling ego dominating the other more disparate elements (In medical terms, I suppose this would mean reinforcing the feedback loops between the pre-frontal cortex and the basal ganglia, and hoping both cerebral hemispheres will act in partnership).
The more oriental approach, which has been alluded to by both ekim and Sriram, recognises all the disparate elements which exist in the most 'normal' of us, but treats them as more or less as an illusion (the maya of Hinduism). The ideal seems to be the dissolution of self into non-dual Brahman. Buddhism has a similar attitude to the everyday self. Some forms of Gnosticism take an even more extreme attitude, regarding the origin of the whole created world in its multitude of different manifestations as a tragic mistake, and our task here is to attempt to escape back to the undifferentiated world of pure spirit, the pleroma.
I think most of us act as if we are individual personalities, and that's the way we get through life, even though we may realise that, on the deepest level, we're just a whirr of atoms. I wish such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin might reflect on such things now and again.

[Dicky Underpants]

That's the problem with using the language of mythos.  It is not meant to lead to concepts but more to give an analogy of the experience or 'inperience' being communicated.  I suspect that this is what the 2nd Commandment is about, which I would paraphrase as 'There is to be no idols nor images of the Divine nether earthly nor subconsciously'. As regards the relationship of 'essence' and 'survival', an analogy might be to consider the essence as water and the totality as an ocean and an individual form as a wave.  Even though all wave forms 'die' the essence continues. The Spirit analogy is from the Latin for breath which is seen as air breathed in (inspiration).  When the body dies it expires (breaths out) and the air (spirit) continues to survive.
Essence is from the Latin for 'Being' and some Vedanta school use the word 'Sat-cit-ananda' (Being/consciousness/bliss) to try to describe the experience of Brahman.  Bliss, bless, blessedness, I believe are related so 'Blessed are the pure in heart'.  Be very aware if you decide to become a Christian though.  I have seen a lot of gravestones recently with the inscription ' He fell asleep on ....' and can you believe it, they buried him!?!

Ekim
I appreciate what might be termed your 'ecumenical' approach, though I think you sometimes take it too far. Mythos does not have the same precise connotations as Logos, but there are inherent dangers in referring to certain religious stories and tropes as 'myths' (apart from the common interpretation of the word meaning 'untrue'). The myths certainly have to have some common resonance to have meaning to people. The trouble is, they don't have such common interpretations. Some people take them literally and believe them as such, some people take them literally and dismiss them as wrong (Richard Dawkins and LR here ). Your instance of the 2nd commandment has had so many interpretations that I would not be keen to suggest that it is supposed to have 'mythical' significance. It strikes me that it was intended to have a literal interpretation for the early Hebrews, whose religion was once henotheistic, and their 'jealous God' wished to lay claim to exclusive worship (the canny insight of those early scribes who realised such an approach would unify the nomadic tribe against the conflicting other tribes).
Etymology is all very well, and may help to get a rounder sense of the meaning of a word, but I don't think it helps to know that 'essence' is related to the Latin 'essere' - to be - in the instance in which I used it. 'Essence' nowadays is used to mean the most important quality of something, the distillation of the strongest components etc. So to move from that use (by which I was trying to grasp what Christians may mean by the individual soul) to talk about the Vedanta experience of non-dual consciousness (Being/consciouness/bliss) seems a bit too much woo for me nowadays, I'm afraid (even though I once thought I'd experienced such a state).

[Dicky Underpants]

You don’t need to be a philosopher to realize the obvious problem with this idea: people have private, separate fields of experience. We can’t normally read your thoughts and, presumably, neither can you read ours. Moreover, we are not normally aware of what’s going on across the universe and, presumably, neither are you.

And here is where dissociation comes in. We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.

Insofar as dissociation offers a path to explaining how, under idealism, one universal consciousness can become many individual minds, we may now have at our disposal an unprecedentedly coherent and empirically grounded way of making sense of life, the universe and everything.

*************

Hi Sriram

Thank you for your quote. I have to say, though, that the last sentence seems hopelessly optimistic " an unprecedentedly coherent and empirically grounded way of making sense of life, the universe and everything". Forsooth! Coherent way?
After centuries of religious, philosophical and scientific speculation, all of which has led to numberless different ideas on how to live one's life and what to believe?

