"People represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."
E.M.Cioran
Scholars and researchers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, whose basic endeavor toward debunking the atrocities of religion I have always applauded, are slowly beginning to lead a new mutant-legion. The question is in what are they going to be transformed.
These top researchers were worried by the universal folly of religions always spreading like a mind disease through mankind history. I understand that their worry -which I duly share- is completely rational and quite legal.
But little by little I am discovering awful signs of -let me be a little "Dawkinsnian" myself- "memetic contamination".
Many letters at Richard Dawkins' site begins with a "I am an atheist" or something like that. Not only at his site. It sounds like a new "declaration of faith". Sorry, but the resemblances with " I am a baptist" or "I am a presbyterian" or "I am an adventist" or "I am a Jew" or "I am a muslim" or...etcetera...seem loud and clear to me.
Call me a paranoic. And I will answer that most of the times, if paranoids are not completely right, at least they thrive well for survival.
I don't like the tendency of this thread. It sounds too much like a new religion.
Besides, if you look at the faces of several self-called atheists or agnostics speaking at TV shows or videos, there is a kind of slow but sure mimicry with the religious fanatics faces...and minds.
I am worried. Very worried indeed.
My growing feeling is that we are stepping out of the saucepan to fall into the barbecue.
There is a lot more in Memetics that we may even begin to dream about.
We are inmersed into a memes-soup and contagion is always imminent.
Passion?
Yes.
But not so much that it degenerates into fanatism.
Religious bigots are not so far away and alien to ourselves as we may think.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Be Careful: in order not to transform yourselves into that same "horror" that you denounce
04 September, 2007
Nisargadatta Video (2 of 2)
There is nothing misterious -neither mistyfying-about a man like Nisargadatta. He is just an ultimate example of Self-Inquiry.
The results, by the way, are very far away from the "Hollywodian" cliche of an Indian Teacher or Guru.
Very simple, very unpretentious, and little to be gained in terms of wordly "powers" or goods, quite on the contrary. Paraphrasing U.G.Krishnamurti (not to be confused with the better known Jiddhu Krishnamurti) we may say that if one does not want to loose everything that a man may have in the world, it is better to stay away from this INQUIRY.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Nisargadatta Video (1 of 2)
Nisargadatta and Ranjit are both from the lineage of Siddharameshwar.
They represent Advaita Vedanta in its ultimate form.
Nisargadatta has been "accused" of being an “atheist” which is of course a preposterous assumption, as Nisargadatta endeavor is a very practical one, based completely in Rational Inquiry, as such, it has nothing to do with something in which reason will sink without remedy, as it happens with the subject of God.
Nisargadatta has been also known as a Gnani, that is, one that follows the path of Knowledge , as it is understood in Vedanta, Self-knowledge.The Gnani inquiries in search of “true identity”, if something like that exists at all, a fact that each one must discovered by oneself.
In this sense, Gnanis are truly Scientists of the Mind.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
"A simple man, Nisargadatta Maharaj, was a householder and petty shopkeeper in Bombay where he lived, and died in 1981 at the age of 84. He had not been educated formally, but came to be respected and loved for his insights into the crux of human pain and the extraordinary usidity of his direct discourse. Hundreds of diverse seekers traveled the globe and sought him out in his unpretentious home to hear him. To all of them he gave hope that "beyond the real experience is not the mind, but the self, the light in which everything appears...the awareness in which everything happens."
By the people at http://www.vedanta.com
Around Darwin's beliefs
"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
Charles Darwin
So much has been written about Darwin, that people are overwhelmed by the amount and content of all those statements, enough to discourage them to go to Darwin's own copious works. And the fact is, that beyond Darwin's opinions or conclusions on the very evolutionist issues that have made him famous, he was a philosophical mind of the very first order.
An incredible observer, subtle, precise,witty, and despite everything written against him by men that lack this virtue, he was an extremely humble and sober thinker.
He knew quite well the limits that many men, both from the religious as from the scientific field, completely seem to ignore, namely, that God and the Origins of the universe are matters just beyond our understanding.
I will go one step further, these things lie even far beyond all the possible streching of our imagination.
I will give a simple example:
Suppose that a microbe situated on a tiny spot of the skin in your ankle tries to make a composition of what you are.
