Survival

[Martin_]

while being wary of over-speculating about so-called paranormal experiences, like NDEs, OBEs, psychedelic trips, etc

Speaking of that, re: the essay of this topic. (Formal) BK does go into a lot more detail on these subjects than I have seen him (Formally) do before.


The article also clarifies the details on what he proposes happens after death. (Not surprisingly, since it's the subject at hand);

I think this quote is quite illuminating.

As we’ve seen above, when a person dies the contents of their dissociation are
released into the broader, transpersonal web of cognitive activity that constitutes the
world as it is in itself. It is conceivable that newly emerging alters, with dissociative
boundaries not yet sealed, could incorporate those contents in the process of their
development. From a first-person perspective, this would literally mean having some
of a dead person’s memories. Yet, there would be no differentiated agent
reincarnating in the new alter; only a form of memory osmosis. I submit that,
empirically, so-called reincarnation cases are indistinguishable from what I am
proposing here.

It's possible that he has said this already in one of his many conversations, but it's the first time i see this in a rigourous essay. Things are moving along!

Things are not moving along in the above quote of BK. Things are getting worse and worse. Instead of admitting he simply does not know what occurs when a person dies and perhaps listening to reasoned arguments of others about what does actually happen (like Cleric here), which he could then challenge, question, clarify, etc., he projects his abstract intellectual speculation across the threshold of death and refuses to discuss the issue with anyone else in any precise and rigorous way. No matter what, he refuses to abandon the concept of "dissociative boundaries not yet sealed", which is the implicitly dualistic reason why he is forced to speculate recklessly in this manner. Anyone thinking clearly about this can perceive why it is an entirely self-imposed limitation, with no basis in any consistent idealism.

Right. You don't think that flipping the arrow will bring people closer to seeing the Unity. I do. Is that correct?

Also, the "things are moving along" refers tho the full essay, in its power to convice regarding the fallcy of Materialism. I should have specificed that.

[Jim Cross]

What a toxic place this has become almost an anti-BK-forum. I will be a passive reader from now on for the most part.

Well, I would suggest more 'meta' kastrup, as the forum name implies, rather than anti-kastrup—although some occasional facile detractors may be in that category. My own critique, if you can call it a critique, is only that, to my liking, he doesn't venture far enough into the profound implications of idealism—albeit, he just doesn't see that as his role, content to deconstruct the limits of materialism, and offer a cogent, scientifically compatible (or so he claims) counter-materialist argument, while being wary of over-speculating about so-called paranormal experiences, like NDEs, OBEs, psychedelic trips, etc. Very few here would dispute that his endeavour is not without merit. Some just want to take it much further than that.

Odd comments coming after I just credited BK for a better approach than Mishlove's. I would have put BK's paper far above Mishlove's.

Really though. All of this anecdotal life after death stuff that Mishlove's offers has been dealt with in many many other books. So his paper is much less original than BK's.

Most of it has also been debunked. Some people prefer to believe it anyway. But most people don't and certainly most scientists don't. BK's topic was, by the way, about approaching this topic from a mainstream science perspective. Certainly "mainstream" scientists by and large don't believe it now and I doubt the paper would persuade many to change their mind.

The problem is as pointed out by Reber:

In short, parapsychology cannot be true unless the rest of science isn’t. Moreover, if psi effects were real, they would have already fatally disrupted the rest of the body of science. If one’s wishes and hopes were having a psychokinetic impact on the world—including computers and lab equipment—scientists’ findings would be routinely biased by their hopes and beliefs. Results would differ from lab to lab whenever scientists had different aims. The upshot would be empirical chaos, not the (reasonably) ordered coherent picture developed over the past several centuries.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/07/w ... t-be-true/

While Reber is writing about parapsychology in general, the same applies to survival after death. Anybody who wants to use science as an explanation needs to address how the rest of science is such a failure, especially since it generally works well for constructing buildings or atom bombs, predicting eclipses, diagnosing disease, or flying to the moon.

Of course, the little ego thinks it has a right to persist even after death. The brute force of consciousness apparently tricks us into thinking that is all that there is.

Post note: I think most of this comment is relating more to Mark's comment. Shu, I think I am actually somewhat agreeing with you. I think BK is trying to walk a line between mainstream science and the paranormal. That's a hard line to follow without slipping to one side or the other.

