Zionism

See my post American-Israeli settler says Palestinians need to leave or we'll kill them.

 

How the Star of David came to be added to Meher Baba's emblem

The Temple Menorah has long been the symbol of Judaism. Use of the symbol dates back 3000 years. 

Early representation of the menorah on a Judea coin, 40–37 BC

The symbol associated with Judaism today is the Star of David. The Star of David gained prominence as a Jewish symbol in 14th-century Prague following the rise of Cabalistic Judaism and only became a widespread religious symbol in the 19th century, coinciding with the rise of Jewish Zionism. Today it is the symbol of the state of Israel.

So, how did the symbol of Israel wind up on Meher Baba's emblem? This is that story.

Meher Baba's emblem was not a project that Meher Baba initiated. It was from its inception the product of his followers, beginning with Dr. William Donkin. Dr. Donkin was both a doctor and a very good artist.

Dr. William Donkin & one of his paintings

Donkin traveled with Baba on his mast tours in the 1940s and wrote The Wayfarers chronicling these tours in 1948. He drew the emblem as a frontispiece for his book. A frontispiece is a decorative illustration found near the beginning of a book. 

Below is his original frontispiece from The Wayfarers (1948).

The symbol became a common motif in Baba things. Below it appears on one of Baba's chair cushions used by him.

The Sufis, who edited and published God Speaks, must have liked the symbol as they included it on the cover and as its interior frontispiece when it came out in 1955.

The symbol remained the same in all four printings of the fist edition, 1955, 1967, 1968, & 1970.

But when the 2nd Revised Edition of God Speaks came out in 1973, the frontispiece and cover were different. The Jewish symbol had been added. What accounts for this?

First, some startling facts. Meher Baba designed his tomb when it was constructed in 1938. He had religious symbols carved for the top, one for each corner. They represented Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. They did not include any Jewish symbol. 

Next, Meher Baba never used the word "Judaism." There are a few possible reasons for this. Ancient Judaism largely ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, afterward first merging into Christianity, and later the remainder merging into Islam in 600 AD. But more importantly, Judaism is not an Avataric religion. It respects no Avatar. While all six Avatars of this age that Baba spoke of are represented by the symbols atop his tomb: Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad (millions of Hindus today accept Gautama Buddha as the ninth avatar of Lord Vishnu). Baba also said that the Jews crucified Christ. "But these Parsis! I feel that when I was Jesus, the Parsis were Jews. The Jews were the cause of my crucifixion." (Lord Meher, 1986 print edition, p. 4675) For these reasons, adding the modern symbol of the Jewish Zionist state to his emblem seems a bit far fetched. Well then, who put it there?

In 1962, a Russian Jewish émigré to America, Vivian Agostini (whose birth name was Ida Losh), and who was living in New York, came and met Meher Baba. Impressed with him, she got the idea to cast a bronze medallion to give away at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. To her medallion she added the Jewish star.

Later, in 1973, the Sufis — apparently liking the inclusion by Agostini — changed the symbol in God Speaks to be in line with it. And still later the new symbol replaced Donkin's original image in The Wayfarers. Donkin had passed away in 1969 so had no say in this.

Therefore, today the symbol usually appears like this: 

Meher Baba never referred to Judaism as a religion, but only to "Jews." We can only guess why. As for being inclusive of other faiths on the emblem, why Judaism? There are more Shintos and Sikhs than Jews in the world. Why exclude them? Why exclude Confucianism? Hundreds of millions of people in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam practice Confucian ethics.

In what way is adding the Jewish symbol to Baba's emblem being inclusive, but not these?

__________________

To download a cleaned up original emblem go here.

Pseudo-scientific quasi-religious bilge

Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson are popular science promoters on TV and the internet. I don't think people believe me when I say the images and concepts they promote are pseudo-scientific quasi-religious bilge. People don't know to question it because they were raised on it and conditioned to think it is advanced thinking they can't understand — and they think these men are brilliant experts.

 

Mastery in Servitude emblem from 1940s

Original design by Dr. William Donkin 1940s for his authored book "The Wayfarers," incorporating Meher Baba's given motto "Mastery in Servitude" (Manzil-e-Meem, 1923).

History of an Idea

1. First began to think this thought in a Physical Anthropology class in the second semester of my sophomore year at USC in January 1978.

2. Continued discussing my idea at Korty Films with Brad Jones in 1982 after being inspired by an article on evolution in the April 1982 issue of Life Magazine. 