Of course, someone may say that my comparison is preposterous due to the fact that the microbe is supposedly a sort of mindless entity, at least completely un-rational. But on behalf of the microbe I could say that in comparison, knowing what we know -which is only a glimpse- of the size of the universe-, the microbe has a big advantage over us, the scale is far smaller than between God and us.
Why are both scientists and religious men so eager to give their verdict on this most absurd matter?
Because of Fear. Unbearable Fear.
Pascal wrote: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me"
In the original French the phrase sounds even more depicting of that sense of horror that overcomes this little creature that we are when confronted with such vastness.
The need for some kind of certainty in the midst of the unfathomable, has always been an incentive for producing theories.
We must not forget, though, that such measures are nothing but placebos. Sort of intelectual barbirutates or moral benzodiazepines to diminish the excruciating "angst" that overwhelms the thinking animal confronting such a "Beast".
Darwin, as many many thinking men -my most humble truly yours one of them- could not possibly accept that an All-Benevolent God could possibly be behind so much pain, anguishes and catastrophes as we have down here. Such a though must certainly be simply abhorrent for any rational creature. Although priests of every faith are an exception. Or perhaps they simply do not enter into the first proposition.
My own predicament is rather awful. As I cannot rationally accept that a Good God could be behind all this, if there is a God after all behind this, he could only be my worst enemy. In the very best of the possible agreements, mutual love would be definitely out of the question.
To soothe my very own and very intense "fear and tremble", I am on the side of the old Gnostics, who believed that this whole manifestation was the work of the evil Demiurge, and that the Good, All Loving God rests away from all this pestilence.
May we all thrust and rest in His Profound Love and Peace which most certainly CANNOT be from this world.
PS: Yes, I know, if we accept this gnostic proposal we must confront the fact that the GOOD GOD that has nothing to do with all this is not "almighty" as an alien force is operating beyond his realm...Well, I began this disquisition quoting Darwin on the impossibilities of our mind to grasp such things. "THIS", which the ancients depicted as "Mysterium tremens".
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Jardines de Prometeo,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
at 10.10 AM September 4, 2007
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen"
03 September, 2007I began my life obsessed by the subject of God and immersed in the research of all the diverse religions. Mine has been a long, too long route to Damascus. And a deep Night of the Soul.
Finally the existence of God began bringing me more restlessness than Its possible absence.
Because, ¿What kind of God could have created such a thing? What could be the Nature of THAT?
The presumption of the religious men, who pretend to be the authorized spokesmen of God’s Word, seems to me absolutely abominable. There isn’t a greater Blasphemy than pretending to know what God is, wht God looks for o what God wants. And it is the upmost Blasphemy, because it means sheer Nonsense.
"If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit."
Robert Anton Wilson
Some days ago a couple whose little daughter got restore from a usually fatal illness, was praising God “for having realized the miracle” of saving the child’s life”.
That most natural attitude in the majority of people, brought me instead a sensation of unbearable horror. Because, What happen then with the thousand children that died on that same day? Which was God’s will in these cases? Did God spare this little girl's life and abandoned the rest?
In a situation like this - that most certainly presents itself daily in thousands of different forms with people as fervent believers as those were- to believe in a god that exists in a participative way in the destiny of men produces in me an indescribable uneasiness.
That is why I consider Wittgenstein one of the great religious philosophers, and I have used as a title his last phrase in the Tractatus:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Religious philosopher I have said, because there isn’t a more certain and deep religion than Silence, which is the only that does justice to THAT about nothing can be "think of", or "say about". The immensurable pile of words that men have spent through the centuries to speak about that about nothing can be say, gives us a clear notion of the tremendous ignorance in which mankind drowns itself today and always.
Could someone call my position "agnosticism"?
May be.
For me it is simple reason and plain common sense.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Suggestion for Psychologists and Students of Psychology
After 30 years of professional practice of Psychology and Psychoterapy, I believe that the most fast and efficient way to learn psychology is to study Etology. Studying animal behavior you are going to learn psychology faster and better than reading all of Freud, Jung and Lacan works.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
XXX Century Avatars
Such is the amount and deepness of people's credulity and the fickleness of historians, that it will not be surprising that in the XXX Century, Donald the Duck and Mickey Mouse could be remembered as great blood and flesh spiritual masters and founders of religions!