Let's take your quoted analogy a little further: the author finds a parallel between the dissociated consciousness of those afflicted with DID and the supposed dissociated personalities which are the manifestations of the 'universal consciousness'. The key point about the psychological condition of DID is that is the result of extreme trauma
. I may be sounding facetious, but are we supposed to think there was extreme trauma at the moment of creation in the Godhead?
Hinduism would like us to believe that individual consciousness is an illusion of Maya, and seems to suggest it's all our fault, and the law of karma operates so we each receive commensurate rewards of good or ill according to what we have done. How often religions like to suggest "It's all our fault" - Original Sin in Christianity and karma in Hinduism.
How about we start saying it's God's fault (if we chose to believe in such).
Of course, Gnosticism in its various forms did tend to imply this idea - the suggestion that Creation was a mistake, and that each enlightened human's task is to gather up the fragmented elements of pure spirit (by doing good) and return everything to the undifferentiated state of the original pleroma (meaning, I suppose, the end of life, the universe and everything).
The most developed form of this kind of Gnosticism was of course that of Isaac ben Luria, who certainly stated that something went wrong at the moment of creation (The Breaking of the Vessels), but the fault occurred as a result of the deity's overflowing love. I think that's a start, if you must believe in some sort of spirituality - apportioning blame where it's due.

On the other hand, this may all be waffling speculation, and what we all need to do is follow Voltaire's suggestion, and cultivate our garden.

[ekim]

Ekim
I appreciate what might be termed your 'ecumenical' approach, though I think you sometimes take it too far. Mythos does not have the same precise connotations as Logos, but there are inherent dangers in referring to certain religious stories and tropes as 'myths' (apart from the common interpretation of the word meaning 'untrue'). The myths certainly have to have some common resonance to have meaning to people. The trouble is, they don't have such common interpretations. Some people take them literally and believe them as such, some people take them literally and dismiss them as wrong (Richard Dawkins and LR here ). Your instance of the 2nd commandment has had so many interpretations that I would not be keen to suggest that it is supposed to have 'mythical' significance. It strikes me that it was intended to have a literal interpretation for the early Hebrews, whose religion was once henotheistic, and their 'jealous God' wished to lay claim to exclusive worship (the canny insight of those early scribes who realised such an approach would unify the nomadic tribe against the conflicting other tribes).
Etymology is all very well, and may help to get a rounder sense of the meaning of a word, but I don't think it helps to know that 'essence' is related to the Latin 'essere' - to be - in the instance in which I used it. 'Essence' nowadays is used to mean the most important quality of something, the distillation of the strongest components etc. So to move from that use (by which I was trying to grasp what Christians may mean by the individual soul) to talk about the Vedanta experience of non-dual consciousness (Being/consciouness/bliss) seems a bit too much woo for me nowadays, I'm afraid (even though I once thought I'd experienced such a state).

I understand what you are saying.  To me, much of the problem revolves around verbal communication especially when many of the words used in religions originated thousands of years ago and it is no longer possible to ask the person, who invented or used the word, what they meant. Often the words were recorded by somebody else who may not have understood what was being communicated and then they get translated into best fit words of another language and those words in turn change their meaning over time.  If you add to this the difficulty in communicating an inner experience to somebody who has not had that experience, it is not surprising that sites like this seem to go around in repetitive circles.  If we take your final comment 'I once thought I'd experienced such a state', are you able to describe that state so that others may understand it and even experience it or was it just a thought?

[Dicky Underpants]

  If we take your final comment 'I once thought I'd experienced such a state', are you able to describe that state so that others may understand it and even experience it or was it just a thought?