3. Was drawing images illustrating my concept of an inside-out evolution in 1991 in San Francisco. 

4. Got inspired to write a book when I came to Fayetteville for good on March 13, 1997 when Megan was one year old.

5. Attended school in Little Rock in June 1997 to complete my bachelor’s degree. Worked on my idea at the library after class each day. 

6. Spoke to my father about my studying philosophy and planning a book shortly before he died. He died April 25, 1998.

7. Took my first undergraduate summer school philosophy class in June 1998, less than two months after my father’s death.

8. Everything got clear by the start of my second semester of graduate school. January 1999.

9. 1999 was the year I became intoxicated with philosophy. 

10. Graduated in May 2001 with my M.A.

11. Completed writing The Evolution of Perception in May 2004. Published in June.

12. Published my second book, Evolution of Perception Re-Explained, in February 2021.

April 1982 Life Magazine, Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?

The idea of an "inside-out" evolution is quite simple. It is what I now call "psychic emergence," where the force driving evolutionary change is an internal psychic one, a drive to gain consciousness, rather than external pressures from the environment that cull or promote random mutations. The reason the idea hit me in a Physical Anthropology college class when I was 18 is that I saw through the course that evolution was not actually occurring all the time in nature, but had once occurred and had ceased to occur after homo sapiens evolved, and that once a species evolved homeostasis set in. This was in perfect agreement with Baba's explanation of evolution in God Speaks. 

The Life Magazine article I read in 1982 that got me excited titled "Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?" said that what scientists had discovered in the 120 years since Charles Darwin originally published his book On the Origen of Species was that specimens in the fossil record did not show the variety that Darwin had predicted would be found. See my December 2021 blog post Evolution is no longer taking place on Earth.

It has taken me almost 50 years to communicate my idea. I'm as convinced of it now as I was then.

Gabriel Pascal

Difficult to find high resolution screenshot of Hungarian film producer and Baba lover Gabriel Pascal (1894-1854). He was slated to direct Meher Baba's movie in the 1930s before the project was abandoned. In his lifetime he most famously produced Pygmalion (1938), Major Barbara (1941), and Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

On the film set of Major Barbara. Vogue Magazine, 1939. Gabriel Pascal was a household name in his day.

What Jesus said about hell

Destiny Finn talks a bit too fast here, but she has a lot to say. What she says about the history of the concept of hell is true and she covers the subject well. For more on the subject spoken much slower I recommend listening to Bart Ehrman, professor at UNC Chapel Hill who focuses on the textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has a good video on this same subject here.

Street artist thrills with “Caruso” live in Latvia

This is one of my favorite versions of one of my favorite songs. 

Other favorite versions include:

As sung by the song's writer Lucio Dalla (1943-2012) in the room where he wrote it in 1986, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqtSuL3H2xs 

As sung by late Luciano Pavarotti in 1998, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDEdZfnULIg

As sung by the superb tenor Jonathan Antoine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlF-wFrukEU

As sung by my favorite soprano Amira Willighagen in 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiH1MPfV5nA

Hydroflying in China

A Flyboard is a brand of hydroflighting device which supplies propulsion to drive the Flyboard into the air to perform a sport known as hydroflying.

All Billionaires Are Evil - 5 Ugly Reasons Why

Outro for Chapter 6 of Red Dead Redemption II

Video reactor ThatNerdViolet posted this yesterday. She has been playing the game for 5 months and still has two chapters to go.

CINNA @StateFarm Gamerhood season 5!

Stephen Kinzer: How America Brought War to Ukraine

Meher Baba Playing Marbles

Ashley Graham's village vlog

Meher Baba's teaching in a minute and 23 seconds

This is worded very well, and very succinctly.

Quantum Delusions: A World That Doesn’t Exist

Recently I wrote a paper with the long title, The Rise of Pseudoscience, pseudo-anthropology, pseudo-history, pseudo-archeology, pseudo-religion, quackery and superstition. You can read it here. That paper set off a series of reflexions in my mind that led to an important point I want to try to express in this paper. If I can succeed in getting my point across, this might end up being the single most important paper I’ve ever written, second only to The Evolution of Perception & the Cosmology of Substance itself — my first attempt to explain my cosmology.

To begin with let me explain something about the evolution of perception concept, a concept I’ve been writing and talking about for over 25 years.

In the evolution of perception there is a pre-existent intelligence. It is wrong to say an intelligence that permeates the Universe, because it preceded and created the Universe, initially in the form of a psychic experience that expanded and gradually came to ‘feel solid’ to the creatures that emerged out of this process and found themselves in this world.