[AshvinP]

Speaking of that, re: the essay of this topic. (Formal) BK does go into a lot more detail on these subjects than I have seen him (Formally) do before.


The article also clarifies the details on what he proposes happens after death. (Not surprisingly, since it's the subject at hand);

I think this quote is quite illuminating.


It's possible that he has said this already in one of his many conversations, but it's the first time i see this in a rigourous essay. Things are moving along!

Things are not moving along in the above quote of BK. Things are getting worse and worse. Instead of admitting he simply does not know what occurs when a person dies and perhaps listening to reasoned arguments of others about what does actually happen (like Cleric here), which he could then challenge, question, clarify, etc., he projects his abstract intellectual speculation across the threshold of death and refuses to discuss the issue with anyone else in any precise and rigorous way. No matter what, he refuses to abandon the concept of "dissociative boundaries not yet sealed", which is the implicitly dualistic reason why he is forced to speculate recklessly in this manner. Anyone thinking clearly about this can perceive why it is an entirely self-imposed limitation, with no basis in any consistent idealism.

Right. You don't think that flipping the arrow will bring people closer to seeing the Unity. I do. Is that correct?

Also, the "things are moving along" refers tho the full essay, in its power to convice regarding the fallcy of Materialism. I should have specificed that.

Probably it's better to say I don't think BK is flipping the arrow at all. He is simply substituting one set of abstract concepts we find in materialism with another set. He knows that "dissociation" is not consistent with idealism, but he doesn't want to admit that there is no hard dissosciation in our current life with "sealed" boundaries, because there are many philosophical and spiritual implications downstream of such an admission, so he says it goes away after death. Then he speculates on vague ways in which it might go away, according to whatever suits his own spiritual preferences. In short, it is completey subjective and arbitrary, not appropriate for any genuine philosophical or scientific approach to the most important phenomena in our living experience. To be clear, I am not suggesting he does any of this consciously. I think most of it is done subconsciously, although he consciously makes sure what he is doing subconsciously will never be revealed to him, i.e. refusing to seriously discuss it with anyone informed on the matters.

[Martin_]

Really though. All of this anecdotal life after death stuff that Mishlove's offers has been dealt with in many many other books. So his paper is much less original than BK's.

Agreed.

[Martin_]

Things are not moving along in the above quote of BK. Things are getting worse and worse. Instead of admitting he simply does not know what occurs when a person dies and perhaps listening to reasoned arguments of others about what does actually happen (like Cleric here), which he could then challenge, question, clarify, etc., he projects his abstract intellectual speculation across the threshold of death and refuses to discuss the issue with anyone else in any precise and rigorous way. No matter what, he refuses to abandon the concept of "dissociative boundaries not yet sealed", which is the implicitly dualistic reason why he is forced to speculate recklessly in this manner. Anyone thinking clearly about this can perceive why it is an entirely self-imposed limitation, with no basis in any consistent idealism.

Right. You don't think that flipping the arrow will bring people closer to seeing the Unity. I do. Is that correct?

Also, the "things are moving along" refers tho the full essay, in its power to convice regarding the fallcy of Materialism. I should have specificed that.

Probably it's better to say I don't think BK is flipping the arrow at all. He is simply substituting one set of abstract concepts we find in materialism with another set. He knows that "dissociation" is not consistent with idealism, but he doesn't want to admit that there is no hard dissosciation in our current life with "sealed" boundaries, because there are many philosophical and spiritual implications downstream of such an admission, so he says it goes away after death. Then he speculates on vague ways in which it might go away, according to whatever suits his own spiritual preferences. In short, it is completey subjective and arbitrary, not appropriate for any genuine philosophical or scientific approach to the most important phenomena in our living experience. To be clear, I am not suggesting he does any of this consciously. I think most of it is done subconsciously, although he consciously makes sure what he is doing subconsciously will never be revealed to him, i.e. refusing to seriously discuss it with anyone informed on the matters.

Right. I get it, although i see it a different way. Out of curiosity, from where do you get his claim that the boundaries are sealed and the dissociation is hard? That's not at all how i interpret his model. If that's been discussed before i've missed it.