I don't know if I've time right now to put the matter in context, but it needs to be. I have in fact mentioned the experience either on this forum in the early days or perhaps on the old BBC forum. True to form, Vlad poo-pooed it, and dismissed it as a spoof. (Well Vlad, I did really have the experience, though what it meant, if anything, I'm not sure, even after all these years).
Certainly, I was young at the time - possibly 21 or 22. I definitely had a very religious turn of mind, as well as being highly sexed. But I had at the end of my teens lost any belief in Christianity, except in the broadest 'ecumenical' sense (though I maintained a constant love for music and art from the Christian tradition). I had become very interested in far-eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism primarily, and would often sit meditating cross-legged and chanting mantra to myself, with the familiar "Om" at the top of the list.
On one such occasion, I began to feel particularly at peace with the world and myself, and slowly felt the whole of my consciousness irradiated with light, and a sensation of all-embracing love. I felt no fear, since there was a sense of absolute naturalness about the experience, though I certainly felt all normal human concerns fall away as insignificant. The waves of light continued for quite some time - how long, I can't say. But I do know that when I returned to 'normal' consciousness, tears were running down my face.
Well, for a time, that definitely altered the way I approached life, and the fact that I remember it so well decades later indicate that it was not lightly dismissed from my mind. But it became increasingly evident that such an experience did not really help me get to grips with the everyday realities of life in the western world, and nor did these eastern religions with their structured teachings.
As for what the whole thing meant, I'm naturally inclined to explain it in a very reductive manner nowadays. You could quite easily say "I got what I was looking for - the end was determined by what I was expecting". It's certainly true that by that time , I'd read quite a few accounts of 'expanded consciousness', so it's quite likely that my unconscious mind provided me with one of my own. As for anything profound and universal to be deduced from it, I wouldn't think so.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I don't know if I've time right now to put the matter in context, but it needs to be. I have in fact mentioned the experience either on this forum in the early days or perhaps on the old BBC forum. True to form, Vlad poo-pooed it, and dismissed it as a spoof.

] I did? That certainly isn't my position with regard to spiritual experience of any kind now

(Well Vlad, I did really have the experience, though what it meant, if anything, I'm not sure, even after all these years).
Certainly, I was young at the time - possibly 21 or 22. I definitely had a very religious turn of mind, as well as being highly sexed. But I had at the end of my teens lost any belief in Christianity, except in the broadest 'ecumenical' sense (though I maintained a constant love for music and art from the Christian tradition). I had become very interested in far-eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism primarily, and would often sit meditating cross-legged and chanting mantra to myself, with the familiar "Om" at the top of the list.
On one such occasion, I began to feel particularly at peace with the world and myself, and slowly felt the whole of my consciousness irradiated with light, and a sensation of all-embracing love. I felt no fear, since there was a sense of absolute naturalness about the experience, though I certainly felt all normal human concerns fall away as insignificant. The waves of light continued for quite some time - how long, I can't say. But I do know that when I returned to 'normal' consciousness, tears were running down my face.
Well, for a time, that definitely altered the way I approached life, and the fact that I remember it so well decades later indicate that it was not lightly dismissed from my mind. But it became increasingly evident that such an experience did not really help me get to grips with the everyday realities of life in the western world, and nor did these eastern religions with their structured teachings.
As for what the whole thing meant, I'm naturally inclined to explain it in a very reductive manner nowadays. You could quite easily say "I got what I was looking for - the end was determined by what I was expecting". It's certainly true that by that time , I'd read quite a few accounts of 'expanded consciousness', so it's quite likely that my unconscious mind provided me with one of my own. As for anything profound and universal to be deduced from it, I wouldn't think so.

[Sriram]

I don't know if I've time right now to put the matter in context, but it needs to be. I have in fact mentioned the experience either on this forum in the early days or perhaps on the old BBC forum. True to form, Vlad poo-pooed it, and dismissed it as a spoof. (Well Vlad, I did really have the experience, though what it meant, if anything, I'm not sure, even after all these years).
Certainly, I was young at the time - possibly 21 or 22. I definitely had a very religious turn of mind, as well as being highly sexed. But I had at the end of my teens lost any belief in Christianity, except in the broadest 'ecumenical' sense (though I maintained a constant love for music and art from the Christian tradition). I had become very interested in far-eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism primarily, and would often sit meditating cross-legged and chanting mantra to myself, with the familiar "Om" at the top of the list.
On one such occasion, I began to feel particularly at peace with the world and myself, and slowly felt the whole of my consciousness irradiated with light, and a sensation of all-embracing love. I felt no fear, since there was a sense of absolute naturalness about the experience, though I certainly felt all normal human concerns fall away as insignificant. The waves of light continued for quite some time - how long, I can't say. But I do know that when I returned to 'normal' consciousness, tears were running down my face.
Well, for a time, that definitely altered the way I approached life, and the fact that I remember it so well decades later indicate that it was not lightly dismissed from my mind. But it became increasingly evident that such an experience did not really help me get to grips with the everyday realities of life in the western world, and nor did these eastern religions with their structured teachings.
As for what the whole thing meant, I'm naturally inclined to explain it in a very reductive manner nowadays. You could quite easily say "I got what I was looking for - the end was determined by what I was expecting". It's certainly true that by that time , I'd read quite a few accounts of 'expanded consciousness', so it's quite likely that my unconscious mind provided me with one of my own. As for anything profound and universal to be deduced from it, I wouldn't think so.