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Vivekananda in the streets of Calcutta
Identification
Every "spiritual"teaching that we may ever need is condensed in the following:
If you don't "identify" yourself, the circus suspends its performance immediately.
If you "identify"yourself, the circus begins its performance once again.
The fact that so much has been written about "spirituality" and the alleged "spiritual life" is a clear proof of the kind of crooks that are usually leading ashrams, founding churches or creating religions.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
True Spirituality
True Spirituality is an intimate affair.
Wittgenstein used to vaguely talked about “'das Mystische”, a realm inaccessible to analysis or articulate description.
I have used the word “true” attached to “spirituality”, because any manifestation that goes away from that indispensable “intimacy”, must be suspected. This obviously includes any relation whatsoever with organized religions, that in this sense, must be observed as possibly anything, except Spirituality.
I quite understand that my statement is rather nasty, but I don’t think that Spirituality can be bent and twist to fit into anything of the sort.
In organized religions we have morals, codes, rules and a lot of collective manipulation. But Spirituality is rather alien to all of them.
This seemingly extreme opinion is really in concordance with the essence of Jesus sayings in the Gospel. Not that I need to arrive to an agreement with what the Gospel said, but just for the record.
Wittgenstein “vagueness”, which has been criticized, here and there, could not be otherwise, taking into account the elusive nature of the issue involved. As Lao Tzu clearly wrote, “The Tao that could be explained is not the real Tao”.
Once the true role of organized religions is understood –to establish some particular moral standards that mostly will serve the needs of the most powerful men and corporations at a given time and place- it must be also clear that any pretended wisdom about what lies before or beyond this life, is just a rather conceited supposition.
The all-embracing power of organized religions has always come from the alleged visions of the alleged visionaries of the alleged Gods. Too many allegations for the rational mind to be comfortable with.
True Spirituality is a process that comes and goes mostly in Silence. It is a rather unseen activity, but its fruits are and have always been visible and tangible: kindness, tenderness, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and peace. Not precisely the sort of fruits that we are watching coming out from organized religions in today’s world.
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Two comments on an Article by Sam Harris at Newsweek
Commenting Sam Harris article "The empty wager" at the online version of Newsweek:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/04/the_cost_of_betting_on_faith.html
I wrote the following:
Sam Harris is, together with Richard Dawkins and a little bunch of first line scientific writers, one of the few that is confronting the madness of a belief structure that has, systematically and inexorably, led to innumerable collective catastrophes. He is worried, very much so, and with outstanding reason. Religious belief as has been preserved by organized religions, is a calamity that has to be confronted by rational minds all over the world. The clash between those beliefs and super-advanced technology will provoke further holocausts, poisoning, in way to that final destiny, our daily lives in every possible manner. 100% support to Dr. Harris work.
After posting my initial comment, I took a look to other commentators. I think that many rationally prone people would agree with me, and I most certainly do not want to offend any person that feels otherwise, but each time somebody defends his or her faith on account of a man or god, whose accountability rests on the far past (like Buddha, Jesus, or whoever) saying I am a Buddhist, or I am a Christian, etc, I cannot help but think in the following comparison, I imagine a person two thousands years from now, proclaiming: I am a Mickey Mouseian, or a Donald Duckian...
Can just we grasp whatever we can from God HERE AND NOW without resorting to some past, improvable and alien experience?
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Sam Harris on his "The End of Faith" 1 of 4
Philosopher Sam Harris discussing issues included in his bestseller "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason". This series at YouTube consists of 4 small videos, which I am posting here. This is an abridged version of the full AVI which is about 1 hour 25 minutes long.
Both Sam Harris and, before him, Richard Dawkins, have began a sort of "holy" war against religious beliefs. I am saying "holy" because in some ways both scientists seem to be applying a similar sort of zeal as religious pundits do to defend their views.
Despite everything that I could say -because I am far away from agreeing with everything they propose- - Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins campaign represents a much needed and purposeful "rational dam" to organized religions outrageous conceptions and their obnoxious effects on every field of human life
Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