In fact, there is a passage in the topic essay which indicates a model of "permeable" boundaries:

Let us first consider telepathy. Under idealism, reality consists of excitations of a
spatially unbound field of subjectivity—i.e., one universal mind. Therefore, what
needs to be explicitly accounted for is why we can’t read other people’s thoughts all
the time; after all, we are all—ex hypothesi—part of the same mind. Idealism accounts
for this by inferring that dissociative processes spontaneously arise in the universal
mind. But no process in nature is perfect or ideal. Combustion never burns
everything there is to burn. Rain fall never precipitates all air humidity. And so it is
not only conceivable, but expectable, that dissociation won’t prevent all cognitive
traffic from crossing dissociative boundaries. That telepathy should occur now and
then, especially under conditions related to impaired metabolism (i.e., weakened
dissociation), is indeed a prediction of idealism.

[Lou Gold]

It really appears to me that these endless conceptual debates are generated by a fallacious "third-person objective view" that does not align with first person experience. I am experienced with mediumship and find disincarnate beings as quite real. Another person with this experience needs no convincing, mutual recognition of experience is enough. However, and despite any conceptual gymnastics, for those without this experience there will be no convincing.

[AshvinP]

Right. You don't think that flipping the arrow will bring people closer to seeing the Unity. I do. Is that correct?

Also, the "things are moving along" refers tho the full essay, in its power to convice regarding the fallcy of Materialism. I should have specificed that.

Probably it's better to say I don't think BK is flipping the arrow at all. He is simply substituting one set of abstract concepts we find in materialism with another set. He knows that "dissociation" is not consistent with idealism, but he doesn't want to admit that there is no hard dissosciation in our current life with "sealed" boundaries, because there are many philosophical and spiritual implications downstream of such an admission, so he says it goes away after death. Then he speculates on vague ways in which it might go away, according to whatever suits his own spiritual preferences. In short, it is completey subjective and arbitrary, not appropriate for any genuine philosophical or scientific approach to the most important phenomena in our living experience. To be clear, I am not suggesting he does any of this consciously. I think most of it is done subconsciously, although he consciously makes sure what he is doing subconsciously will never be revealed to him, i.e. refusing to seriously discuss it with anyone informed on the matters.

Right. I get it, although i see it a different way. Out of curiosity, from where do you get his claim that the boundaries are sealed and the dissociation is hard? That's not at all how i interpret his model. If that's been discussed before i've missed it.

BK says - "It is conceivable that newly emerging alters, with dissociative boundaries not yet sealed, could incorporate those contents in the process of their development." So he is claiming that at some time before some de-individuated soul is reborn into "newly emerging alter", dissociative boundaries are formed and are "sealed". And that is how we go about existing between birth and death, until the boundaries are "unsealed" again after death. This is a dualistic, reductionistic, and atomistic view of human souls between birth and death without any warrant.

In fact, there is a passage in the topic essay which indicates a model of "permeable" boundaries:

Let us first consider telepathy. Under idealism, reality consists of excitations of a spatially unbound field of subjectivity—i.e., one universal mind. Therefore, what needs to be explicitly accounted for is why we can’t read other people’s thoughts all the time; after all, we are all—ex hypothesi—part of the same mind. Idealism accounts for this by inferring that dissociative processes spontaneously arise in the universal mind. But no process in nature is perfect or ideal. Combustion never burns everything there is to burn. Rain fall never precipitates all air humidity. And so it is not only conceivable, but expectable, that dissociation won’t prevent all cognitive traffic from crossing dissociative boundaries. That telepathy should occur now and then, especially under conditions related to impaired metabolism (i.e., weakened dissociation), is indeed a prediction of idealism.

Let's break down what is happening in the above passage:

"Under idealism, reality consists of excitations of a spatially unbound field of subjectivity—i.e., one universal mind. Therefore, what needs to be explicitly accounted for is why we can’t read other people’s thoughts all the time; after all, we are all—ex hypothesi—part of the same mind."

Absolutely correct. This is the view necessitated by a consistent idealism.

"But no process in nature is perfect or ideal...And so it is not only conceivable, but expectable, that dissociation won’t prevent all cognitive traffic from crossing dissociative boundaries."

Here he has suddenly switched to describing the very structure of the One Mind with "dissociative boundaries". He imagines himself standing apart from MAL and seeing how there are bubble-like boundaries surrounding each "alter" (which is only a possible 3rd-person perspective under dualistic thinking). Once in awhile, according to BK, and for no apparent reason we can identify, one of these boundaries becomes more permeable and lets ideations cross over to other "alters". That is what explains the phenomena of "telepathy" for him, and presumably all other phenomena which involve shared ideations.