That's a valid experience DU. Good going!  It is considered as the first step towards serious spirituality. 

We have two parts to ourselves....what we call the Higher Self and the Lower Self.  The Lower Self is what we normally recognize as ourselves.  The Higher Self is wiser, more loving and more universal.

When the Higher Self surfaces...it is normally experienced as a light deep within. This light grows over the years and takes over the mind and body and replaces the lower self. 

We don't have to be religious for this to happen. Religion is one way but other secular processes will also work. It can happen spontaneously sometimes.

[ekim]

On one such occasion, I began to feel particularly at peace with the world and myself, and slowly felt the whole of my consciousness irradiated with light, and a sensation of all-embracing love. I felt no fear, since there was a sense of absolute naturalness about the experience, though I certainly felt all normal human concerns fall away as insignificant. The waves of light continued for quite some time - how long, I can't say. But I do know that when I returned to 'normal' consciousness, tears were running down my face.
Well, for a time, that definitely altered the way I approached life, and the fact that I remember it so well decades later indicate that it was not lightly dismissed from my mind. But it became increasingly evident that such an experience did not really help me get to grips with the everyday realities of life in the western world, and nor did these eastern religions with their structured teachings.
As for what the whole thing meant, I'm naturally inclined to explain it in a very reductive manner nowadays. You could quite easily say "I got what I was looking for - the end was determined by what I was expecting". It's certainly true that by that time , I'd read quite a few accounts of 'expanded consciousness', so it's quite likely that my unconscious mind provided me with one of my own. As for anything profound and universal to be deduced from it, I wouldn't think so.

Your words 'peace, light, love, absolute naturalness, concerns fall away, altered the way I approached life' and the timeless 'how long, I can't say' are expressions that a mystic might come out with.  Although I doubt whether those words fully convey the actual experience/in-perience.  Apart from following the method to attain it, it seems to be all we have for communication purposes.  Then the mind kicks in to reassert its authority by 'reductive explanations'.  Although structured methods are probably necessary to eventually sustain that 'absolute naturalness' etc, the dark side of 'structured teachings' is that they can be used as a means of Putin style control rather than a path to freedom.  I don't know how old you are, but are you likely to seek out that 'state of being' again or has your mind convinced you it was a one off mission accomplished?

[Dicky Underpants]

  I don't know how old you are, but are you likely to seek out that 'state of being' again or has your mind convinced you it was a one off mission accomplished?

Well, the experience occurred five decades ago, so I'm certainly past seeking out such a state of being again, though I continued on the 'meditative' path for a long time afterwards. I don't think I'd reached any state of finality/mission accomplished with it all, and was quite prepared to be 'surprised by joy' at any time.
However, as I said, subsequent experience has been a stern teacher, and I later started to doubt its relevance. I thought back to it most during the worst period of my life, when I was in my mid-thirties. It didn't help - I even turned to Jesus (the old 'no atheists in fox-holes scenario). I can confidently state that this period, whilst not converting me to total atheism, certainly convinced me that Christ does not exist as a cosmic figure (and subsequent critical biblical studies and readings have reinforced that).
I wasn't immediately determined to find a scientific, reductionist explanation then. That came after. I've certainly had quite a few bizarre psychological experiences in my time, and I'm well aware of what the mind is capable of generating when the conditions are right. None of this implies the actions of a divine spirit to me now.