This evolution went through several stages or eras. These are named and described in my book The Evolution of Perception & the Cosmology of Substance. The first of these was a mathematical era. Initially mathematical laws and then a world of gases and minerals that supervened upon those laws emerged and evolved, though solely in a mathematical form. On one level the inorganic world continues to be in this state today. It is only our evolved senses (that evolved out of that inorganic state and supervened upon it) that schematize these mathematical states as qualitative states like sound and color.

Let me say this again. As these gases and minerals in their mathematical state evolved, organic forms gradually supervened upon those states, what we know as living organisms. These organic forms (which were themselves really fundamentally mathematical) evolved nervous systems and sense organs, and through these gradually gained the ability to perceive mathematical states as sensible states.

I show this in a crude diagram:



The point of this diagram is to show the idea that through the evolved nervous system and sense organs of evolved organic creatures, mathematical states are perceived as sensible states like color, sound, touch, smell, etc. All the while they remain mathematical states. This is described in detail in my books.

So, now we come to the subject of this paper. Not seeing things in this way, philosophers and scientists had to explain things a different way, not in terms of such a psychic emergence but as actual things. This led to various problems. In recent years a world wound up being invented by scientists, philosophers, science fiction writers, and New Age influencers that does not in fact exist. It is what, in contemporary polite conversation, is referred to as the quantum reality — a world imagined to be how things really are where we can’t see them or on the level in which things are too small to see.

The result of this extremely modern trend is that people now trust these scientists and science fiction writers and use words they don’t stop to realize they don’t understand. But they evoke vivid images in them that they like and believe are in some way profound. I am speaking of dimensions and multiverses and warped space and time particles. This world isn’t real.

I want to talk about how this occurred. How did men of science and reason, who began their journey using observation and careful reasoning dive into pure unrestricted imagination and think they were making great discoveries?

To answer that we have to go back and tell the story.

Making things up is not new. Human beings have a long tradition of inventing things that were vividly imagined to explain things we couldn’t understand. Sometimes these imaginary things might have been intended symbolically by those who concocted them, but even if that were the case other people innocently believed in them literally.

I have often referred to this ancient way of explaining things as inventing things we can’t perceive to explain the things we do. This method of explaining things had the disadvantage of adding to the sum of things needing to be explained. For we wind up in the end with not just the thing we wanted to explain but also the thing we invented to explain it to explain.

Take the example of the World Turtle. The belief that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle appears in several different cultures and spiritual traditions.

Deities are another example. How do we explain people we perceive? By inventing people we don’t who we suppose created them.

But about 2600 years ago in ancient Greece people began to look for natural explanations for the things they saw. Aristotle called such men “natural philosophers.” The same happened in the European enlightenment beginning in the 17th century. Philosophers like Galileo began to question the old orthodox ways of explaining things. And gradually belief in God began to weaken and give way to such natural explanations.

The ideas these men had were radical for their day, but they remained rational and based on observation. In 1620 Francis Bacon formalized what became known as the scientific method in his treatise Novum Organum. And in 1623 Galileo began to break with past doctrines of causation in lieu of answers in line with scientific principles in his book The Assayer. Even when such philosophers proposed ideas that were purely conjectural, they continued to conform with our natural intuitions. For instance Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 for teaching concepts like an infinite universe filled with other planets, moons, and suns.

But around the start of the 19th century, a change occurred. People started to propose ideas that were not based on observation or real reasoning or the scientific method. Pseudosciences like Phrenology and Galvanism began to emerge and gain popularity. Spiritualism became fashionable. By the 20th century even once-serious scientists began to abandon the scientific method and swear off logic and observation, bragging about their reliance on imagination. What happened?

There were many reasons for this. I’m going to go over some of those influences before explaining what truly was behind this trend.

