[ExI] Transpersonal Extropianism?

[Giulio Prisco]

Welcome Aaron!

Will re "Unfortunately the ExI list, for all its positives, is not
really a good spiritual resonance chamber.  I've got the idea that a
lot of people here may be stuck at the skeptic/atheist phase, instead
of pushing on to ask more deeply about the nature of reality and
consciousness."

I am an old ExI list member (20 years and counting) who is NOT "stuck
at the skeptic/atheist phase." Aaron, you might like my website and my
book:
https://turingchurch.net/

Aaron re "transcending the self (the ego)"

This is often brought up when comparing Eastern and Western spiritual
traditions, and in connection with philosophies like Open
Individualism (check Daniel Kolak's book). I agree with many of your
points, but transcending the self is not a viable option for most
people, especially Westerners.

I don't WANT to transcend the self!

I am intellectually attracted to ideas like that the self/ego is part
of the overall ground of being, that we are all little parts of One
cosmic Mind, then after death we just merge back into the One, etc.,
but these ideas are not emotionally appealing. Also, I think the One
is much more imaginative than that. Who's to say that BOTH the concept
of One Mind and the concept of personal self as a relatively
autonomous part of the One can't harmoniously coexist?

I dedicate a lot of time to speculating about this, and I am persuaded
that what the world needs at this moment is not abandoning the self
for the One, but merging the two, in a fusion between Western and
Eastern modes of thinking and feeling.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 5:00 AM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Aaron,
>
> You took the words out of my mouth!  Unfortunately the ExI list, for all its positives, is not really a good spiritual resonance chamber.  I've got the idea that a lot of people here may be stuck at the skeptic/atheist phase, instead of pushing on to ask more deeply about the nature of reality and consciousness.  Some here seem ok with the tautological "consciousness is an illusion"--even though, since illusions need a subject to witness said illusion, this leaves us at the same place as before.  Or "consciousness is what data feels like to be processed", without asking what is data, what is matter, what makes data incarnate in matter, why does consciousness exist at all, how does it relate to the fundamental forces which we have predictive maths for yet not even an iota of predictive maths regarding consciousness, &c.
>
> Kudos on reaching the point yourself.  For me, I used a lot of psychedelics.  And even then, I used to think they were merely tools for the intelligent, and was content to simply live in a mysterious universe without any explanation for being or consciousness.
>
> In any case, I welcome your attempts to bring these ideas here.  At some point, the scientific community will budge, because a model that does not include or explain consciousness is a failure.  Soon we will find the need to incorporate spiritual-type ideas into physics.
>
> -w
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