[ekim]

Well, the experience occurred five decades ago, so I'm certainly past seeking out such a state of being again, though I continued on the 'meditative' path for a long time afterwards. I don't think I'd reached any state of finality/mission accomplished with it all, and was quite prepared to be 'surprised by joy' at any time.
However, as I said, subsequent experience has been a stern teacher, and I later started to doubt its relevance. I thought back to it most during the worst period of my life, when I was in my mid-thirties. It didn't help - I even turned to Jesus (the old 'no atheists in fox-holes scenario). I can confidently state that this period, whilst not converting me to total atheism, certainly convinced me that Christ does not exist as a cosmic figure (and subsequent critical biblical studies and readings have reinforced that).
I wasn't immediately determined to find a scientific, reductionist explanation then. That came after. I've certainly had quite a few bizarre psychological experiences in my time, and I'm well aware of what the mind is capable of generating when the conditions are right. None of this implies the actions of a divine spirit to me now.

I understand your position.  Thank you for your reply.

[Dicky Underpants]

I recently received a private message from Sriram inviting me to read his life's journey and spiritual experiences on his website. I have to say, it is fascinating reading, even though I remain unconvinced by his basic conclusions. However, I urge anyone who is remotely interested to read it, because it is full of fascinating details and insights. No doubt the most hardened atheists will take great issue with his whole approach, but I don't think they would be quite so harsh with him as they regularly are in reply to his postings here. It is always good to see things in context, and his long story certainly does this well, because you see something more of the whole man, which you cannot really do from his posts.
I'm sure he's linked to his website somewhere on this forum, but no doubt he'll provide a link for those interested anyway.

[Sriram]

I recently received a private message from Sriram inviting me to read his life's journey and spiritual experiences on his website. I have to say, it is fascinating reading, even though I remain unconvinced by his basic conclusions. However, I urge anyone who is remotely interested to read it, because it is full of fascinating details and insights. No doubt the most hardened atheists will take great issue with his whole approach, but I don't think they would be quite so harsh with him as they regularly are in reply to his postings here. It is always good to see things in context, and his long story certainly does this well, because you see something more of the whole man, which you cannot really do from his posts.
I'm sure he's linked to his website somewhere on this forum, but no doubt he'll provide a link for those interested anyway.

Thanks for posting about my blog here....though I didn't expect you to. 

I have two blogs. The first one has about 45 articles giving my views on things from evolution, anthropic principle, God particle  .....to spirituality, mind, consciousness etc.  This blog is accessible here by clicking on the icon above my message.

The other blog is about my life experiences and  thoughts along the way. It has some amount of personal details. This may not be of interest to everyone. Unless one has a certain background and a certain affinity for such matters they may not be able to relate to it. It also needs a certain cultural matching.

I though you Dicky, with your background and interest in Indian philosophy, would find it somewhat interesting. That is why I sent you the link.

If anyone else is interested they may please send me a personal message and I will send them the link to the second blog.

Thanks guys.

Sriram

[BeRational]

I recently received a private message from Sriram inviting me to read his life's journey and spiritual experiences on his website. I have to say, it is fascinating reading, even though I remain unconvinced by his basic conclusions. However, I urge anyone who is remotely interested to read it, because it is full of fascinating details and insights. No doubt the most hardened atheists will take great issue with his whole approach, but I don't think they would be quite so harsh with him as they regularly are in reply to his postings here. It is always good to see things in context, and his long story certainly does this well, because you see something more of the whole man, which you cannot really do from his posts.
I'm sure he's linked to his website somewhere on this forum, but no doubt he'll provide a link for those interested anyway.

I might read it if I get time, but the main issue is that truth claims are in no way influenced by someones 'journey'.

If someone claims the Earth is flat, we rightly disregard the unevidenced claim. You never hear someone say "We cannot reject this fantastic claim until we know this persons journey".

This is because the persons journey is completel irrelevant to the claim.

Surely this is not a contentious thing to say??

[Dicky Underpants]

I might read it if I get time, but the main issue is that truth claims are in no way influenced by someones 'journey'.

