rigorousintuition.ca

FourthBase wrote:Just a reminder.

The dogma and superstitutions of mainstream religions aren't alone.
All religious belief and ritualization is bullshit.

Generally when I encounter this sentiment it comes from someone with a very poor understanding of, as well as and no practical experience of the occult or even really most mainstream faith. But that goes triple for the people Jeff has documented who somehow think this is a path to material domination.

FourthBase wrote:Just a reminder.

The dogma and superstitutions of mainstream religions aren't alone.
All religious belief and ritualization is bullshit.

The irony of this post being made at RI is something else. I'm not sure exactly how Jeff defines it, but to me, intuition is, at its simplest, a non-analytic and inexplicable encounter with reality. Sort of a mystical thing, yet also a human sense that is recognized by nearly everyone aas a valid part of the human experience. Thus its a kind of bridge between the natural and the supernatural (as in that part of the natural that we have not yet apprehended.) In other words, people who would otherwise ignore or debunk 99% of what gets written here are still forced to acknowledge intuition as a real and non-empirical way of knowing. Sort of a Gotcha! phenomenon to use against the hypnotized.

Rituals and practices that are intended to hone our sense of intuition or empathy, or make us more sensitive to related perceptions (things like particular magick rituals, kundalini meditations, shamanism, ayahuasca rituals, etc.) bear little in common with "mainstream" religious dogma that operates around the usually passive reception of a symbolic telling and re-telling of a singular and restrictive semiology.

The kinds of rituals I am interested in are ways to re-train our body-machines to develop capacities that have been largely suppressed and devalued since at least the Industrial Revolution. That ain't bullshit in the least.

Atheism is just another bullshit religion.

Rationalism is a fairy tale.

You are right. I had the athiesm knocked out of me a little while back. Not exactly a deist of any kind, but I don't disbelieve, that's for sure. I renounce this thread, more or less. But...maybe to rephrase...what I'd still argue: Perfect faith, in anything, is not only impossible, it's bound to be wrong. No...not right...how about: Group doctrines based on perfect faith are always crippled by bullshit, and dangerous. That's better. No? As for rituals, I now don't feel I can discount the possibility that religious rituals might work, supernaturally, in some way. I preferred thinking all rituals were utter bullshit.

Just to put my $0.02 into this thread: I happen to be a chaote (not an occultist, mind you, and arguably not an deist), and I can tell you from experience that *something* happens.

I don't have the level of arrogance to proclaim to know what it is. I'm a pragmatist at heart, and so as much as I try to figure out what it could be, I realize that I can never be 100% sure of anything except that things work. To me, whether it is purely psychology, memetics, and subconcious communication or whether it involves something supernatural, VALIS mind rays, hyperdimensional tricksters, space pancakes from Venus, or whatever is immaterial to its function.

I typically lean towards explanations that involve autosuggestion and the subconscious propagation of primings via the subtext of normal communication, but even that doesn't fit all the data all the time, nor am I willing to cut the data down with straw men and emotional second-circuit faeces-throwing to adhere to my idea of what the One True Theory should be. Science ain't an exact science, but we're getting better .

FourthBase wrote:Just a reminder.

The dogma and superstitutions of mainstream religions aren't alone.
All religious belief and ritualization is bullshit.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." --J.R.R. Tolkien.

Enki-][ wrote:Just to put my $0.02 into this thread: I happen to be a chaote (not an occultist, mind you, and arguably not an deist), and I can tell you from experience that *something* happens.

I don't have the level of arrogance to proclaim to know what it is. I'm a pragmatist at heart, and so as much as I try to figure out what it could be, I realize that I can never be 100% sure of anything except that things work. To me, whether it is purely psychology, memetics, and subconcious communication or whether it involves something supernatural, VALIS mind rays, hyperdimensional tricksters, space pancakes from Venus, or whatever is immaterial to its function.

I typically lean towards explanations that involve autosuggestion and the subconscious propagation of primings via the subtext of normal communication, but even that doesn't fit all the data all the time, nor am I willing to cut the data down with straw men and emotional second-circuit faeces-throwing to adhere to my idea of what the One True Theory should be. Science ain't an exact science, but we're getting better .

Keep in mind that according to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are an infinite number of realities branching off at any given instant, so that making things happen is more a question of controlling your travel through these alternate universes rather than applying any sort of direct force on things.

As for occultism, I have been accused of practising it in print. As Jay Kinney wrote in The Inner West,

"In Tarot history, any connection is fair game. For instance, because there are fifty-six filled in holes at Stonehenge and fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana, to an occult commentator such as Stephen Franklin the two not only might be but must be connected. (Franklin, who connects the cards with astrological figures in a far-reaching argument based on Pythagorean, Hindu, and Chinese sources, would recoil at being called an occultist, but in the strict sense of the word he is one.)"

Why I would "recoil" is beyond me. I have no problem with occultism, though my analysis was much more detailed than indicated by Mr. Kinney. The point here, however, is that "occultist" is bandied about by the keepers of scientific orthodoxy the way "Communist" used to be broadcast about by Senator McCarthy and "terrorist" (or "terr'ist" in the former case) was and is bandied about by George W and Barack H in the service of their newly discovered executive authority, that of treating their fellow human beings like targets in a particularly violent video game.

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Thank you Lord Balto and Enki.

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How do you know.smarty-pants?

Inkwhyring wrote:How do you know.smarty-pants?

I met him at summer camp. And you?