crane@fortune.UUCP (12/07/83)
Yes I've given a lot of thought to that concept and have read "Stranger in a Strange Land" about 5 times. I absolutely love the book! It literally changed my life! A lot of Christians believe that God can dwell in your heart. Some religious people believe that God is everywhere. The Latter Day Saint (Mormons) believe that every person is a god in embryo and that given the proper development can develop into a god or godess and create his/her own universes and populate them with his/her own creations. The Scientologists believe that human beings do have a lot of god-like abilities and that once a lot of hangups in a person's mind are eliminated, the peson is freed as a spiritual being and has almost limitless powers. Psychologists believe that we use only a small part of our potential abilities. Many positive thinking books say that if you visualize something and make it real enough in your own personal universe it will eventually also appear in the physical universe. Read "Illusions" by Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Believe it or not. Faith healing happens. A person can believe in a doctor, Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, God, a minister of God, or even HIMSELF and get better. I believe it is actually our own faith or power within us which effects the healing. Don't laugh. I've seen it happen. All the above, plus my own experience, suggests to me that we all have a great deal more potential that we allow ourselves. There surely is a Supreme God, but if we are really His offspring then some of it must have rubbed off.
tim@unc.UUCP (12/08/83)
I haven't read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" since my early teens, since it has lost the force that it had at its release. Still, I've been watching the discussion of it here with some interest. As longtime readers of the group know, I feel that humans have attained to the status of gods in this century. We can devastate cities in a microsecond, send our voices across millions of miles, reap vast and profitable harvests, fly, create new forms of matter, pry behind the scenes of the very nature of events, and so on. These developments propel us into the world of the gods whether we want it or not, and our morals must be worthy of gods or horror and chaos will surely result. If human history continues as it has, we will surely die before another century passes. We must change if we are to survive our forced technological apotheosis. That is why I was somewhat distressed to read the somewhat naive and vain feelings on this subject posted by one Heinlein acolyte. He seems to feel that Godhood is in some way tied up to realizing psychic powers within ourselves. I like comic books too, but I don't base my religion on them. So what if you got these marvelous powers? Would it make you a better person? Would it make you a happier person? The whole idea is juvenile wish-fulfillment. The Latter Day Saint (Mormons) believe that every person is a god in embryo and that given the proper development can develop into a god or godess and create his/her own universes and populate them with his/her own creations. I would rather see a good movie. Why would you want the responsibility of this? You then have to agonize over their fate, whether you have born them to a life of pain, how much you should intervene in their destiny, and so on. If the prospect is really so attractive to you, I suggest you take up fantasy role-playing games instead. You can fulfill your universe-creation fantasies without forcing real people to live with your decisions, which is a morally objectionable act. What qualifies you to force beings into incarnation at your whim? The Scientologists believe that human beings do have a lot of god-like abilities and that once a lot of hangups in a person's mind are eliminated, the peson is freed as a spiritual being and has almost limitless powers. You must be kidding. You're going to quote the Scientologists as a reliable source of spiritual information???? They also believe that if you wire tin cans together, you get a miraculous instrument which will read the innermost sensations of your trillion-year-old soul, which, by the way, is called a Thetan and is roughly six inches long. Scientologists routinely "regain" the memory of past incarnations on Venus and similar comic-book science-fiction silliness, and pay through the nose for something they could get a lot cheaper at the local drug store's rack. I don't want to come off like too much of a dogmatist here, but Scientology is mental poison. It encourages unquestioning acceptance of various hallucinatory sequences and of the word of the leaders of the cult, to the extent of physical harassing of its enemies, perjury in court, break-ins, and theft. Psychologists believe that we use only a small part of our potential abilities. I have a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (for what that's worth), and it's news to me that any respectable psychologist has uttered any such nonsense. Sounds to me like you're talking about Goodavage or some other such pseudo-scientific gimp. I say that this is nonsense because its literal meaning is trivially obvious (clearly we could all learn to do things we can't do now, like drive a forklift) but it is invariably quoted in a context that hints of mysterious psychic powers locked away in the unknown recesses of our brains. At any given moment, only a small part of your brain is in use. At any given moment, only a small part of the CPU of your computer is being used. That doesn't imply that there's anything mysterious and psychic happening in the rest of it, only that there's a certain degree of localization of function. I can't prove that there is nothing psychic in the unutilized portions of the microcode interpreter of your CPU, but that hardly implies