Links about philosophy, religious experiencing, and psychedelics

These are links to sites, pages, or queries, relevant to the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence. Links to book descriptions. These links provide the gaps -- what are the gaps that you won't find at all the sites? Google searches seem to be producing much more distinctive results than "cool site" link lists and conventional categories. A more granular approach to putting links here works better.

Searching is more granular than conventional cool site lists, and the links I put here are more granular, with a page first, site last approach to providing links. This way I cut across sites providing new categories -- a new database View, a view that is not the conventional view and categories. Cut across the categories my own distinctive way. Search for the search, the view, that cuts across the Net in a way that highlights the distinctive ideas I've put together in my Theory.

· Entheogens in the origins of Christianity

· Determinism, Fate, and the block universe

· Christ-myth

· Self-control cybernetics and religious experiencing.

· loss of control and mystic rapture

Each Google search can form a topical webpage. The good news for me is that so far in my special Google searches, my own pages appear near the top, showing that I have a clear idea of what's distinctive about my philosophy.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/ -- The Foundations of Christianity site - Quentin David Jones

http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/FallofChrist.html -- The Descent of Christ

Andrew Benson, author of the book, The True Origins of Christianity & the Bible, -- the "fictitious, forged and fraudulent history" of these two entities. (The book is available for about $25, from the Prudential Publishing Company, PO Box 1372, Clovis, CA 93613-1372, or through special order from major book stores.

http://www.freethoughtforum.org/Religion Articles/fundamentalism's_gift_to_humanity.htm

http://home.talkcity.com/SpiritCir/gracewatcher/mystery.html -- Esoteric Christianity: The Greek Mystery Religions and Their Impact on Christianity (copied from Benson's site)

Detailed table of contents

http://www.totse.com/en/drugs/psychedelics/index.html

http://www.totse.com/en/drugs/psychedelics/dmtschiz.html -

Like previous investigators, we found that DMT was a hallucinogen with rapid action and a short duration of effect. Psychological changes were evident within 5 minutes of injection, peaked at about 10 to 15 minutes, and ended within 45 to 120 minutes. The major psychological effects are shown in table 1. The subjects became so uncommunicative and withdrawn during the drug experience that we were forced to inquire about the subjective effects with simple "yes-no" questions. Although all subjects reported visual distortions and illusions, these were color or spatial distortions rather than formed visual hallucinations. Only 1 subject reported an auditory hallucination, a "buzzing bee" in his ear. We did not observe formal loosening of associations, although several subjects seemed to have thought blocking. Two subjects had paranoid symptoms that lasted less than an hour.

These psychological changes were accompanied by mydriasis, tachycardia, and increased blood pressure. Blood levels of DMT (see figure 2), assayed by a gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) isotopic dilution technique, closely paralleled the psychological and autonomic changes (11). Peak concentrations of DMT, which averaged approximately 100 ng/ml, were reached about 10 to 15 minutes after injection; the concentration then fell rapidly to baseline, undetectable levels within about 45 to 120 minutes after administration.

TABLE 1.

Subjective Effects of DMT Experienced by 15 Normal Volunteer Subjects

--------------------------------- -------

Subjective Effects Percent

--------------------------------- -------

Visual hallucinations 100

Hallucinations with eyes closed 100

Movement of surroundings 93

Difficulty talking 93

Difficulty describing feelings 93

Relaxation 93

Difficulty concentrating 93

Colors seem brighter 87

Excitation 87

Thinking faster 87

Dry mouth 87

Tenseness 80

People look different 75

Depersonalization 60

Nausea 60

People have orange-red hue 53

Hallucinating "real things" 27

Paranoia 20

Auditory hallucinations 7

Spiritual Emergence or Psychosis? - by Selene Vega. kundalini-l-d Digest. Volume 96 : Issue 169

Subject: spirituality vs.psychosis

6. Possession States The Grofs describe this crisis as the emergence of an archetype of evil that is identified as demonic by the possessed individual. They say that this type of possession state "can underlie serious psychopathology such as suicidal depression, murderous aggression, impulses for antisocial behavior, or craving for excessive doses of alcohol and drugs. They imply that there might be some relationship to multiple personalities as well.

The Grofs describe therapy hours that resemble medieval exorcisms when the archetype appears during the session. Often there is choking, projectile vomiting, or frantic motor behavior with temporary loss of control. To resolve the problem, the archetypal pattern must be allowed to emerge and exteriorize, leading to a liberating and therapeutic experience. The Grofs do not go into detail about what type of support is required from the therapist in this situation beyond the need to be "not afraid of the uncanny nature of the experiences involved."

In addition to the demonic sort of possession state that the Grofs describe, I would imagine that more benevolent possession states would also fit in this category. There are many cultures where the deliberate induction of possession states is part of a valued religious experience. This includes Haitian voodoo ceremonies where specific deities are invited to `ride' the bodies of the worshippers during specific ceremonies (Metraux, 1959, p. 121), as well as the dancers of Bali who become the entity they are portraying in ritual drama. Even in our country there exist religious groups who consider it desirable to be possessed by the Holy Spirit, with physical manifestations that include shaking and speaking in tongues (Sargant, 1975). P. Buckley (1981) cites E. Bourguignon as concluding that possession trance is an ability that is part of the human potential, as his worldwide studies show that it is utilized in a large percentage of societies.

Not covered in these six categories is the classical mystical experience that is understood as a union with the divine. Much of the historical written literature describing mystical experiences falls into this category and comparisons have been made of these accounts with those of psychotics. Buckley gives an example comparing St. Augustine's mystical experience with the description John Custance wrote of his psychotic experience (Buckley, 1981). These descriptions demonstrate beautifully the similarity (at least in the retrospective description) between the two experiential states. It would be difficult to distinguish between them on the basis of the 200-300 words of description that Buckley excerpted.

Buckley delineates several specific concepts often found in descriptions of both mystical and psychotic experiences.

1. Feeling of being transported beyond the self to a new realm

2. Feeling of communion with the `divine'

3. Sense of ecstasy and exultation

4. Heightened state of awareness

5. Loss of self-object boundaries

6. Powerful sense of noesis

7. Distortion of time-sense, particularly time-distortion

8. Perceptual changes

A. Synesthesia

B. Dampening or heightening

9. Hallucinations

The hallucinations found in mystical experiences are more often of the visual than the auditory type. A frequently described vision for both states is "the sensation of seeing and being enveloped in `light'" (Buckley, 1981).

The heightened state of awareness... a "lowering of perceptual thresholds that allows greater awareness of alternate states or of inner life"... a breakdown in the `stimulus barrier.' This characteristic... is shared by hallucinogenic drug states. ...an increase in primary process thinking.

Oxman, et al conducted a computerized content analysis of written passages describing schizophrenia, hallucinogenic drug experiences and mystical experiences with autobiographical accounts as controls.

---

Buckley, P. (1981). Mystical experience and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 7, 516-521.

Sanella, L. (1978). Kundalini: Psychosis or transcendence. San Francisco: H. R. Dakin.

Sargant, W. (1975) The mind possessed. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

The Jesus Puzzle site

Home

About the book The Jesus Puzzle

Book reviews of Christ-myth books --

Book review: The Jesus Mysteries

Book review: The Christ Conspiracy -

Book review: Jesus -- One Hundred Years before Christ -

Book review: Deconstructing Jesus -

Discussion area

mailto:oblio at ca.inter.net,EarlDoherty at hotmail.com

Journal of Higher Criticism

The Jesus Mysteries site

Discussion area at eGroups

Discussion area at CNN for The Jesus Mysteries

Links

Email authors

http://www.kheper.auz.com/topics/Gnosticism/Gnosticism.htm - Gnosticism site

http://www.cyberus.ca/~brons/valentin.htm

http://www.hermetic.com/gnostic-list/index.html - discussion

Gnostic links at academicinfo.net

Gnostic webring

http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?language=English&version=RSV - bible gateway

The Jesus Seminar

The Mysteries of Attis and Cybele - Gary Courtney.

Existence of Jesus Controversy - with passages from Wells. Rae West.

Religion and the Information Society - Jorge Reina Schement and Hester C. Stephenson. School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. Rutgers University. A version of this paper was published as: Schement, Jorge Reina, and Hester C. Stephenson (1996) Religion and the information society. In Religion and mass media: Audiences and adaptations. D.A. Stout and J.M. Buddenbaum, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Just as any technology arises out of the values of its creators, so too do new mediated forms of worship arise out of understandings of Church, rite, and spirituality. In this chapter we weave together the connections between the information society and religion... by exploring the historic and contemporary threads that link the information society to Judeo-Christian institutions and beliefs.[2] We first review the tendencies and tensions of the information society, and then discuss emerging forms of religious practice. At essay's end, we speculate on the consequences of what may result.

...the continued convergence of religion and technology is likely to result in religious expressions within the medium of virtual communities

...the impact of the information society on the practice of religion will produce a most complex range of possibilities beyond any simple predictions.

As information comes to be considered as a thing, so too will religion. The facility with which information can be converted into a commodity also encourages the brokering of religious symbols in the marketplace, with resulting fuzzy boundaries. Americans will consume spirituality in the same settings in which they consumer entertainment.

The reinvention of domestic space has remade the home into a media center. The old public exposure to the norms of the congregation has been left behind for the liberation of the privacy of one's home. Where the faithful once sought solitude they now claim privacy.

Americans are busy constructing virtual communities, both within and beyond the internet. The power of the home as media center assists in this quest, and the new attitude toward religious privacy encourages the practice of religion apart from traditional geographically oriented communities. Certainly, the mainstream religions, with their dependence on a centralized hierarchy to govern and socialize the members, will adapt. But many will do so by bringing together mostly anonymous congregations. Still, the yen for intimate community continues unabated.

