17th February 2012

Ten of us altogether met up for another brain stretching exercise. We first viewed a video curtesy of TED where a philosopher must have confused an audience of young people by telling them the idea of a inner self was not true. Although we felt that the ego maybe an illusion the inner being or essence is a reality and many believe to be the true Self.
After a break we read and discussed the following mixture of different ideas.

The Source of PhilosophyWonder: The main source of philosophic questioning is the sense of wonder, a childlike wonder just about everything. Philosophy starts with bewilderment, astonishment, amazement about the world, life, and ourselves. Philosophy arises from the workings of an inquisitive mind which is bewildered by seemingly common things or by those that appear to be entirely impractical. It emerges out of readiness to follow the call of human intellectual curiosity beyond common sense acquaintanceship with the world. The same idea is expressed in the old saying that the business of philosophy is to deal with the things supposedly familiar, but not really known and cognized. Philosophy reveals the illusion of knowledge where none in reality exists. Indeed, everything touched by philosophic bewilderment miraculously changes its character from a known to an unknown. B. Russell resuscitates the same idea in claiming that philosophy "keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect".
Self-Knowledge There is nowhere we have to go, nothing we have to do, although lots of going and doing seem to happen. This apparent activity is just as it is without anything being wrong with it. It simply cannot make or create anything with regard to spirituality.
At some point we are reoriented in our search away from the attainments and achievements we long for – we come to a maturity and a place of pause. In this pause we likely realize we are chasing our tail. We might then begin a serious inquiry into the very nature of our essence, what-we-ARE, not what we might become if we do spirituality the right way, trying to hold our posture straight and our thoughts still. We might then realize that only by inquiring into our beliefs about ourselves, by questioning and challening our core set of default beliefs, do we have a chance to see past them, to realize their shortcomings, to recognize that what we believed ourselves to be isn't as we thought................
There is no hiding with LSDSue Blackmore She has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation. She practises Zen and campaigns for drug legalisation
Beyond the flowers that turn into cats, an acid trip forces users to face whatever comes up, and self-knowledge often follows
face the fact that I could not blame the drug nor anyone else for my visions, and certainly not for the worst fact of all – that such cruelty has always happened and is happening somewhere even now. Ultimately I confronted the fact that I was not fundamentally different from either the torturers or the tortured, that I had in myself strains of cruelty and hatred that might, under other circumstances, lead me to be the perpetrator as well as the sufferer.
This is just one small example, and everyone's stories are different, but again and again people report that through LSD they learned to know, and accept, themselves. This may be why LSD has such powerful and can be so helpful for people mentions "spirituality" and whether anyone becomes "kinder and wiser". Surely knowing oneself underlies all these – knowing and accepting your own mind, taking responsibility for what you have done and what you might do. Even simple kindness grows with self-knowledge. When we see ourselves clearly we can see others more clearly, and then it is so very much easier to be kind.....