that your computer could bend spoons at a distance, either. Many positive thinking books say that if you visualize something and make it real enough in your own personal universe it will eventually also appear in the physical universe. Gag... Yes, I'm sure that those books tell you that. There is lots of good money to be made by preaching to the insecure that they actually are not as impotent as they seem to themselves. Enough said. Believe it or not. Faith healing happens. A person can believe in a doctor, Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, God, a minister of God, or even HIMSELF and get better. I believe it is actually our own faith or power within us which effects the healing. Don't laugh. I've seen it happen. Why should anyone not believe it? Psychogenic disease is a well-known and verified phenomenon. Should we then disbelieve the converse, that there are psychogenic cures (particularly of psychogenic disease)? The mind and body are a close-knit whole, with impulses in one part having effects in all the others. So? If that was all you were asserting, I would go along with you completely, but you are implying that there is something mysterious about the process, and alluding to it as evidence of psychic powers. Bosh. The primary fact about all of this "Thou art a high-powered God" talk is that omnipotence has got to be the most boring thing conceivable. If you can do absolutely anything, then where is the fun in doing any one thing instead of any other thing? They are equally easy. There is only interest for a human in a task if some obstacles have to be surmounted to achieve the desired end. Raise your hand. What a thrill, eh? The reason it seemed like a pointless action was that you already knew you could do it; there were no obstacles preventing it. For an omnipotent being, everything would be like that, since no obstacle is even conceivable. The fun in the scenarios you have pictured is not in being omnipotent, but in being more powerful than most humans. Seen in this light, the grandiose daydream nature of your religion is embarassingly obvious. There is nothing wrong with grandiose daydreams -- like many people, I have them not infrequently -- but there is something wrong with elevating them to the status of religion and making them a large thing in your life. My suggestion that you take up fantasy role-playing games was serious -- it would provide you with an outlet for your fantasies, which are not bad in and of themselves, and keep them from poisoning your religious views. I am sorry that I have been so harsh in this article -- I haven't been in my best mood lately, for a number of reasons I'd rather not go into now. Nonetheless, although they could have been stated less strongly, I stand behind all my assertions above. It is particularly frustrating for someone like myself, who is deeply involved in the occult, to see someone espouse this sort of unashamed egotism and wish-fulfillment as the highest goals of religion. Such nonsense only confirms the opinions of those who think that occultists desire nothing more than to become the last survivor of Krypton, when in fact the goal is a willed self-transformation into a being which is superior due not to its "powers", but because of its beauty -- because of what it is, not what it can do. ________________________________________________________ Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)
rpw3@fortune.UUCP (12/16/83)
#R:unc:-637500:fortune:21900003:000:1523
fortune!rpw3 Dec 16 02:44:00 1983
Tim Maroney says (with LOTS of hacked editing):
"I am sorry... I haven't been in my best mood lately, for a
number of reasons... It is particularly frustrating...
to see someone espouse this sort of unashamed egotism and
wish-fulfillment as the highest goals of religion... when in
fact the goal is a willed self-transformation into a being
which is superior due not to its "powers", but because of its
beauty -- because of what it is, not what it can do.
This is sort of why I never could cut the traditional "Western" religions.
They never had any way to deal with WHY one felt "sorry", or "frustrated",
and past a certain point one wasn't even allowed to comment on the problem.
Buddhist psychology (called "abhidharma") for me presents a much better
working model of exactly how we manage to continually fall into these
traps, and how to avoid them. The main trap is, in fact, thinking that
there is something/somewhere else to be. If we are to be able to work
with our state of mind, then our current state of mind must already be
workable, otherwise we could never escape the "while(1)can't;" that so
often cripples our typical "self-help" schemes (the "Woody Allen" loop).
Whatever path we choose must start with where we are. Whenever we discover
we're fooling ourselves again, we have to drop it. That is the essence of
meditation.
Rob Warnock
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphins Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065tim@unc.UUCP (12/22/83)
This was an interesting article, but I fail to see what the quote from my article on psychic powers had to do with it. Was the poster implying that I was a member of some Western religion and should meditate to remove these bad feelings? If so, the first point is not quite accurate (I assume that by Western religions you refer to such things as Christianity which are more cocerned with externals than internals), and neither is the second. I said that I wasn't in "my best mood". If it were not for the fact that I am a skilled meditator with a lot of control over my emotions, the situation would have caused me to slip into deep depression. As it is, I was only plagued by small feelings of irritation. No doubt I could have banished the feelings altogether, but that would be dishonesty to myself. -- Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)