INFLUENCES

• Historical: The end of the 1700s saw the end of the European Enlightenment, a unique period in philosophy and the arts that emphasized reason and worked to emancipate people from superstition. Ending in the 1790s with the French Revolution, it was followed by the Romanic Period. The Romantic Period saw a passionate rejection of cold rationalism, industrial order, and the strict rules of the Enlightenment and Classicism. Instead, Romantics embraced an outlook centered on strong emotion, individualism, and the mysterious.
• Religious: In the United States there was a major Protestant revival that became known as the Second Great Awakening. Millennialism and Spiritualism became popular. Seances were everywhere, even reaching the Lincoln Whitehouse. In 1875 the Theosophical Society formed in Greenwich Village with its own alternative theory of evolution — one where we descended from a series of root races.
• Technological: Innovations in the printing press brought down the cost of printing books, making publishing more accessible and obviating the need for institutional support such as by a University or Church. The second industrial revolution caused people to increasingly place faith in science over God, ushering in scientism and faith in the salvific power of science.
• Philosophical: Materialism, behaviorism, functionalism, and atheism became norms in academia.
• Scientific: Darwinism (where things evolved out of chaos) became canon in schools. Galvanism was popularized in the mid-19th century by lecturers who taught that electricity was the connecting link between spirit and matter. Post-Newtonian “quantum mechanics” became a catchword for counterintuitive ideas about space and time.
• Literary: The mid-19th century saw a drastic increase in science fiction. Frankenstein (1818) popularized galvanism, equating the soul with electricity. By the mid-1800s a new genre was introduced called nonsense literature, a broad categorization that balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning. Jabberwocky from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is an example. In 1895 The Time Machine introduced the “fourth dimension” as a literary McGuffin — a device in a story that serves as a trigger for the plot.
• The New Science: In 1905 a young Albert Einstein introduced time dilation. In 1915 he introduced the concept of bent spacetime in The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. In 1957 Hugh Everett introduced his concept of parallel realities (multiverses) through his "Many-Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics. In 1969-1970 Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielsen, and Leonard Susskind introduced vibrating, one-dimensional quantum strings (String Theory).

These influences led to science beginning to emulate science fiction. What would cause this new level of speculation to be introduced into science based on what the scientist is able to imagine to account for purely mathematical observations? All these ideas — time dilation, bent spacetime, multiverses, and extra dimensions — were honest attempts to explain these anomalies in the mathematics extrapolated from observations. These were no longer testable hypotheses. But rather than being the source of concern people bragged about what felt like liberation.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. (Einstein)

The mistake was to promote imagined imagery to the level of reality they confusedly thought was another realm we could not see, a quantum realm. Such a second realm they assumed existed behind the curtain of reality – using a metaphor. Were they to understand what EOP tries over and over to articulate, that our sensible (sensory) experience is an interpretation of an existing mathematical world in an underlying primary intelligence, they would never have tried to project things analogous to the things they found in their experience (like strings or substances) into the realm they imagined existed. For they would have recognized that this realm does not exist at all.

But only through the lens of the concept of psychogenic emergence could they have realized what they were doing. There is no ‘other side,’ a notion popularized by the 60s rock band ‘The Doors’ that sounds profound specifically because it perpetuates this catchy illusion. See my paper The Other Side of the Veil where I describe how LSD was sold to a young public as a way to see ‘the other side of the veil.’

Now let me explain what’s really behind this move away from our natural innate intuitions and reason and toward unfettered imagination and projection.

The idea that our internal intuitions are somehow connected to God’s mind, and thus to the Universe God Created is a very ancient idea. The idea was that we human beings have certain innate intuitions we can’t fully explain ourselves that connect us in some way to the Universe, because the human mind is in some mysterious way connected to the Creator’s mind, and thus to the rational laws of nature. This view is sometimes called Newtonian, for it was the view that allowed Isaac Newton to guess there is a regular mathematical principle behind gravity that he could discern through reason. Without this view Newton would never have sought for the law of gravity, let alone discovered it by careful observation and intellect.

This view that God’s Universe is ordered rationally — and thus is discernible to us — we also find in the Old Testament.

...but you have arranged all things by measure and number and weight. (Wisdom of Solomon 11:20)

This verse highlights God's divine wisdom and order, stating that everything in creation was structured and designed with precise measure, number, and weight rather than chaos.

But this idea even goes back before the idea of a Universe created by a monotheistic deity, for we have it in the works of Aristotle in Greek times. The way Aristotle understood it was that the Universe is rational, and it was because of this that it could be understood by us. It was not the result of chaos. This is the idea of the governing factor of the logos, often interpreted as reason. And John taught that Jesus was the very embodiment of this logos.

But we have lost this notion. We lost this sense of connection to the logos. We began losing it in the Enlightenment as theists became deists, more so in the 19th century with the emergence of the “new science” and the popularity of irrationality. And finally completely with what came to be called the “quantum universe.”