Religions of the book must re-examine their skill base, as traditional literacy declines while new forms of electronic literacy establish themselves. That is, along with the emergence of megachurches and electronic congregations will come the adoption of presentation rituals that emphasize the visual and the oral.

The line between media entertainment and media religion will continue to blur, as the consumption of religion and the consumption of secular entertainment take place in the same settings. Individuals accustomed to meeting so many needs via the same channels are thus likely to further blur the separation between religious belief and political conviction.

..intertwining of religion and the information society... How will the tendencies and tensions of the information age lead people to imagine their God differently? In what ways will these interactions alter religious practice? ...will new religious sects grow from the dynamics of the information society?

...Americans are choosing new settings for religious expression.

http://www.futureworship.com/reframing_paul.htm

Reframing Paul : Conversations in Grace & Community

By Mark Strom

(http://www.users.bigpond.com/sstrom)

Argues that Paul was for radical religious freedom and was anti-elitist.

Mysticism vs. Madness - by Group #4: Mark Butterfield, Allison Carrol, Kevin Cunningham, Melanie Johnson, Michael Roma (the marbleless mystics)

As we all know, mysticism can come in many forms. During the early 1900's, William James wrote about the idea of a spectrum, contiuum, of mystical states of conciousness ranging from the non-religious to the most religiously profound (James 1982). Yet, how can any mystical experience be validated? And what are the criteria for constituting such things? In the quest to understand the mystical experience, questions like these must be answered. So, what is mystical and what is neurotic?

Drug Workshop -

harm reduction perspective to the use of psychoactive drugs, and supports the use of psychedelics as an alternative euphoriant. This site is for those who are interested in unlearning drug-guilt, overcoming addiction, and embracing drugcraft as a means for attaining euphoria. The Drug Workshop ... does support social activism to change the law."

...American drug policy has been "pharmacological Calvinism", i.e. getting pleasure from drugs is evil. This assumption is based on American historical puritanism which views any altered state of consciousness a threat to piety, devotion, and patriotism.

In spite of our Constitutional guarantee of freedom from religion, drug taking is still treated as a sin, and drug rehabilitation is, in many instances, simply a form of penance. In every instance drug taking is viewed as abnormal. And, based on the "medical model" of addiction, taking drugs when you are "well" is considered "sick"... a pathology.

Drug use as a basic human drive - ... within the past two decades there is a growing understanding that all animals seek out experiences that will alter their consciousness. Many of these experiences are drug experiences. Humans seek out drugs, as we know, but so too do many other animals. ... the pursuit of intoxication as a biological drive just as natural as those other basic drives for oxygen, water, food, sleep or "internet" sex.

Understanding and accepting that drug taking is a basic motivational drive will free one from the guilt about taking drugs. Guilt about drug use prevents the integration of drug use into everyday life; drugs take over and the person surrenders control. Due to the legal sanctions which enforce abstinence (called prohibition) there are few social-cultural rules for taking drugs and very few drugs legally available from which to choose.

Hierarchical authority relies on such ignorance and anomie to promote and disseminate drug guilt, i.e. just say no! It does this by supporting the labeling process whereby people come to see themselves as AA/NA/CA "addicts" and thus internalize drug guilt. The "addict" then experiences lack of control by default. By definition, the "addict" gives up all options for control and the prophecy of "loss of control" becomes self-fulfilled. The "addict" behaves as the label implies.

This labeling process is in turn supported through government imposed prohibition laws (mandatory minimum sentences). Government increases the stigmatization process whereby "addicts" are publicly shunned (i.e., not entitled to apply for supportive housing) at times when they are in the greatest need of social support.

Drug use as an empowering activity

Once free from drug guilt people are better able to understand, take control, and harvest those benefits which accrue with every successful/euphoric drug experience. Euphoric drug taking gives one a sense of personal control. Such controlled drug taking is a form of empowerment and can lead to experiences of self-actualization.

Who is to deny someone the opportunity for a "peak"/religious experience!

The Drug Workshop is dedicated toward making the drug experience meaningful, euphoric, personally relevant, and socially beneficial.

It provides support to those persons who want to integrate drug taking into their lives and not have drugs become the center of their lives. It provides a place—a site where people can take the euphoria i.e., positive benefit of their drug experience and use it to further individual and societal growth and development. This is what is meant by drug empowerment: Using drugs as tools for the betterment of all human kind.

To become drug empowered you will need to understand that people do not simply take drugs: they have drug experiences. It is important to understand drug taking as more than the drug itself. It is a holistic experience that involves the sensations that drugs produce but also is inclusive of who takes it, where it is taken, and with whom.

We have learned about these extrapharmacological factors from observing the action of placebos. This is the one "drug" that we here at the Drug Workshop encourage everyone to take... even school children on Ritalin. PLEASE! If you can get your hands on a placebo take it! More than any other drug, placebo reveals the inner workings of the drug experience.

The Drug Experience is the summation of 1) the physical sensations that the drug pharmacologically produces 2) the psychological set of expectations about what it is the drug will do and 3) the socio-environmental setting in which the drug is taken. If all three of these components are not part of your drug plan, you will not have consistently successful and euphoric drug experiences.

...Part of drug control is learning to control dosing: how much; how often; and when?... none of these questions can be answered or even proposed in a political climate that turns drugcraft into witchcraft and "addicts" are "burned at the stake."

Holy Trinity - Hacienda Heights. Sermon

...two trees that defined the relationship of God and man - the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The middle is God's place. Man's life revolved around God, with God in the middle. Life, knowledge, and death are God's to give, not man's to reach out and grab. Man received his life and his knowledge as a gift from God in the middle. Man was made from the mud by the hand of God and had God's breath of life breathed into his nostrils. Man was alive with the life of God, and he knew only good, for he was the image of God.

In the middle of the garden was a boundary, a line drawn by the Word of God. The line was the boundary between God and the image of God, between the Creator and His foremost creature. Every tree in the garden was given to man for food to preserve his life, every tree except the tree of knowing good and evil. This was man's freedom. He was free to eat of any tree in the garden but one. Man's freedom is a freedom with a middle and a limit. Only God has absolute freedom. This boundary line between God in the middle and man is the limit to man's freedom. Over this boundary man may not venture or he will die. [ego death -- mh] For man to reach his hand over that boundary line and eat the forbidden food was to reach into the middle, the place of life, and knowledge, and death, [ego death -mh] the place that only God may occupy. It was to usurp God's place, [trespass into the realm of the ground of being's sovereignty] to be a god in place of God, to push God out from the middle of life, to grab for what was not given. It meant death, for only God can be God. "For on the day you eat of it, you will surely die." [ego death, but not bodily death; you die but you do not die from the Amanita, archetypal entheogen - mh]

This is our temptation. We are tempted to trespass the boundary of God's Word [the sovereignty of the ground of being - mh] and exercise our freedom without limits, to push God from the middle and to put ourselves there, to draw life and knowledge from ourselves and our experiences instead from God, to live as if God did not matter and as if we mattered most. To live without God in the middle is death disguised as life. Temptation is a matter of life and death, not good and evil. [but this rebellion, taking to full completion, is the path and the door to our own individual revelation of the sovereignty of the ground of being over the phenomenal ego that was assumed to be sovereign. - mh]

Temptation began with an assault on God's Word. [no, a discovery of God's Word directly, as a prophet not needing the authoritarian hierarchy of the church as institution. - mh] "Did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" Perhaps Adam and Eve had misunderstood or misheard. That didn't sound like God. How could God, who is good and love, impose limits on their freedom? It wasn't fair. Why would God have put a forbidden tree there in the first place? In the very middle of the garden, of all places.

"Did God really say." It is a religious question from a very religious serpent. It is the seed of all speculative theology and religious philosophy. Eve is invited to step back and become a dispassionate critic of God's Word instead of the object of God's passionate address. She is invited to reach behind and beyond God's Word, to speculate about God, to judge God and His Word, to draw conclusions about God apart from His Word, to use her own experience of God against God's Word. And if her experience conflicted with God's Word, then perhaps God's Word is wrong, or she must have misunderstood it. Eve was on her way to "schwaermeri," religious enthusiasm, faith fashioned by religious experience instead of God's Word. [false dichotomy - spoken from authoritarianism. Gnostic direct-experiencers in original Christianity equated religious experiences with God's word. The experience of falling in ego death and rising in rebirth *is* God's word, received directly. - mh]

...Did God really say, "Honor your parents," "Do not murder," "Do not commit adultery," "Do not steal, lie, cheat, slander, covet?" ...Perhaps it doesn't apply to our modern, enlightened situation. Did God really say, "This is my body; this is my blood" or did he mean something else? Did God really say, "The sins you forgive are forgiven?" Did God really say, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved?" Did God really say that he forgives sin unconditionally, that Christ has died and been raised for us, that we need no works in order to receive His mercy?

..."You will not surely die [bodily]. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." [you will die in the sense of ego death - mh] The Lie and the Truth lie close at hand. They are wound together tightly. The temptation is to reach into the middle, to cross the boundary between God and man, to be "like God" instead of the "image of God."

To be the "image of God" is to be bound to God's Word and to draw your life from God. To be "like God" is to be bound to your own experience of good and evil and to draw your life from your self.

...the fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom. Wouldn't God want them to be wise? She reached across the boundary into the middle and ate. And she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Adam and Eve took charge of their lives at that moment. Their eyes were opened. They experienced good and evil independently of God. Taking charge, they lost control. Adam fell and in Adam all mankind fell. Falling is the ultimate loss of control. ... Man cannot be "like God." He loses control. He falls. He dies.

