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D. Read's Revelation
seeker1@MAPLE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU
Wed, 12 Jan 1994 22:11:55 EST
.... so D. Read, how did you arrive at the assumption that the mind IS JUST
a manifestation of the material brain? Was it a revelation?
In all seriousness, one need not believe in non-material properties for
either the brain or the universe (although I do), in order to conceive of
parapsychological mechanisms for receiving knowledge apart from the
processing of sense-data.
You are sitting right now in front of a machine which is receiving
information from all over the planet. That information probably comes from
a physical connection, e.g. a cable for carrying digital data. However,
on an Ethernet connection, this data would be arriving in a nonphysical form
(e.g. energy, namely electromagnetic signals) which is transceived through
a physical device.
Perhaps the brain contains in organ which in unusual states of
functioning (e.g. the overwhelming of cognitive programming which insists it
is incapable of such functioning) can transceive data from the 'information
spectrum' being broadcast from other brains similarly operating.
This takes us to the matter of the empirical facticity of ESP, which I
accept, and for which I am sure several people will take me to task, arguing
that the AAAS should never, never have let those kooky ghostbuster types in.
(But this puts me in the company of our esteemed totem goddess Ms. Mead.)
And that, under certain conditions which most brains normally do not
meet, this faculty is operational and capable of providing the brain with
information not arrived at from sense-data.
And that perhaps some of the knowledge which is gained through
nonordinary states of awareness may in some cases be derived by this faculty.
And that, as I argued above, nothing is needed for this process other
than the material brain, energy, and information.
Hence we can have our spirit possession and still live in the material,
mechanistic universe which the Western tunnel-reality prefers, no?
Seeker1
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