So now we come back to my friends around a picnic table thinking they are talking about the teachings of Meher Baba, peppering their concepts with tropes from Star Trek the Next Generation, wormholes, holodecks, antigravity, spacetime, and portals to exotic dimensions. This is not Baba’s teaching in any way, shape, or form. The public is today ripe for superstition after the 2nd half of the 19th century, due to a steady diet of spiritualism, crank science, pseudoscience and pseudo-history. Einstein and Feynman finished them off in the 20th century. Add to this science fiction in television, and what passes as philosophy is literally stupidity.

In his posthumously discovered and edited Intelligence Notebooks, Meher Baba greatly developed and explained in enormous detail the relationship between our own mind and innate natural intuitions about space and time and the logos. We are not just connected to it, but are expressions of its very emergence.

American-Israeli settler says Palestinians need to leave or we'll kill them

In fairness to this ignorant girl, the Bible does tell the Jews to kill the people of Palestine and steal their land.

In Deuteronomy 7:1–5 Moses relays God's command to the Israelites before they enter the land: when God delivers the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites into their hands, they must "destroy them totally", make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

In Deuteronomy 20:16–18 God specifically instructs regarding the cities of these nations inside the land: "Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."

What kind of God would order a people to do such a thing? A god who never existed. Contemporary secular and textual scholars generally date the core of the Book of Deuteronomy around 622 BCE, 800 years after Moses is traditionally believed to have lived.

Amira Willighagen & Ndlovu Youth Choir - Amen (Official Music Video)

Dreams, Orbs, Spaceships, Spirits channeled by Darryl Anka

This is a madman. His nonsense has probably ruined many lives by now.

See my paper The Other Side of the Veil here.

Economy

 

"Selfishness, multiplied by population, results in wars, exploitation, persecution and poverty. Selflessness, multiplied by population, brings about peace and plenty. All the modern fads that are stalking the world today, in the guise of politics, economics, materialism, communalism, nationalism and socialism, have to be judged on the criteria of selfishness or selflessness." 

– Meher Baba, 1947

Bukowski on the Rare Souls

At the end of Bukowski's life he stopped drinking, began meditating, smoking bidis, and married a Baba lover named Linda Beighle. He died in Los Angeles on March 9, 1994. He was featured in no less than six films, including Barfly starring Mickey Rourke.

Michael Hudson on Billionaires, Wall Street, and the Oil Wars

The truth isn't pretty. It isn't sexy. And it unfortunately takes a long time to say. This isn't my first post featuring the wisdom of economist Michael Hudson. My first was on April 1 of this year (April Fool's Day) and titled What is Really Happening in the World. See it here. Michael Hudson is an American economist who is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College.

Here is an excerpt from the above video where Professor Hudson expresses his key point in under 3 minutes.

See my full Economics playlist here.

Real or AI?

The Rise of Pseudoscience, pseudo-anthropology, pseudo-history, pseudo-archeology, pseudo-religion, quackery and superstition

Old men discussing philosophy and religion

Some people are liable to disagree with much of what I say here. That’s fine. Most of what I write is intended for future generations, who, after much development in the world’s thinking, will look back on my essays and see many of them as prescient.

Every other Saturday at 10:00 am I meet with a group of men for morning conversation. I don’t do much socializing, so it gives me something to look forward to.

The others in the group fit into a narrow demographic. They are Baba lovers, about 77 to 79 years old, college educated, from the East coast, middle class, and white. They are what I would call ex-hippies, and they would be inclined to agree.

While I try to participate in the conversation, I also do a lot of listening. I know that many of them perceive themselves as being engaged in heady ‘philosophical’ thought. What I hear is a lot of pseudoscience and science fiction, which they take as real. It is what I often summarize in my writing as “New Science” and “New Age” ideas.

I would like to discuss where such thinking actually comes from. It has a confused mixture of sources.

Prior to the 18th century, educated people had many wrong ideas, but the source of those ideas were well established and known. They were composed of the classics from literary history: The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Plato’s Republic, etc.

But things began to change at the end of the 18th century. Books such as the spiritualist works of Emanuel Swedenborg, pseudoscience on races by Carl Linnaeus, and Essays on Physiognomy by Johann Caspar (1741-1801), which popularized physiognomy, the discredited practice of assessing a person's character from their outer appearance—especially the face.

Works of this nature sped up even more in the 19th century, with offerings like Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), theorizing the modern idea of Atlantis as an advanced civilization and the capital of an empire, and The Secret Doctrine (1888) by Helena Blavatsky, which purported to synthesize science, religion and philosophy by channeling hidden “Mahatmas.”