Early Nontherapeutic Use Of LSD - From the book Licit and Illicit Drugs. by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine

Although practically none of the sample had originally had any interest in having a religious experience through LSD, nearly half reported a religiously significant experience.

The majority in this sample described both pleasant and unpleasant reactions to the drug. For most, the unpleasantness was recalled as initial and transient. Frequently the unpleasant features were said to have been valuable, 'part of the price of self-knowledge' Quite clearly, several people felt it was necessary to suffer to gain from LSD.

The belief that suffering is a necessary requirement for salvation is extensive in our culture. It is found in psychoanalysis, in the Christian doctrine of salvation from sin, and in the Protestant work ethic which holds that good things do not come easily. One suspects that the welcome accorded to the painful facets of the center LSD experience is not unrelated to these larger themes.

One may also have here an explanation of the strange fact that some people who have personally experienced a bad trip nevertheless take LSD again-and recommend it to their friends. Others, of course, abandon the drug.

Among the informal professionals the chief unpleasant reactions were physical distress [and] feelings of helplessness or loss of control. The clinic patients said that they felt self-conscious or were embarrassed by what they did or felt during the experience. The patients of psychiatrists in private practice suffered raw fear -- of madness, of loss of control, of the unknown lying ahead. In the social circle using LSD for pleasure, the one bad effect was disappointment at the failure of LSD to meet their expectations-to produce the desired aesthetic, euphoric, or self-expanding sensations.

The sovereign ego (the old accustomed King Ego, the egoic ego or egoic self) must be humiliated, suffer, die -- for the transcendent ego or transcendent self to be born and awaken. - mh

A Meditation on Mystical Union Using System Dynamics - Arlen Wolpert

Theory of Consciousness: Consciousness as a dynamic complex system. Arlen Wolpert. Cambridge, MA. September 22,1998. September 1998 revision of this working paper. It was presented first at the 1996 Consciousness Conference at Tucson II and the later revised and presented at the April 1998 Primacy of Consciousness Conference at Lisbon

This overshoot is perceived by the mystic-to-be as a loss of control and produces a fear of death and great anxiety. This great anxiety is reflected in the intense prayer of the Dark Night of the Soul(see PrayerIntensity in the system dynamics flow diagram of Figure 1).

...during which curve 4, FearDeathDueToKnot, rises accompanied by what Kierkegaard called 'fear and trembling'. This fear and trembling leads to intense and insightful prayer. The intensity is that of a drowning man crying out for help; the insightfulness is a gradual recognition that the source of the particular knot is a particular sin, hatred or guilt.

...the culminating point of the 3rd knot removal period when, in fear and trembling, the mystic-to-be accepts in the depths of his heart the deep insight into his sin, hatred, or guilt. This is what is needed to bring PrayerQuality (curve 2) to 100%, the forgiveness threshold, and produce the ForgivenessResponse and removal of the 3rd knot at the 608.63 minute mark.

Then FearDeathDueToKnot drops suddenly from 87.2% of maximum all the way down to around 1% of maximum. At that point there is extreme thankfulness to the Lord, accompanied by rapture. This extreme thankfulness comes about because the blessed Lord has answered his prayer, granted Forgiveness, and saved him from death.

Phenomenological Analysis of Stage 11, the Dark Night of the Soul or Purgation.- Arlen Wolpert

...a knot represented a sin, I presented the sin to the 'Lord' like a drowning man crying for help. Because of the fervor or integrity of prayer at this desperate moment of stress, the Lord, out of the void within, accepts this plea for mercy -- if the Lord so wills. The Lord forgives: the impurity or sin associated with that particular knot in the heart is dissolved and the knot is untied. Then the stress lessened and the mind felt infinitely relieved.

For the case in which a knot represented hatred of a rival, my first move was reluctantly to prepare my mind to forgive.

[he uses charts quite similar to those I've worked with to track the entheogenic loose-cognition response curve against time -- a more detailed version than the charts at Erowid: Duration Charts.]

Greek Religion and Christianization

An attempt to illustrate and explore the circumstances of the Christianization of Greece is difficult for many reasons. First the reasons and events for that lie in the distant past and they are more complex than most people would like to believe. There are two prevailing equally plausible interpretations. The first one suggests that the triumph of Christianity over Greek religion is a proof of the greater truthfulness of the former. Christianity managed to prevail because it arrived at a time when the old religion was collapsing because of socio-economical reasons.

On the other hand one cannot ignore the few who suggest that the extinction of the old religion was caused by the power of “the barbarian theosophy” and Christianization was a result of political moves and was imposed with violent means. An extreme point of view would be the one of Friedrich Nietzsche, who strongly suggested that the triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy was only the coarser and more powerful that has triumphed over the more spiritual and delicate (Shiel, p. 117).

I can only hope that this paper will equally present both of the above arguments or at least some of their elements. In addition what I hope to show is that Christianization was a result of the rejection of the old Olympian religion following the collapse of the Greek ‘polis’, on the one hand. The fact that it was replaced with Christianity though, was a result of both ideological processes as well as political enforcement.

A very well supported point of view is the one that suggests that Christianization was not forcibly imposed but was the natural continuation of the Greek thought. It is true that some ideas in the Greek thought have a remarkable similarity with Christianity and may have prepared for the acceptance of the latter by the Greeks . These should not be considered though to be the only factor to have led to Christianization. Depending on what one wants to argue, they could be also seen as Greek influences on Christianity.

Plato has been called the first Christian before Christ because he has expressed ideas similar to those of Christianity. The most important aspect of his philosophy associated with Christianity is his notion of the existence of one god who created everything including the lesser gods that we know of. In his famous dialogue Timaeos, it is being argued that this ‘creator god’, after creating the universe and everything in it, no longer interferes with human matters. He left this role for the lesser gods which interfere in human life and as we know have many anthropomorphic features. This is as close as one could get to the Christian doctrine of creation. In addition, he argues that god is good and he created the world because he desired that there should be as many beings as possible to share his perfection.

References:

Hyde, Walter Woodburn. (1923). Greek Religion and its Survivals… Boston, Mass.: Marshall Jones Company.

Temple, William. (1916). Plato and Christianity. London: Macmillam and Co.

Murray, Gilbert. (1951). Five stages of Greek religion. Boston: Beacon Press

Nilsson, Martin. (1964). A history of Greek religion. New York: Norton and Co.

Nilsson, Martin. (1948). Greek piety. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Macgregor and Purdy. (1936). Jew and Greek: tutors unto Christ. London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson

Hatch, Edwin. (1957). The influence of Greek ideas on Christianity. New York: Harper Torchbooks

Nock, Arthur Darby. (1964). Early gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic background. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Shiel, James. (1968). Greek thought and the rise of Christianity. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Trombley, Frank. (1993). Hellenic religion and Christianization. Volume 1. Leiden, New York, Koln: E.J. Brill

Eliade, Mircea. (1982). A history of religious ideas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Trance and Shamanism - at Evgenia's Anthropology Homepage. A graduate student at the anthropology department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wants to work in South America. Interests: religion, altered states of consciousness, hallucinogenic plants, well as medical anthropology. 1st year of Graduate School. Possession, altered states.

Maslow - Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. Abraham H. Maslow. Chapter III. The "Core-Religious," or "Transcendent," Eperience

...the people I have called non-peakers. In my first investigations... I used this word because I thought some people had peak experiences and others did not. But... a higher and higher percentage of my subjects began to report peak-experiences. ... I finally fell into the habit of expecting everyone to have peak-experiences and of being rather surprised if I ran across somebody who could report none at all. ... I finally began to use the word "non-peaker" to describe, not the person who is unable to have peak-experiences, but rather the person who is afraid of them, who suppresses them, who denies them, who turns away from them, or who "forgets" them. My preliminary investigations of the reasons for these negative reactions to peak-experiences have led me to some (unconfirmed) impressions about why certain kinds of people renounce their peak-experiences.

...such a view of life tends to make the person regard his peak-and transcendent experiences as a kind of insanity, a complete loss of control, a sense of being overwhelmed by irrational emotions, etc. The person who is afraid of going insane and who is, therefore, desperately hanging on to stability, control, reality, etc., seems to be frightened by peak-experiences and tends to fight them off. For the compulsive-obsessive person, who organizes his life around the denying and the controlling of emotion, the fear of being overwhelmed by an emotion (which is interpreted as a loss of control) is enough for him to mobilize all his stamping-out and defensive activities against the peak-experience. I have one instance of a very convinced Marxian who denied—that is, who turned away from—a legitimate peak-experience, finally classifying it as some kind of peculiar but unimportant thing that had happened but that had best be forgotten because this experience conflicted with her whole materialistic mechanistic philosophy of life. I have found a few non-peakers who were ultra-scientific, that is, who espoused the nineteenth-century conception of science as an unemotional or anti-emotional activity which was ruled entirely by logic and rationality and who thought anything which was not logical and rational had no respectable place in life. (I suspect also that extremely "practical," i.e., exclusively means-oriented, people will turn out to be non-peakers, since such experiences earn no money, bake no bread, and chop no wood. So also for extremely other-directed people, who scarcely know what is going on inside themselves. Perhaps also people who are reduced to the concrete a la Goldstein, etc. etc.) Finally, I should add that, in some cases, I could not come to any explanation for non-peaking.