There is a much more simple, intuitive, and logically sound explanation - our own localized cognition has subconsciously veiled most of the One Mind and therefore we ignore most of the ideations which are always interpenetrating each other within the unified 'space' of the One Mind. We see the results of these interpenetrations everywhere in our experience, i.e. shared percepts/concepts, communication, planning with others by way of logical reasoning, empathy, etc. - but we have completely forgotten why and how those results come about. We just take them for granted and have no expanation for them apart from speculating "boundaries" arbitrarily become permeable once in awhile.

Instead of projecting our own personal cognitive limitation onto the structure of Reality itself, we are simply recognizing that we are incomplete beings who are not yet knowledgeable or cognitively free, yet with the capacity to move towards genuine knowledge and cognitive freedom in this lifetime, between birth and death. This recognition is how we start to overcome abstract, dualistic, and reductive materialism AND idealism alike. Without this recognition, we have overcome neither, even if we claim that we no longer "believe" in material things which give rise to consciousness. Until we discover the logic of this recognition from within, our abstraction and reductionism is functioning exactly the same as it does in the mind of an explicit outward materialist.

[Eugene I]

Ashvin, you are right, it is exactly the subconscious "veiling" that makes the localized cognition to ignore and not being able to experience the "excitations of a spatially unbound field of subjectivity—i.e., one universal mind". BK first offered DID only as an explanatory analogy to make some sense of such "veiling", but then he also brought the ideas and terms of "Markov blanket" and "dissociative boundary" as linguistic labels for such "veiling" phenomenon and called the localized cognition as "alters" according to the DID analogy. Over time BK used these terms everywhere without reminding that they are only metaphors for the "veiling" phenomenon, and so this analogy started living its own life disconnected from the actual 1-st person phenomenon of the "veiling" that it was just a metaphor of, and turned into an abstract 3-person perspective metaphysical and dualistic model of the Mind. If I were BK, I would probably write an article saying "guys, we went too far, the "alters" and "boundaries" are not in any way real, these are only metaphors and analogies, stop interpreting them literally in a naïve realistic way" (providing that this is the way he himself understands it).

[Martin_]

He imagines himself standing apart from MAL and seeing how there are bubble-like boundaries surrounding each "alter"

I'm not sure he does. I think there is a distinct possibility that he might be imagining himself Inside MAL.

Again though, in my view these are finer points which we all can discuss a lot more effectively when we're all in the house of Idealism. Step One is to get ppl looking at the House in the first place.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Right. I get it, although i see it a different way. Out of curiosity, from where do you get his claim that the boundaries are sealed and the dissociation is hard? That's not at all how i interpret his model. If that's been discussed before i've missed it.

In fact, there is a passage in the topic essay which indicates a model of "permeable" boundaries:

Let us first consider telepathy. Under idealism, reality consists of excitations of a
spatially unbound field of subjectivity—i.e., one universal mind. Therefore, what
needs to be explicitly accounted for is why we can’t read other people’s thoughts all
the time; after all, we are all—ex hypothesi—part of the same mind. Idealism accounts
for this by inferring that dissociative processes spontaneously arise in the universal
mind. But no process in nature is perfect or ideal. Combustion never burns
everything there is to burn. Rain fall never precipitates all air humidity. And so it is
not only conceivable, but expectable, that dissociation won’t prevent all cognitive
traffic from crossing dissociative boundaries. That telepathy should occur now and
then, especially under conditions related to impaired metabolism (i.e., weakened
dissociation), is indeed a prediction of idealism.

Sometimes BK's choice of wording is questionable. In this experience any such 'hard' boundary is a conceptual fabrication. There is always a nexus of interchange, and never 'sealed' except insofar as one believes that is the case after being indoctrinated into the prevailing paradigm, in which case, that factors into the limits of one's capacity, and even willingness, to traverse that nexus. I much prefer BK's, and The Other's musings in the sub-section titled 'Death' in Part III of More Than Allegory (In the hard copy beginning on page 215), wherein, in reply to our protagonist's question "What is death?", The Other answers: "You're being lazy ... You can easily derive the answer to this question from what you already know."