But pseudo-science, pseudo-archeology, and pseudo-religion were not the only new influences on thought. The other was science fiction. Many actual developments in science in the 19th century spurred the imagination of writers to embellish what science was increasingly believed to be capable of. Good examples were Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells.

In the 20th century all of these streams of influence began to blur, overlap, and converge, especially through television. Too many books on pseudoscience and pseudo-religion came out to mention. Books like Chariots of the Gods (1888) by Erich von Däniken and The Bermuda Triangle (1974) by Charles Berlitz came out with huge success. People literally believed in a real Atlantis, Ascended Masters, Races, and Time Travel. Quackery in science and medicine became commonplace.

Quickly in the 20th century, ideas sold under the broad rubric of “Quantum” began to enter the culture. Multiple dimensions, multiverses, hidden particles, magical substances, and bent spacetime became accepted scientific-sounding polite conversation. Much of this was pure imagination, often proposed as explanations of anomalous physical behaviors. People were gradually dragged down into a quagmire of hyper-superstitious talk that reflected Star Trek more than real life.

By the late 20th century, conspiracy theories took off and entered into the same conversations, people competing to prove they had the most ‘original’ theory. In some cases conspiracy theories that had long been debunked became a litmus test for intelligence. Of greatest importance to people were the 911, JFK, and UFO conspiracy theories — all taken as settled fact even when no two theories agreed. In time, people began to literally consider that we had been ‘seeded’ on Earth by Aliens. All with people thinking they were discussing philosophy.

My Argument that the World is Perceptually Emergent

In 2000, when I was thinking about what to write my master’s thesis on, I had some interesting discussions with my thesis advisor, Richard Lee, who had his Ph.D. from Stanford.

I was aware that the 18th century philosopher George Berkeley called himself an immaterialist, meaning he did not believe in matter. I had not read Berkeley’s works carefully though, while Richard had and had taught on Berkeley. I also knew that Berkeley was derided for saying this. I knew this just from the general environment in the department and talking to people. So I came to Dr. Lee with two main questions that bothered me. I assumed there were simple answers.
   

The first was what Berkeley’s argument was that matter didn’t exist. Lee replied Socratically, which was his manner, “What makes you think there is one? Maybe he had many.” I felt foolish for assuming there was just one argument that Berkeley had given, but Lee’s reply opened up a whole area of inquiry for me which would later prove useful. My second question was, “What is the argument against Berkeley’s claim?” The term “idealism” is what Berkeley was later categorized as, though he himself never heard such a term. Today Berkeley is one of the most famous “idealists.” So from Lee’s point of view my question amounted to asking what the argument against idealism is. This time Lee’s answer really surprised me. I was expecting him to regurgitate a well-established answer. Instead, he replied wryly, “Have you ever heard of fashion?” He went on to explain that there was not a specific argument against Berkeley’s claim, but suggested the question would make a good thesis title. He suggested I explore both questions in my thesis and title it “Refutations of Idealism.”

Looking back I think in Dr. Lee’s mind he thought I was going to find answers to my questions, and was interested in hearing them. I was simply determined to try my best to find out and report on what I learned. I assumed if Berkeley had arguments that matter didn’t exist, I would find some holes in them, and I assumed if I dug deep enough I was bound to discover what the fatal flaw with Berkeley’s thinking was. So that’s how I began my thesis.

Incidentally I passed my thesis defense in May 2001, so I must have done a fairly good job. I don’t plan here to explain Berkeley’s arguments or critique the various refutations of his writing. I already did that in my thesis and have covered the subject many times in my books and papers. Instead, I talked about this as an introduction to the subject of what my own argument that there is no matter is today and what my argument for my alternative, psychic emergence, is.

I will add, however, a couple things I later learned about Berkeley. I have counted 24 arguments Berkeley gave for his claim that matter didn’t exist, and even why he believed it impossible. And I have learned that there is no actual verbal argument against Berkeley. The only two famous refutations I am aware of, after 25 years since writing my thesis on the subject, were largely performative. They were Samuel Johnson kicking a rock in 1763 and G. E. Moore waving his hand in the air in 1939. In both cases, the men failed to understand what Berkeley meant by 'matter.' And Samuel Johnson was not a philosopher, but a lexicographer.