Gross error on Maslow's part: he opposes "peak experience" vs. "rational" -- as though they are two exclusive views. But actually, purest rationality produces peak experience of loss of control. - Michael Hoffman

To summarize, it looks quite probable that the peak-experience may be the model of the religious revelation or the religious illumination or conversion which has played so great a role in the history of religions. But, because peak-experiences are in the natural world and because we can research with them and investigate them, and because our knolwedge of such experiences is growing and may be confidently expected to grow in the future, we may now fairly hope to understand more about the big revelations, conversions, and illuminations upon which the high religions were founded.

(Not only this, but I may add a new possibility for scientific investigation of transcendence. In the last few years it has become quite clear that certain drugs called 'psychedelic', especially LSD and psilocybin, give us some possibility of control in this realm of peak-experiences. It looks as if these drugs often produce peak-experiences, in the right people under the right circumstances, so that perhaps we needn't wait for them to occur by good fortune. Perhaps we can actually produce a private personal peak-expeience under observation and whenever we wish under religious or non-religious circumstances. We may then be able to study in its moment of birth the experience of illumination or revelation. Even more important, it may be that these drugs, and perhaps also hypnosis, could be used to produce a peak-experience,, with core-religious revelation, in non-peakers, thus bridging the chasm between these separated halves of mankind.)

Google search: "block universe" and determinism

Reflections on Relativity: 9.8 The Gestalt of Determinism - excellent. block universe. The first time I've ever seen a distinction between what I call "causal-chain determinism" vs. radical pre-set, pre-existent block universe view. Kevin Brown's MathPages.

Author site for book Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point. By Huw Price, published by Oxford University Press, New York, in March, 1996. Table of contents, chap 1, discussion area, etc. Presents the benefits and pitfalls of adopting a tenseless, directionless view of time.

Reviews of books similar to Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point - At Price's site. Appeared in Nature, 348 (22 November, 1990), p. 356. There is a reply by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, with a response from Huw Price, in Nature, 350 (11 April 1991), p. 456.

The Arrow of Time by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield. W H Allen. Pp 378 [[sterling]]14.95

Time Journeys by Paul Halpern. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Pp 153. $19.95 pbk.

The book's basic mistake is to fail to properly distinguish several quite separate issues about time. For a start, the authors overlook an ambiguity in the arrow metaphor, and hence confuse the issue of the directionality of time (i.e., the question whether the universe is symmetric in time) with the question as to whether time flows. The standard use of the metaphor turns simply on the fact that arrows are effectively one-dimensional objects, with a clear orientation along this single dimension. But some arrows move (unlike, e.g., the ones on signposts), and this provides the trap that Coveney and Highfield fall into in saying that time `travels like an arrow' (p. 24). Antiquity has given us a perfectly good metaphor for the flow of time, namely the stream or river. The arrow is best kept for simple directionality.

More seriously, the authors also fail to see an important distinction between the issues of directionality and determinism. This emerges early, when they misconstrue Einstein's remark that `the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion.' They see this as arising from a `belief in a deterministic world' (p. 30; cf. p. 64). In fact the remark is simply an allusion to the familiar notion of a 4-dimensional block universe, embodying no objective `present moment' or flow of time. Such a view need not insist that the state of the universe at one time determines its state at other times.

In general, the issue of determinism is quite distinct from that of the directionality of time. A deterministic system may be asymmetric (e.g. in virtue of its boundary conditions) and an indeterministic system may be symmetric. So even if it is true (by no means clear, in my view) that the theory of chaotic evolution `blows apart time-symmetric determinism' (p. 206; cf. pp. 37-8), what it leaves might well be time-symmetric indeterminism. This demolishes one of the main positive suggestions of the book. If chaos shows that the future is open, it also shows that the past is open. It doesn't yield an arrow of time.

Outline for John Polkinghorn's book: Science and Theology: An Introduction. 1998. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. ISBN: 0-8006-3153-6.

The Arrow Of Time. gimchiak paper. IC2101.

In search of an explanation for the observed temporal asymmetries, for the observed difference between the past and the future, in effect, people unwittingly apply different standards with respect to the two temporal directions. The result is that the asymmetry they get out is just the asymmetry they put in. Far from being solved, the problems of temporal asymmetry are obscured and deferred, the lump in the carpet is simply shifted from one place to another.

The reason the mistake is so prevalent is not (of course) that the physicists and philosophers who have thought about these problems are victims of some peculiar intellectual deficit. It is simply that temporal asymmetry is so deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking about the world that it is very difficult indeed to spot these asymmetric presuppositions. Yet this is what we need to do, if we are to disentangle the various threads in the problem of temporal asymmetry, and in particular to distinguish those threads that genuinely lie in the world from those that merely reflect our own viewpoint. In order to explain temporal asymmetry it is necessary to shake off its constraints on our ordinary ways of thinking, to stand in thought at a point outside of time, and thence to regard the world in atemporal terms.

It is easy to see that our view of the world has often unwittingly embodied the peculiarities of our own standpoint. As noted earlier, some of the most dramatic episodes in the history of science are associated with the unmasking of distortions of this kind. A striking example is the conceptual advance that led to Newton's first law of motion. This advance was Galileo's appreciation that the friction-dominated world of ordinary mechanical experience was not the natural and universal condition it had been taken to be. Left to its own devices, a moving body would move forever.

In the same historical period we find a parallel concern with the philosophical aspects of the project of uncovering the anthropocentricities of our ordinary view of the world. We find an interest in what soon came to be called the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and an appreciation that the proper concern of physics is with the former: that is, with those aspects of the world that are not the product of our own perceptual peculiarities.

...quantum mechanics always can be formulated in a time-reversible fashion, without wave function collapse. Conventionally, the time-reversed solutions in classical and quantum mechanics are ignored, with no reason given. This is an arbitrary procedure that has no justification other than agreement with preconceptions that have been conditioned by our macroscopic experience.

Choice, free will, determinism, measure - at James Higgo's Quantum Ontology site - assumes many-worlds hypoth, I think, which I consider extravagant.

Copenhagen is plain silly. In MWI everything happens, there is no collapse, so there is no scope for choice. In Stenger's time-reversible interpretation, again, there is no scope for a choice. Penrose is way out on a limb. In the MWI view, we have a 'block universe' made up of every possible universe and time is just a relationship between them. [that's a completely different sense than the Einstein sense] To speak of anything 'happening' - let alone a choice - is meaningless when you take this 'Archimedian' perspective in 'nowhen' (The time issue is mastered by Huw Price in 'Time's Arrow and Archimedes's Point' (1997 I think) - absolutely required reading.). Determinism, free will - all meaningless. [reaching this view is simpler without requiring multi universes. - mh] In essence, we see a 'law' of thermodynamics simply because we are creatures in time and you could only see us - replicator molecules are only a valid concept - in an 'environment' where entropy increases - the weak anthropic principle. There is NO reason to think that the arrow of time is an objective feature of reality.

EVERYTHING is subjective. Nothing is meaningful without an observer choosing to see it by glancing at the block universe from an angle of subjective choosing. Time does not flow. Nothing happens unless someone strings the snapshots together in such a way as they see things happening - we creatures in time can do no other. So it is MEANINGLESS to think of 'choice' or 'determinism'. Two meaningless words can be as compatible as you like.

Book review: Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time. By Huw Price. 1997. $16. At Oxford University Press.

Religion: an update from Gary

If the world is deterministic (the block universe of Laplace), then of course a person's body is immortal. A body is a feature of the 4D object in space-time that we call "the world". This feature always was in this object and always will be.

For example if a woman died a year ago, we need only move back a year-and-a-bit along the time dimension to see her body apparently alive. And every time we visit this location in space-time, there she'll be. Yes, the woman is immortal in this sense, as are all of us.

LaPlace used the Block Universe idea. Is he the one who used the word cybernetics?

Science and Faith in Dialogue. Course Syllabus Spring 1997. Instructor: Dr. Hyung Choi. John Templeton Foundation: HON 350

This course will examine the essence, limits, assumptions, scopes and the historical and philosophical issues involved in scientific claims that are relevant to Christian understanding of humanity and God’s creation.

Recommended Reading: Jones, chs. 9, 10; Davis, ch.8. Ch.3 "Beyond the Frontiers: The Boundary of Science" and Ch.4 "The Fringes and the Edges of Science" in Richard Morris, The Edge of Science, pp.143-193. Russell, "Cosmology, Creation, and Contingency," in Peters.

14 (Apr. 15, 17) Chaos, Determinism, and God’s Action in the World - Science of complexity, automata, self-organization, chaos, strange attractor, far-from-equilibrium system, higher level organism, being and becoming, Naturalism and theism, Whitehead’s process theology. Einstein’s problem: Does God play dice? Religiousness of science, Einstein’s block universe and divine foreknowledge; Calvin’s predetermination. Determinism and indeterminism in science, genetics, free will, causality, chance, and the providence of God.

Carl Young, "Deterministic Chaos and Quantum Chaology," and John Polkinghorne, "Chaos Theory and Divine Action," in W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue, London: Routledge, 1996, pp.227-252. Polkinghorne: Science and Providence.

Real Dispositions in the Physical World. Ian J. Thompson. Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TR, England. Published in: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 39 (1988) pp. 67 - 79.

To consider (c) the world as a `block universe' or `Zeno universe', as recently pointed out by Emmet [1984], is to see only different states of affairs at successive times, and not to see the changes that lead to these differences. Since the rise of Einsteinian relativity, it has become popular to see all of time and space in one `block continuum' of four dimensions, and to see change as only the difference between successive `time slices' of this continuum. In this world there is only what actually happens, and as in (a) above, what `might have happened' is purely hypothetical. The only sense of `might happen' that can be invoked is to imagine an entirely new possible world, e.g. one with different initial conditions or different physical laws. This world view thus does not base power ascriptions on any real features of this particular universe.