If someone claims the Earth is flat, we rightly disregard the unevidenced claim. You never hear someone say "We cannot reject this fantastic claim until we know this persons journey".

This is because the persons journey is completel irrelevant to the claim.

Surely this is not a contentious thing to say??

No, it is not. However, it might be of interest to some people to investigate some of the claimed 'spiritual' experiences and see how they relate to brain activity, hormonal imbalance (or serene 'balance') unusual chemicals released naturally into the blood stream etc. (We all know about the ones unnaturally introduced). These things can be related to life experiences.
I'm sure you know that I  am not a believer, but as mentioned above, I can lay  claim to a few bizarre mental states. I have had to find my own explanation for these. There are many 'Varieties of Religious Experience' even if the true meaning of all these may not have anything to do with divine influences, life forces or whatever.

[Sriram]

Of course, peoples views of their experiences are just their interpretations. No doubt about that. It may not represent reality...whatever that is. Philosophical explanations are speculative but that is all that is possible in such cases.

But does anyone have better models or better interpretations, is the question? Very often the experiences are merely glossed over or biological mechanisms are offered as explanations by scientists. Just because these biological explanations fall under 'scientific explanation'  it doesn't become correct or meaningful.

[Sriram]

OK....as Dicky suggested, maybe I should give atheists and skeptics also a chance to read and see my perspective. 

Here is the link to the second blog.

https://sriramraot.wordpress.com/

What I have offered are my personal thoughts and perspectives. Most of my ideas and interpretations could be speculative....but that's the way it is!

Please read through the introduction also. 

Thanks.

Sriram

BTW....I have devoted almost an entire chapter (Ch 5) to the BBC site, our discussions and atheism. Shows the influence that the discussions here have had on me!



 

[Udayana]

Of course, peoples views of their experiences are just their interpretations. No doubt about that. It may not represent reality...whatever that is. Philosophical explanations are speculative but that is all that is possible in such cases.

Yes.

But does anyone have better models or better interpretations, is the question? Very often the experiences are merely glossed over or biological mechanisms are offered as explanations by scientists. Just because these biological explanations fall under 'scientific explanation'  it doesn't become correct or meaningful.

As people have these experiences in, what we consider to be, a real physical world there will be undoubtedly be physical or biological mechanisms that cause them. That does not mean that there is an "explanation" for them, or that we will ever have enough grasp of the complexity of the brain and mental processes to reliably predict peoples experiences. 

In any case, the question misses the essence of these experiences: The mechanism or "explanation" of the experience is of no interest. The value of the experience is in ... experiencing it... the feelings of, and effect on, the person at that moment in time.

[Alan Burns]

(apologies for this late response)

Once you can accept the concept of a spiritual entity (the soul) having control over certain functions of a material body, is is feasible that there could be circumstances when a different spiritual entity can somehow take over control of the same body.  This would explain many of the "dual personality" features mentioned previously.  It is also backed up in the New Testament which describes several examples of a person being possessed by evil spirits.  And there is the dangerous practice of Ouija boards which involves inviting other "spirits" to take over the control of our physical bodies.  The Roman Catholic Church recognises this danger and forbids its use to members of the church.  And exorcism (the casting out of other spiritual entities) is still a recognised religious practice.

[jeremyp]

(apologies for this late response)

Once you can accept the concept of a spiritual entity (the soul) having control over certain functions of a material body, is is feasible that there could be circumstances when a different spiritual entity can somehow take over control of the same body. 

Fortunately, since there is no evidence that the premise is true (that a spiritual entity called there soul exists), we can dismiss this statement.

This would explain many of the "dual personality" features mentioned previously.  It is also backed up in the New Testament which describes several examples of a person being possessed by evil spirits.

Those were all made up stories by people who didn't understand human biology.

And there is the dangerous practice of Ouija boards which involves inviting other "spirits" to take over the control of our physical bodies.  The Roman Catholic Church recognises this danger and forbids its use to members of the church.  And exorcism (the casting out of other spiritual entities) is still a recognised religious practice.

The most dangerous thing about these is that there are people who believe they are something more than pure hokum and for whom they can therefore have traumatic consequences. It would be much better to educate people out of their superstitions.