We can’t get started until we clarify what we mean by “matter.” There are two senses of the word. The first is the colloquial sense and how it is used in the physical sciences. This first sense is in fact closest to its original meaning in its Latin form materia, which meant the substance from which something is made, most notably wood. So the 'matter' you built your house from refers literally to the materials used in its construction. But there is a second use of the word “matter” that is specific to metaphysics in philosophy. This is the theoretical substance we cannot directly perceive with our senses, but that is thought to be the underlying hidden cause of our experience. This is a strange notion and I have discussed it in many papers. John Locke said of this sense of underlying substance:

The idea of corporeal substance in matter is as remote from our conceptions and apprehensions, as that of spiritual substance, or spirit. (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689).

Chris Hill, who taught me metaphysics and had his Ph.D. from Harvard, and now teaches at Brown University, told me this second theoretical sense of “matter” is purely a theoretical entity. It’s not something we can perceive or prove. It is simply the basis of a metaphysical view in philosophy called “materialism.”     

This is the sense of “matter” that Berkeley argued did not exist. 

So, when talking about whether matter exists, we need to clear up which sense of the word we are using. When Samuel Johnson kicked a rock to prove Berkeley wrong and that matter did in fact exist, he didn’t understand the sense of ‘matter’ Berkeley was referring to. As I said, Johnson was not a philosopher and had likely never read the works of Berkeley.

So I was going to say what my own argument is that ‘matter’ (in this secondary metaphysical sense as used in philosophy) doesn’t exist is. To begin, the question needs to be reversed. The question isn't what is my argument that matter doesn't exist, but rather what is the argument that it does? There is no such argument, either empirical or linguistic. You can’t perceive it. And there certainly exists no logical argument for why it must exist. The only case that one could make for matter is that it might possibly exist. But since we can’t picture it, what are we even claiming to be possible? Most appeals to common sense that it exists are confusing this metaphysical sense of it with the colloquial everyday sense of the word, as materials we can perceive that things are built out of, which no person has ever argued against. 

I don’t argue against ‘matter’ in this common sense of the term. In fact my system of an evolution of perception succeeds at explaining how such perceived matter eventually emerges in experience. I certainly don't deny its presence in experience. 

But my main argument against the theoretical notion of matter is that belief in its existence explains nothing. Instead it only produces a secondary hidden substance beyond the substances we perceive, and hence adds to the sum of things we have left to explain rather than eliminating one. While we began with our perceived world to explain, we wind up with it and our theoretical entity to explain. So it only adds to the sum of things needing explaining.

On the other hand, my theory of an evolution of perception begins without the metaphysical form of matter and ends of accounting for the common sense form of it in experience that materialism failed to explain. My argument for psychic emergence is that it explains matter, something ‘matter’ in its metaphysical sense couldn't do.

SUMMARIZING

The two distinct senses of the word ‘matter’ make a difference. Without such a distinction you don’t understand what is being said and your objections make no sense. Like Moore and Johnson who effectively made fools of themselves.

Second, the question of what is my argument that ‘matter’ (as used in metaphysics) doesn’t exist should be reversed. There is no argument for its existence, either empirical or linguistic.

Thirdly, I don’t argue against ‘matter’ in its common sense. In fact my system explains how it emerges in experience — it certainly doesn’t deny its presence in experience.

Lastly, I show that belief that the word ‘matter’ in its metaphysical sense as an unseen unfelt causally responsible substance we can’t observe exists doesn’t explain anything. Instead it only produces a word for a theoretical entity that we in turn can’t explain. So it adds to the sum of things needing explaining.

My argument for psychic emergence is that it explains what ‘matter’ in its metaphysical sense can’t.

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Click image below to view on Substack.

Dan Houser

Giving Gaza to Trump

Profile Picture

Very good photo of me useful for a professional profile photo.

The West's War of Grand Design

Alaistair Crooke is a former British diplomat. He was also a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy.

He mentions Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th century self-declared messiah. You can read about Sabbatai Zevi and other related figures here.

Christina Bevan, Dorset, England, 1913

Christina Bevan was born March 8, 1897 in Harrow, London, the daughter of Edwin Bevan, a philosopher at Kings College, and Daisy Bevan. Mervyn O’Gorman, a British Electrical Engineer and friend of Dr. Bevan, captured these colorful and vibrant photos of 16 year old Christina at Lulworth Cove on the Dorset Coast of Southern England. 

O’Gorman achieved the lovely colors through the Autochrome Lumiere process, developed by the Lumiere brothers and patented in 1903. She wore red because the color process was especially good at picking up red. 

Christina passed away in Buckinghamshire, England in 1981. She never married or had children. She was 84. Little else is known about her. In modern parlance we would say she had aura. 