If we reject the `block universe', we are also rejecting the account of time in which the future is `already formed' and perfectly definite in advance of its happening, if indeed on this account anything happens at all. (In extreme versions of this theory, time and real change are both completely illusory). I admit that these accounts have an internal consistency that makes them difficult to refute, but despite their being advocated by many philosophers and physicists, I do not believe that they should be the only coherent metaphysical systems on offer. I believe that alternatives can be devised that not only have more explanatory power (e.g. for quantum physics, see section 5), but also more practical use (see below, end of this section). Once these alternatives have been formulated, we should be able to decide in which way our world is more adequately described.

Web search: block universe and fate - good

Web search: block universe and determinism - good

Relativity is, at least from Einstein's perspective, a theory of absolute (ie., observer independent) properties which characterize four-dimensional `objects'. According to Einstein and others (ref. Isham/Polk debate; Fraser book; Whiteheadians) relativity "spatializes time", making our experience of the passage and flow of time an illusion. This view is often called the "block universe" view. Many other scholars, though, have challenged this view, arguing instead that relativity "temporalizes space" and is entirely consistent with a "flowing time" view of the world as given in ordinary human experience.

The most prominent issue that theologians have addressed regarding special relativity is that of God's relation to time, or what is usually called the question of time and eternity. Is God totally separate from the flow of time, the divine eternity a timeless universal present, or is God intimately involved in the world and, in specific, in our experience of the passage of time? The block universe interpretation seems highly compatible with the former view of eternity as the absence of change, the simultaneous presence to God of all moments and events in the history of the universe. On the other hand, the flowing time view of the world is nicely compatible with the belief that God experiences the world in time, hears prayer and acts in the world in the present moment. Actually both views of God's relation to time are prominent in Christian theology today.

... the challenge will be to incorporate insights from both sides here into a richer synthesis.

Re: Parsimony - Apr 1997

I consider that Smout, Price, and Dennet are the best contemporary materialists that I have read. The work of Price on determinism and causation in his recent book Times Arrow Archimedes Point, is absolutely brilliant, also his article 'Cosmology, times arrow, and that old double standard', in Savitt: Times Arrow Today, gives a good summary of the 'block universe' determinist standpoint.

The Book of Destiny (Kitab-ul-Qadr). Translation of Sahih Muslim, Book 33:

Whether the fate of man is predestined or he himself is the architect of it, is a question which has been very often discussed by scholars of all times. This problem is significantly important as no sensible man. not even the man in the street, can afford to ignore it. Faith in Taqdir (Destiny) has a very deep impact upon our lives and we always find our lives oscillating between determinism and freewill. As a man looks around himself and looks to his own self and within himself, he finds that there are hundred and one things in shaping and reshaping of which he has no hand, e. g. in determining the climate of the land in which he is born, in canalising the courses of rivers which flow therein and in determining the nature of the soil thereof. He finds himself absolutely powerless. As he looks to himself he finds that there are so many things In him which are beyond his control, viz. the measure of intellect he has been endowed with, the shape and form of his physical structure with which he has been sent to this world, and the inclinations and so many other qualities of head and heart which are embedded in his very nature. In all these aspects of life he finds himself helpless before the Great and Mighty Power that created him.

On the other hand, there are so many things in which man finds himself quite empowered. As he looks to the marvellous achievements of man despite all odds, he finds it difficult to believe that he is a mere puppet in the mighty hand of Nature. This problem of predestination and freewill, in which man finds his life hanging, has been adequately solved by the Qur'an and the Sunnah. We give below a brief summary of their elucidations.

The first principle which Islam lays down in regard to Taqdir is that man is neither completely the master of his fate nor is he bound to the blind law of predestination. So far as the sovereignty of Allah's Will is concerned, it is all-pervading and nothing falls outside its orbit. Not even a leaf, therefore, stirs without His Will.

It is His Will that prevails everywhere. To God belongs the sovereignty of Heavens and the Earth. He created what He pleaseth, giving to whom He pleaseth females and to whom He pleaseth males or conjoining them males and females, and He maketh whom He pleaseth barren, verify He hath knowledge and power (xlii. 48).

Men are, therefore, completely subordinate to the overruling power of God, they cannot do anything unless God wills so.

...The idea of Destiny as we find in the hadith that God wrote down the decrees regarding the created world fifty thousand years before He created the Heavens and the Earth does not in any way mean that God created a block Universe, finished off and complete, bound to the iron formulae of Nature. Here the idea behind Taqdir is that the creation of this universe is not accidental but something preplanned and pre-conceived and it was shaped according to the Grand Design of the Greatest Designer. There is no element of chance in the creation of this Universe. Everything is well-set and well-planned.

The idea that Allah has a foreknowledge of everything that He created and the events unfold themselves exactly according to it, does not imply that human beings have been completely deprived of the freedom of action. The foreknowledge of God is an acknowledged fact, but it should not be interpreted in the sense of predestination, for if we do so we shall have to conceive of eternity as a storehouse of ready-made events, from which they drop one by one like particles of sand in a glass hour. If we take the foreknowledge to be a reflecting mirror we shall have to deprive the Creator and the Controller of the Universe of His Creative activity.

Amazon: Time's Arrow Today: Recent Physical and Philosophical Work on the Direction of Time by Steven F. Savitt (Editor)

Moral complexity in the making and keeping of promises by Kenneth Head

It is not difficult to demonstrate, for example, the extent to which choosing and deciding bear importantly upon the problem faced by moral philosophers of the relative importance of, on the one hand, the motivation for a moral action and, on the other, its consequences or outcomes. Perhaps more importantly still, choosing and deciding are central to the debate concerning free will and determinism, in which, to summarize briefly, libertarians argue that freedom requires choices or decisions which are originations, as distinct from effects of previous causes*, while determinists argue for what William James referred to as "the iron block universe", a universe in which "those parts of the universe already laid down appoint and decree what other parts shall be*" [Honderich: p 194].

*The two marked phrases merely express the standard, passe causal-chain determinism, not the actual classic Fate view, of the radically preexistent future. I reject causal-chain determinism as too weak and not strong enough a position. The ever-existent future is more interesting and unimpeachable.

William James, A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE, 1909, New York: Longmans. "Classic expression of anti-mechanistic, anti-entropic (or a-entropic) universe ... the 'block-universe eternal and without a history' ... loose enough in organization to permit real freedom for endeavor"

Ouspensky, P. D. The Strange life of Ivan Ossokin - Ouspensky's erotic science fiction novel contains a "block universe" model of time.

Lawrence LeShan found that the mystical worldview is more closely approximated by relativity theory than by quantum theory.

The Einsteinian world-picture is often called the "Minkowski, four-dimensional, block universe," and it did not seem possible to find any real differences (someone once defined a "real difference" as "a difference that makes a difference") between the descriptions given by Minkowski, by Eileen Garrett [representing the worldview of the medium], and by Vivekananda [representing the worldview of the mystic]. (LeShan, 62)

LeShan has clearly demonstrated a relationship between the human perception of reality as expressed by mystics and modern relativists. The space-time continuum of relativity theory closely approximates the continuity, oneness and timelessness that are expressed in all of the great mystical traditions. It is not that Capra denied the same relationship between special relativity and the mystic view of an interconnected oneness, but Capra mistakenly thought that his Bootstrap hypothesis was the logical culmination of the space-time view as well as the quantum worldview. So, while Barbour criticizes Capra for basing his 'religious' speculations on a short lived theory, it is rather doubtful that either Barbour or Stenger could make that same criticism fit the worldview associated with special relativity. If they or others wish to further criticize the conceptual process by which the statements and worldviews of mystics and physicists are compared, then they should find another drum to beat.

Boo review -- Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of Science by Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. Review by Val Dusek [To appear in Metascience 9.3]. London: Profile Books, 1998.

Sokal and Bricmont, like a number of other physicist and mathematician science warriors, strive to maintain a view of science that preserves the attitudes of the past [18th] century by reinterpreting the apparently unsettling developments of twentieth century science. They wish to reassure non-scientists that chaos theory and quantum mechanics have not radically changed the nature of the universe presented by science. They debunk claims that twentieth century science has undermined determinism or the independence of the observer from the observed.

During the first half of the twentieth century, many leading theorists of modern physics were also philosophers and humanistic scholars. Werner Heisenberg first learned of atoms, not in a physics text, but from reading Plato's Timaeus. He claimed that later reading of the same work (in Greek) for relaxation during lunch break had some influence on his conception of uncertainty in physical reality. Schrödinger took his lab notes in classical Greek and wrote as did Heisenberg about the Presocratic philosophers in his search for a way to understand subatomic reality.

Bergson's own treatment of time in reaction to Einstein mistakenly treated Minkowski's diagram as a dreaded "spatialization of time" similar to that of classical treatments of time as a fourth dimension in d'Alembert and others (a mistake shared, by the way, by some of the physicist defenders of Einstein's theory as portraying a "block universe" without genuine change).