Good Video

In all honesty

This video with Cornel West, Richard Wolff, & Norman Finkelstein reflects something I've said for a long time. Even well-intentioned honest brilliant people can only imagine a "political" change to fix the West's problems. 

None can even picture a "philosophical" revolution, let alone a "spiritual" one.

But the politics they discuss all came out of philosophers, such as Adam Smith, Carl Marx, etc. However, I must admit I cannot imagine anyone getting interested in Baba or EOP. And even if this happened, what would it do? How would it relate?

It might make people nicer to one another.

It might make them see that money and power are not the summum bonum in life. 

It might make them see why we are here.

The problem is that this would be the slowest of all revolutions. But Baba literally called it that!

I have come to bring about a revolution in man's thinking, the slowest of all revolutions. (Awakener Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 2, p. 6)

The heart behind socialism, communism, and even capitalism is to try to help people -- either through regulation or through lifting curtailments imagined to be in the way of success and suppressing energies.

But when people are conditioned by the philosophy of Empire (which is what Darwinism was and what rules our thinking now) then there is no avenue forward out of our problems. 

All the modern fads that are stalking the world today, in the guise of politics, economics, materialism, communalism, nationalism and socialism, have to be judged on the criteria of selfishness or selflessness. (Meher Baba, LM 3162)

Even these men are committed Darwinists. And don't realize how this limits their minds.

Once again I don't wish to diminish their good intentions. But their political hopes are what the young call delulu.

As you know my thinking has many parts, and not all relate. But there is a thread in it. That's why I wrote "A Quick History of My Hobbies and Interests." But that even doesn't capture it. 

One thing I used to try to explain to my friend Joyce, who I wrote to for a long time, was that EOP wasn't self-help. She's an old hippie (she would proudly agree) so naturally can't imagine something else. That's that Esalen human potential movement MKUltra thing. 

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From a letter to a friend.

I see EOP as trying to continue one branch of what Baba was doing. And that is the pedagogy part. The conveying concepts that could bring about profound world-change if accepted as a new 'collective lens.' I talked about that in the introduction of my first book. It's about how 'we' might think differently. And the reason I have always encouraged it, is I think many problems would be solved automatically that now seem to evade solution.

I often talk about how everyone right now can only imagine a political change. They use their thinking, but never think about their thinking. That was the problem I was getting at in this post. (see above)

As I watched this video I felt camaraderie for these men. I think they are good honest men who care about humanity. But all their thinking was about a 'revolution' like Marx imagined it and the 60s saw it. The notion of a revolution in man's thinking does not occur to them. That's not a criticism of them. Their ideas are sincerely well-intended. I have left-leaning thoughts too. But I don't imagine a political shift can solve the disparity between trillionaires and people on food stamps. We are living in a selfishness orgy. Seeing leaders stealing makes people think they need to do that too. My HOA is going up $100.00, and it just recently went up. A guy in our local newsletter raised his rent for a room in his condo from $550 to $850. He doesn't have a mortgage so his expenses didn't go up. The culture right now is to steal from the poor as the ship goes down.

But I don't see a new political movement alone as the solution. I like this quote. "All the modern fads that are stalking the world today, in the guise of politics, economics, materialism, communalism, nationalism and socialism, have to be judged on the criteria of selfishness or selflessness." – Meher Baba

When I look at Russia and China I am impressed by their hybrid economic innovations. But what I think Putin and Xi have in common (their admins too) is a desire to lift up their people. Here in the US it feels more and more Darwinian to me. Even looking for EOP for the self-help in it is Darwinian. I had a friend with an MA in marketing take me to lunch to see how I could 'sell' EOP better, but first wanted to know what you can get from it. For that's how you sell a product. I tried to explain that truth is all you get, and if you don't value that then it has nothing to offer. It won't make you thin or rich.

All this led me back to where I began when I was young. I began in my 20s imagining making Baba's movie. I studied it very hard, and a friend named Bill went to India and brought back scans of all there was on it that Bhau gave him. This was in the 80s when Bhau was still working on LM.

EOP is kind of a done project. The next level is the pedagogical one. But 'teaching' won't work anymore. I now think Baba saw this time coming. If you can get kids 'playing' the path like a game, they will 'see' what it is by doing it. Their interest will be grabbed by the magic of games- like the one you described yesterday. 

I assume I have to reincarnate to do that. But I can't get the idea out of my mind that there is no other way. 

I have always thought EOP can only really be conveyed with animation. But I don't have those skills.