From Virtue to Morality: Republicanism in the Texts and Contexts of William James Google's cache of the page Journal of American Studies of Turkey. 2 (1995): 37-48. Paul Jerome Croce - pcroce at suvaxl.stetson.edu

In the early 1870's, he made a political parallel with a central tenet of his philosophical outlook when he declared that "Republicanism is of course the political corollary of free will in philosophy" (untitled note in Nation 94). He used this political label because it well suited his disgust for the forms of determinism that would deny a role for individual initiative. His first act of free will was to function as a self-starter in defiance of the tyranny of expecting the world to be pre-determined. He could declare so vehemently that he was for free will because he firmly believed that "there belongs to mind, from its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote" ("Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence" [1878], Collected Essays and Reviews 67). This sentiment sometimes took on anti-establishment overtones, as shown, for example, in his interest in non-traditional psychologies and medical therapies: of them, he said there should no more be "an aristocracy of remedies than of physicians." Much to the chagrin of his professional peers, he used the popular language of republicanism to equate expertise with aristocracy and to call for openness to a range of unorthodox approaches to physical ailments, spiritual phenomena, and psychological mysteries (James 1868).(Note 3)

The republican aspects of James's philosophical outlook came to full fruition toward the end of his life in his formulations of pragmatism and pluralism. A key element of his philosophy is its contrast with absolutism, whether determinist, idealist, or rationalist. They all suggested a dreaded "block universe" of restricted freedom and already completed activity (A Pluralistic Universe 140, 147, 148), while he emphasized the importance of openness to new experience. With pragmatism, James explained, "Teachers of the ultra-rationalist type would be frozen out, much as the courtier type is frozen out in republics" (Pragmatism 31). Paralleling his descriptions of pragmatism, James characterized his metaphysics of pluralism as "more like a federal republic than like [the] empire or kingdom" of monistic or absolutist systems (A Pluralistic Universe 145).

Is God In Time? Gregory Koukl. Transcript of a commentary from the radio show "Stand to Reason," with Gregory Koukl. It is made available to you at no charge through the faithful giving of those who support Stand to Reason. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only. ©1995 Gregory Koukl

Is it possible time can be reduced to a series of static events, causally related, yet not in time? Is it possible that all of history is one big space-time manifold--a "block universe"? From the inside we sense the "flow" of time, but in fact each moment is just a static, unmoving, slice of the story. This is Lewis and Yancey's solution. It's called the B-theory of time, but let's just call it the story-book view.

There are Christian philosophers who hold to this view because it's the only view that allows God to be totally timeless. But as we've seen in our definition, such people can't admit to any change in the universe because change immediately thrusts us into time. We have to have God in a changeless state, and the time- space universe existing as a static storybook block.

William James - Interesting Ency Brit article on William James. At Ellie Crystal's Metaphysical And Science Page.

[James' depression] was relieved... by the reading of Renouvier on free will and the decision that "my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will." The decision carried with it the abandonment of all determinisms--both the scientific kind that his training had established for him and that seems to have had some relation to his neurosis and the theological, metaphysical kind [of determinism] that he later opposed [that was imbedded] in the notion of "the block universe."

...the step from teaching physiology to teaching psychology--not the traditional "mental science" but physiological psychology--was as inevitable as it was revolutionary.

It meant a challenge to the vested interests of the mind, mainly theological, that were entrenched in the colleges and universities of the United States; and it meant a definite break with what Santayana called "the genteel tradition." Psychology ceased to be mental philosophy and became a laboratory science. Philosophy ceased to be an exercise in the grammar of assent and became an adventure in methodological invention and metaphysical discovery.

Special Relativity and Models of Becoming. Mephistos Participants and Abstracts. 1997. UCLA. Peter Bokulich. Dept. of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame.

Special Relativity is often taken to imply that we live in a fixed four dimensional 'Block Universe' in which the past and future are as real as the present and thus there is no real temporal becoming. Putnam, Rietdijk and Maxwell, for example, have independently argued that various forms of objective becoming are ruled out by Special Relativity. However, there are three models of temporal becoming in the Minkowski spacetime of Special Relativity which escape their arguments. The first treats as real everything in an event's 'absolute now.' The second, which has been advanced by Howard Stein, considers only the past light cone of an event to be definite, or to have 'become' for that event. The third model postulates a physically undetectable Absolute Hyperplane of Becoming which 'passes through' Minkowski spacetime. The first two models would seem to be unacceptable to an advocate of real becoming because they are unable to provide a recognizable three dimensional world which changes over time. The third model is problematic in that it does not allow a realist interpretation of Special Relativity. An exploration of what it means to interpret Special Relativity realistically yields another argument for the Block Universe based on the invariant properties of four dimensional objects and reveals the _ad hoc_ nature of the Absolute Hyperplane of becoming. Thus, although each of these models technically escapes the arguments advanced by Putnam, Rietdijk and Maxwell, they do not provide a natural model of becoming in Minkowski spacetime.

Reciprocal Cosmology - Some Further Discussion - excerpts:

Thus the conventional demonstration of the non-existance of simultaneous action (so long as we un-forget the context of real space) shows that the universe is a block universe - all events just hanging there in 4 space! Note that the predeterminism in here isn't like old fashioned predeterminism, which came from the idea that the universe is fully deterministic (a Newtonian billiard ball universe), such that a being armed with all particles positions and trajectories could extrapolate to any point in the future. This predeterminism comes from considerations of the basic assumtions of GR only. It does not require a deterministic working out, so "chaos" or "QM uncertainty" can't touch it. It says that the universe is predetermined, but not necessarily deterministic! ... And this has real significance. GR time shells have to be accounted for in the ground software for GPS receivers. Without accounting for the relativistic timeshells, we get the wrong numbers. The same theory that we trust with our lives to navigate to our meeting says that the outcome of the meeting is already predetermined. Yet never in over 100 years have the newspapers roared, "Einstein Confirms: Fate Exists!"

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Premio UPC 1998. Science Fiction in Spanish - [UPC Award 1998]. Anually presented by Politechnical Univertity of Cataluña , the Science Fiction UPC Award was organized by the first time in 1991, becoming international since 1992. This volume gathers four short novels from Robert J. Sawyer ("Block Universe"), Rodolfo Martínez ("This lightning, this madness"), Gabriel Trujillo ("GRACOS"), Pedro A. García Bilbao and Javier Sánchez-Reyes ("Fire upon San Juan"). In "Block Universe", Canadian Robert J. Sawyer (NEBULA Award winner in 1995) imagines an experiment which, unexpectedly, makes loose the time notion to the whole mankind and, at the same time, allows seeing a few instants from the future. The study of that phenomenon is followed by a fascinating moral reflection about fate and freedom.

Sir Karl Popper. Science: Conjectures and Refutations - Professor Fred O'Toole's site.

Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical." it cannot claim to be backed by empirical evidence in the scientific sense-although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the "result of observation."

The Flow of Time: Scientific Perspectives by Kevin Sharpe and Jonathan Walgate. Covers theology, God and time.

We naturally think of the “block universe,” a four dimensional crystal of events suspended in the lattice of space-time. To equate the divine with this finite and static model would rob God of all vitality, and falls into a pantheistic confusion of creator and creation. Newton did not see space and time this way; rather, he insisted, “we are not to consider the world as the body of God.” Space and time represent instead the infinite expanse of potentiality and actuality. A piece of matter cannot exist by itself, independently of them, because the very idea is inconceivable. To exist just is to be grounded and sustained within space and within time.

Of course, if existence as we commonly know it is to be instantiated within space-time, then space-time itself cannot exist in this sense. While it sustains all activity, it cannot cause anything itself (as far as we understand causation). Newton describes this God as “all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us.” This develops, in his Optiks, into his most famous metaphor – space-time is the sensorium of God:

Review of James Selections (Stuhr anthology) - chance, control, determinism, mention of block universe.

...the "block universe" that is a logical consequence of the non-existence of simultaneous action in Relativity, and self-organisation that we can see at cosmological scales - the Great Voids and Attractors - and one has a very suggestive picture. The problems can be resolved if we assume that for some reason, consciousness is perceiving time flowing in the other direction to the causal sequence ... because the actual causes of events are in the future [I'd say outside of time]

God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion, online adaptation, ed. by Dr. Christopher Southgate. Published by T&T Clark.

In Quantum Physics and Theology you can learn about how current physics theory describes a universe that's far less mechanical than once thought.

[This exposes how much QM was invented to fulfill psychological needs rather than reason; we fear mechanism in fact it kills our pride of egoic freedom, so we invent QM as a hiding place or fort for the delusion of egoic sovereignty - mh]

Course: Philosophies of Freedom. Professor William Blattner. Spring 2001.

What is human freedom? Is there such a thing anyhow?

After a quick look at Aristotle's distinction between voluntary and involuntary action, we will turn to four conceptions of human freedom offered in the Western philosophical tradition.

...James argues that both Hume and Nietzsche have a defective conception of truth. ...they also misunderstand the relationship between freedom and morality as well as freedom and psychological determinism. James asserts that we cannot prove, one way or the other, whether human choices are determined by social conditions or psychological pressures*. We are left to believe either in a pure free will, in which we choose oursevles, our actions, and our moral vision, or in a "block universe" of unrelenting determination of the will from the outside. He professes that we have a right to believe in pure free will.

* That's causal-chain determinism (a weak position), not classic Fate and eternally existent future - mh.

Texts:

Derk Pereboom, ed. Free Will. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage.

David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature. New York: Penguin.

William James. Essays in Pragmatism. Ed. Alburey Castell. New York: Hafner.

Is Process Theology The Answer? A Christian And Scientific Response by The Rev. Mark S. Winward - theology article about God and the block universe, related to Isham, Christopher J. and John C. Polkinghorne. "The Debate Over the Block Universe," Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, vol. 2, eds. R.J. Russell, N. Murphy and C.J. Isham Berkley: Notre Dame, 1993.

Isham, Christopher J. & John C. Polkinghorne. "The Debate over the Block Universe" in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, onder red. van R. J. Russell & al. 2nd ed. Berkeley, Cal.: Center for Technology and the Natural Sciences, 1996, blz. 139-147.

Growing entheogens, loss of control

Planting Spiritual Growth: Getting high with a little help from your plants - By Chuck Castanet. Growing salvia divinorum and cactus, mention of loss of control.

Books: Self control

ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control. Book by Russell Barkley. Amazon.

Losing Control : How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation by Roy F. Baumeister, Todd F. Heatherton, Dianne M. Tice $60. 307 pages. Amazon.

Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control by Alfred R. Mele. July 1992. $25. 183 pages.

Theory of psychedelics - online book

The Center of the Universe -- Moxley, The Center of the Universe, ch. 3. Effects of Psychedelic Drugs. Mentions loss of control. "Psychedelic use appears to be the rule, rather than the exception, in every corner of the earth where man has developed. And not just in times we may safely relegate to the stone age: I have already mentioned the strong likelihood that lysergic acid alkaloids were important in Greek Civilization over a period of two thousand years. Once acquainted with the wealth of evidence concerning early use of psychedelic drugs, the reader or researcher who then picks up a new book on anthropology, religion, human evolution and the evolution of consciousness and finds no relevant entries in the index, will have immediate and compelling reasons to question the author's scholarship! ... The discontinuance of psychedelic use in Western Civilization itself coincided with the rise of the Roman Church as the primary political power in the world. From the early centuries of the Christian epoch, the use of such substances became the occupation of heretics, outcasts, witches, primitives or other similarly uncivilized, satanic elements."

Book: entheogens, Christianity. CSP

John Allegro's book Sacred Mushroom and the Cross - entry at Coucil on Spiritual Practices

Book: Christ-myth

G. A. Wells articles at Infidels.org - "Doherty tells that he was launched on the path of scepticism [about whether Jesus exists at all] by my own critical work [The Jesus Myth], but finds that my scepticism does not go far enough. This is certainly a novel criticism for me to face."

Links: mushrooms, Alien's Shroom Tek

Shroom Resources (links) at Alien's Shroom Tek

Mushroom John. Forthcoming book.

Bio of John Allen at Shroomery. "Currently, Mr. Allen is preparing for publication, along with Dr. Mark D. Merlin And Dr. Jochen Gartz, a bibliography of Entheogenic Mushrooms (with a forward by Jonathan Ott) Teonanácatl: A Bibliography of Entheogenic Fungi. This scholarly research volume covers 2300 references (2000 on psilocybian fungi and 300 on Amanita species related to the Soma complex). 1600 references are annotated and there is a cross reference index covering more than 7000 references."

http://www.google.com/search?q=soma+%22divine+mushroom+of+immortality%22+wasson

Acid Magic site

Home

Links

Books online --

· LSD, My Problem Child. By Albert Hofmann

· The Doors of Perception. By Aldous Huxley

· The Man Who Turned On the World. By Michael Hollingshead

· The Joyous Cosmology by Alan W. Watts

· The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs. By Brian Inglis. Prohibition has always led to an increase of drug consmption, coupled with an increase in corruption and crime.

· The Center of the Universe: A Theory of Psychedelic Experience. By William S. Moxley. Multi-disciplinary theory of psychedelic experience.

book: Zen and altered-state molecular triggers

Zen and the Brain - James Austin. 1998.

Links: at entheogen book site, to __ sites

links page at Mind Books

Links: at yahoo, for entheogens

Yahoo Psychedelics links

Yahoo Entheogen links

Books: online, at Schaffer Drug Library

LSD books online at Scaffer Drug Library

The Secret of the Kykeon - Peter Webster

The Psychedelic Library

The Lycaeum

Links at Lycaeum

Visionary Drug Links (Lycaeum)

About the Lycaeum

Contacts

What's New at Lycaeum [not sure scope]

Books section of Lycaeum.org

Lycaeum: Links for Epistemology, Consciousness, and the Mind

LSD page at Lycaeum.org

psychedelic abstracts, searchable

Online psychedelics books at Lycaeum

The Lycaeum: The world's largest entheogenic library and community

A bibliography of drug books, journals and magazines

The Lycaeum Book Archives

Online books at Lycaeum

Book reviews at Lycaeum

Book review: Drug Warriors & Their Prey

Book review: Trips

Lycaeum discussions

Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by John Lilly. Author's note and chapter 2 only.

Programming... Biocomputer - Full text, poorer formatting

book reviews at Island Web

Psychedelics Encyclopedia t-shirt

Cannabis Culture magazine - more activist than High Times

High Priest - best book by Tim Leary

Erowid review of Marijuana Law

Erowid books

Review of Hofstadter/Dennett: The Mind's I at Erowid

psychedelics books online at CSP

CSP: Entheogens and the Future of Religion

Mindbooks: online entheogen bookstore

Do Psychedelic Drugs Mimic Awakened Kundalini?

What Is Enlightenment? - web site for magazine

Salvinorin: The Psychedelic Essence of Salvia Divinorum - by D. M. Turner

Ency Brit online

Ramesh Balsekar interview - Consistent determinist mystic

Letters to the editor in response to Balsekar interview - including: "The article on Ramesh Balsekar is excellent. It is the classic discussion of "free will" that is one of the demarcation lines between enlightenment and seeking. While it is a fascinating topic for philosophers, it is not even an interesting discussion for the sage-—for whom it is obvious that there is no such thing."

The Resonance Project magazine (TRP) - general entheogen-tech/culture magazine

Links at TRP

Sadie Plant: Writing On Drugs

Interview Joel Kramer: The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power. Maintains that self-deprecation is a false foundation of spiritual morality and leads to submission to authoritarianism. Ambrosia - eponymous. search for lyrics. http://www.resproject.com/links.html - ethno Ethnobotanical sites http://www.roninpub.com/ - Ronin books. http://www.erowid.org/library/reviews/

Philosophy in Cyberspace - resource list site

Mind Books - Mail-order book store focused on the mind-expanding plants and compounds, also called psychedelics, entheogens, or hallucinogens. Offers a wide selection of books on this topic, from advanced scientific research to more personal and practical experiences, from how hallucinogenic plants have been used in other cultures, to the use of psychedelics in our own culture.

Philosophy page of Principia Cybernetica web

The Road to Eleusis - R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck. Foreword, Chapters I - IV: HTML. This explains how the Greeks almost certainly used an extract of ergot of grain, to trigger a psychedelic experience in the Eleusian Mysteries. "Wine" definitely does not mean our sort of wine, in ancient Greece. Explained in The Road to Eleusis. The new, long 150 page book is $50, avail. at Amazon.com or lycaeum.org.

Right-click to save a complete PDF of Road to Eleusis, 1st Ed.

Has the Mystery of the Eleusinian Mysteries been solved? - Ivan Valencic

The Secret of the Kykeon - Reflections on the Eleusis debate, by Peter Webster. Recommended -- this is the latest hypothesis, very interesting. The more psychedelic ergot occurs on the wild, inedible grasses. The less psychedelic ergot occurs on cultivated barley. Brushing the infected wild grasses against barley then causes the barley to become infested with the more psychedelic ergot. This fits with the "wild vs. civilized" theme of the Eleusian mythology.

I point out that on the greek vases, the eyes are often dilated. This is not just stylization; they really are portraying dilated pupils.

My excerpts from the LSD FAQ

LSD in the United States (DEA document) - My single-page excerpted version - for fast reading of main points - recommended. Official version of the document.

The Center of the Universe (William S. Moxley): 3. Effects of Psychedelic Drugs - excellent. Includes the Habit Suspension Model of psychedelic experience. At Schaffer Drug Library.

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences by Abraham H. Maslow

LSD: The Problem-solving Psychedelic by P. G. Stafford and B. H. Golightly

I have this book by John Allegro. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East, John M. Allegro. excerpts at CSP. It's very heavy on linguistic hypotheses. It is good because it focuses on fertility cults and their relation with early Christianity. About the amanita. A good companion to Strange Fruit. Read the reviews at Amazon.com. Allegro has a flaw: he doesn't believe Jesus existed; thinks he is just the mushroom personified. I disagree; I believe the shroud is authentic evidence he existed. If Jesus existed and left the shroud, fascinating collapses happen; if Jesus was just a mythical being, no fascinating collapses would be possible.

Strange Fruit: Alchemy, Religion and Magical Foods, A Speculative History, Clark Heinrich. This is an excellent book about Amanita. Probably the best on the subject. Includes Christian mushroom hypotheses. VPL'er wpenna has this book.

The most important book about Jesus is The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth about the Resurrection. Proves that the Turin shroud is legitimate, unequivocal evidence that Jesus was still alive when removed from the cross. Explains how opium, mhyrr, and the biblical "100 pounds of aloes" could be used to simulate death and then heal and resuscitate Jesus. Explains how and why the Catholic Church suppressed this evidence and swapped the carbon dating samples in the vials behind closed doors.

The shroud is the real, significant Holy Grail -- that which caught the blood of Jesus. A cup would be worthless philosophically, just a magic relic, but the shroud is of earth-shaking significance, as it is a carrier of evidence that the Church is founded on a proven falsehood, the death of Jesus on the cross and his miraculous resurrection. This book, however, provides no philosophical interpretation of this dramatic act of Jesus. That is the difficult problem I have been working on. I've essentially solved it, but it's been tough going, requiring research into fertility-religion logic and beliefs about kingly sacrifice.

The companion book is Jesus Lived in India. Both are by Holger Kirsten; I have and recommend them most highly. Another book claims the shroud shows DaVinci, but that is an uninteresting claim, is not worthy of being called a revelation, contradicts the artistic conventions of nail marks in the palms rather than wrists, and has no real impact or import, compared to the shroud being of Jesus. Read these to see what happened, and watch egodeath.com to see a developing explanation of why Jesus did it.

I suspect that the crime of "denying the death of Christ" (have you heard that phrase?) is from reading between the lines in the Bible, noting Pilate's disbelief that Jesus is dead already, and realizing that in the midst of all the talk of "rising from among the dead", the gospels raise a great deal of doubt about whether Jesus was dead when removed from the cross. Drugs and healing herbs play an important part in the execution of this drama, and in capturing the coma-like recovery state in a shroud photograph with an exposure time of a couple days.

Forget King James; instead, everyone should have a comparative New Testament with 7 or 8 translations side-by-side. Well worth the money. Cut sticky-notes into thirds. Mark the passages that Kirsten refers to.

The Cliff's Notes to the New Testament are excellent and explain how the book of Mark is the original, most authoritative gospel, and that the version of Mark we have is abruptly cut off *right in the middle of the most important sentence* that tells how the first visitors to the tomb were terribly frightened to find that Jesus had left.

*This* broken account, broken at the most important spot, is the cornerstone of Christian civilization -- a cornerstone designed to collapse and bring down the entire Church upon the heads of the believers. (What is unique about Christianity? It's the only religion that is designed to reveal that it is founded upon a purely symbolic "sacrifice" of a king, mistaken for the usual old literal bodily sacrifice of the king as in the ancient fertility religions.)

Quamran/dead sea scrolls books contain the Manual of Discipline, aka "Rule of the Community". Repeatedly emphasizes a mysterious "sacred meal" as the most highly desirable thing; clearly this is no ordinary meal: proof: all punishment is in terms of forbidding partaking in the sacred meal. Proof: you are punished if you share your sacred meal with one who is forbidden to eat the sacred meal.

The way they talk about the meal makes it clear that it is not any ordinary sort of food. ...the "Manual of Discipline" or "Community Rule" -- the most important source of information about the religious sect at Qumran -- it described the requirements for those aspiring to join the brotherhood... about the Manual of Discipline

The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible. Dan Merkur. Amazon price $16.95. Paperback - 208 pages (June 1999). Not Yet Available. Amazon has info. Compelling evidence that the early Jews and Christians used psychedelics as part of their religious rites. Reveals the Bible's disguised references to this tradition and traces knowledge of this secret to the gnostics, masons, kabbalists, and the legends of the Holy Grail.

Explores the idea that psychedelics have played a role in nearly all religious traditions. Citing biblical material, as well as later Jewish and Christian writings, Merkur reveals the existence of an unbroken tradition of Western psychedelic sacraments, from Moses and manna to Jesus and the Eucharist. Most important, Merkur shows that this was not a heretical tradition, but instead part of a normal, Bible-based spirituality, a continuation of the ancient tradition of visionary mysticism.

Even when this practice became unacceptable to the religious orthodoxy, it was perpetuated in secret by gnostics, masons, and kabbalists, as well as through the legends of the Holy Grail. Merkur traces a long line of historical figures who knew of manna's secret but dared only make cryptic references to it for fear of persecution.

The Mystery of Manna is the strongest contribution yet to our growing realization that, contrary to popular belief, psychedelics and religion have always gone hand in hand. Dan Merkur, Ph.D., has taught at Syracuse University and Auburn Theological Seminary. His research focuses on the varieties of religious experience in historical, cross-cultural, and psychoanalytical perspectives. He is the author of many books, including Powers Which We Do Not Know, Gnosis, and The Ecstatic Imagination.

Essene communalism - excerpts: Robert Chaney 1968 agrees that many Essenes were healers. In his fascinating book, The Essenes and their Ancient Mysteries, he informs us that one Essene community was especially famous for its skilled healers: "The Theraputae, consisted of those Essenes who engaged in the healing art. The word "Essenes" in the nearest Aramaic equivalent means 'healers'....

...that the young Yahowshua received his first instruction in the healing arts from the residents of this Essene healing community." it was believed that Divinity was expressed in the plant kingdom as an antidote for the illnesses of the human kingdom, that for every illness there existed a palliative in a root, leaf or bark of a tree or plant.

The Essenes therefore were herbalists in the highest sense of the word... And Yahowshua did heal every ailment and disease among the sick, even teaching the people the art of true health reform according to the natural laws of nature. Yea, for he taught the people healing properties of plants, even every herb and grass of the field [note], and the power hidden in stones [some say young mushroom = stone/egg].

The Drug Controversy and the Rise of Antichrist. 28 pages. Fredric Madeleine. Explains how prohibition supports the rise of a global dictator in an end-times scenario. Persecution of drug users is a form of persecution of Christians in the end times.

Entheogens and the Future of Religion. Robert Forte, editor. Published by Council for Spiritual Practices

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society. Peter McWilliams. Has a lot of Biblical references.

http://www.hyperreal.com/drugs/faqs/FAQ-LSD

Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy, a bibliographic source by Thomas B. Roberts and Paula Jo Hruby.

Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs - excerpt from A Review of the literature in J. Nerv and Mental Disease 172(10):577-595, by Rick Strassman.

The Council on Spritual Practices (CSP) -- Entheogen Project

LSD report from the DEA

The Schaffer Library of Drug Policy

Recent Drug Articles in the Media

Sacred Mushrooms And The Law - by Richard Glen Boire, Esq.

The Entheogen Law Reporter - periodical

CTHEORY - an international journal of theory, technology and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape. Edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker.

Blade Runner main theme

It is true that, for the careful watcher, there were a wealth of allusions to the possible android nature of the Harrison Ford character. But these would have gone by a casual watcher, and few are likely to take the trouble to pull meaning from an adventure story. These confusions -- am I an android, am I a human, does it matter, am I just as mechanical one way as the other -- were the main subject of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP.

That if consciousness is mechanical, a truly superior organism is beyond our comprehension? That it is past time we stop thinking of ourselves as nature's finest creation?

some interesting features of ANDROIDS... Silas says that the purpose of ANDROIDS is to create a society with a unique religion, Mercerism, and ask 'What if?' I think the purpose is much deeper -- the book is trying to answer the question, 'What is the authentic human being?' Dick has invented creatures (androids) which are almost exactly like human beings but lack one essential human trait, empathy; this lack informs all of the action and all of the characterization in the book. Mercerism isn't important for its dogma, it's important because it is inaccessible to androids. The plot of the novel is only superficially concerned with Deckard's detective work -- the real point is Deckard's slow appreciation of the quality of the difference between androids and human beings. Notice how subtle this difference is: it requires a complicated and tedious test to identify an android, and humans are constantly confusing androids for humans. The most chilling aspect of this is the realization that so many human beings don't use their capacity for empathy, with the result that the planet is being taken over by androids and the humans have barely noticed.

...As a bounty hunter, Deckard is placed squarely in the middle of Dick's dilemma, since he must be able to distinguish androids from humans in order to survive. The plot events [in the book] are organized to show Deckard's increasing confusion about his job and his approach to his final epiphany... the detective who fears that he may be an android ... to illustrate the difficulty humans have in appreciating what makes them human. (Witness the detective's behavior with the singer android after her snide comments about humans being a superior life form, and Deckard's reaction to it: 'Do you think androids have souls?')

...the film copped out in giving 'replicants' the ability to acquire empathy. The novel's Deckard is able to empathize with the android Rachael even though Rachael is incapable of empathy in return; the movie's Deckard has a much easier task. ... the movie lacks the book's intellectual adventurousness. If ANDROIDS disappointed Silas, he'll really hate other works of Dick's like VALIS or THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE...

the central question of the film... Is a Replicant which develops emotions (i. e. a soul) more "human" than a passionless man? "More human *than* human" is the slogan of the Tyrell Corp., after all; simply another restatement of this theme.

Deckard was no Replicant. He was a man who was more like a machine, forced to destroy constructs which were more like men than himself.

With Deckard a human being, discovering his own humanity at the same time he is required to terminate the existance of creatures just beginning to discover theirs, the film is deep, tragic and poignant.

...the first draft of the screenplay, which made it clear the character was a replicant.

To the person who pointed out that Deckert had a history as a bladerunner, yes. But Rachel had a history too - it just wasn't real. Deckert has no friends, no contacts, no colleagues. Only the two policemen.

Chemical synthesis of lysergic acid

http://www.hyperreal.com/island/DOCS/intro.html

The Loompanics catalog has about 6 books on lab equipment and business that you should get. Call info in Port Townsend, WA to get their phone. The 1994 address:

P.O. Box 1197

Port Townsend, WA 98368

From http://www.paranoia.com/drugs/psychedelics/lsd/

"Synthesis of Ergot Alkaloids from Tryptophan" J Rebek Jr., et al, JACS 106, 1813 (1984)

"A New Synthesis of Lysergic Acid" eidem., Tet Lett 859 (1983) (and refs. therein.)

"Emetic Activity of Reduced Lysergamides" FN Johnson et al, JMC 16, 532 (1973) (Lysergamides using s-amine and POCl3)

The premiere, Jan 99, issue 1 of Ecstacy: Journal of Divine Experience: The World's Largest Psychoactive Entheogenic Interactive Publication. Has a reprint of the original Wasson mushroom article. Herbal Ecstacy.com This magazine is a giant ad for the company but it's a good premiere. The article has a wrinkle due to the insert and cheap newsprint stock.

DejaNews query of psychedelics newsgroups for "lsd"

Online Bibles [to do: add more]

Online Bibles - 5 versions of the Bible, nicely formatted and (somewhat) searchable on the Web.

Home (ego death and self-control cybernetics)

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