A Smattering of New Age Theosophy

Anyone else have New Age parents?  I'm referring here to Baby Boomers: people old enough to have dodged the draft and/or been to Woodstock.  My parents skew young for that generation, but not too young to have been influenced by the Krishna consciousness, communal living and astrological thinking of that time.

I suppose my own thinking is to some extent a reflection of theirs.  I'm an empirical sort of person, and my embrace of logic and factual accuracy is in part a reaction to the theosophy I was exposed to as a child.  My parents never forced their beliefs on me, and my inborn character had something to do with it, but my fondness for philosophy and the scientific method was in some contexts a deliberate reaction to discussions of past lives, astral healing and the like.

What follow below are some excerpts from books in my parents' library.  I chose these books randomly, and the sections quoted were also chosen randomly.  Maybe you'll find them insightful enough to embark upon a new spiritual path.  Maybe you'll just find them amusing.  Maybe they'll remind you of your own parents, in this life or the next.

"Free awareness, or from our standpoint, 'pre-perception,' is the basis for our physically focused sense perceptions.  Pre-perception is undifferentiated; it is an ability to, or potential for, organizing awareness along certain specific lines.  Our regular perception brings the earth alive for us by structuring our basic awareness, sifting it through the differentiated senses and alternately blocking out other data that might otherwise also 'come alive' to us."

- Adventures in Consciousness by Jane Roberts

Q: Deep waters here.  Or are they?  Sometimes piling on intellectual (scientific) terms can give the illusion of meaning.  This is one of the cornerstones of Scientology.

"Free awareness" seems to imply a lack of subjectivity.  If the barrier between subject and object (i.e. one's individual self) has been removed, IS there such a thing as awareness?  If we are existing (or perceiving) in a state of oneness with the universe, can such a thing as "awareness" even occur/exist?  This mention of "undifferentiated" awareness also begs the question.  While remaining open to new information seems necessary, isn't it also necessary to filter information through an individual being?  Isn't that the essence of individuality?

Also, is perception possible without sensory input?  Without physical being?

"Power goes into our word according to the feeling and faith behind it.  When we realize that the power that moves the world is moving on our behalf and is backing up our word, our confidence and assurance grow.  You do not try and add power to power; therefore, there must be no mental striving, coercion, force, or mental wrestling."

- The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy

Q: Strong Gospel of John vibe here.  "In the beginning was the word (Logos)..." and so forth.  And yet the last sentence seems very Buddhist.  I suppose it all depends on the author's definition of "power," which could just as easily be the Holy Spirit, individual spiritual power, or the ultimate nature (perhaps negation) of all existence.

"Many mediums have 'spirit controls,' guides who take over and protect them while the physical body is in a trancelike state.  Sometimes these guides are exactly as presumed, discarnate entities who lived many years ago and have now dedicated themselves to aiding in this work.  In certain instances there is a different element involved.  Several years ago I went with a group to a Spiritual church conducted by a very successful medium.  His 'guide' would apparently take possession of his body as soon as the trance state was established."

- Psychic Energy by Joseph J. Weed*

Q: I fail to understand what "discarnate" means in the context of an entity that somehow still exists.  Maybe the author explains it elsewhere in the book.  But um yeah, cool man, guides who take over and protect us while we're in a trancelike state.  Good to know!

"BB turned and faced a woman who seemed to be walking in slow motion, in one place.  She appeared middle-aged, overweight, tears running down her face... (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mommy didn't mean to leave you, baby doll, but she just couldn't help it, but I'm coming back, I'm coming back to help you just as soon as I can... I'm coming back somehow...)"

- Far Journeys by Robert A. Monroe

Q: I seem to remember that this book is about astral projection.  Certain people expend a lot of time and energy toward contacting loved ones who've died.  I'm never quite sure how I feel about the idea that we all have a spirit that lives beyond our physical selves.  I understand why people find it comforting, but it seems to me that the erasure of such individuality could be equally comforting, if you believed that nothing is truly gained or lost in a closed system.  Given such a closed system, even in death we're still part of the totality of things.

This of course begs the question as to whether our universe is a closed system.  Do I know the answer to that question?  Of course not.

"Every cell of the body is enveloped in soul or thought, and its initial impulse is to conform to the divine-natural law.  When this law is not observed by the will of man and cells are reduced to the slavery of lust, they combine with other cells of like condition, and, rather than submit longer to the debased condition, they destroy the organism.  But the destruction of the cell as matter does not destroy it on the mental plane; the mental entity survives, and again seeks to carry out the great law of soul evolution that was implanted in it from the beginning."

- The Twelve Powers of Man by Charles Fillmore

Q: Shades of Zoroastrianism.  This could easily be a passage from the Zend Avesta, or even Herman Hesse's most famous work.  The old duality between mind and body, flesh and spirit.  Without getting into whether or not such a duality really exists, this passage seems to hinge upon this "slavery of lust" mentioned by the author.  No idea what that means, and I'm not about to read "The Twelve Powers of Man" in hopes of finding out.

Related Entries:

"Misbehaving" by Richard Thaler (2015)
"The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac (1958)
"What Money Can't Buy" by Michael Sandel (2012)
"The Anatomy of Violence" by Adrian Raine (2013)

*That's really his last name.  I swear.

NOTE: No offense intended toward anyone who adheres to any of the authors, books and ideas quoted above.  I wrote this entry with a lot of affection for my parents, who are able to overgeneralize on any number of topics.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

This book was published last year.  I got about 1/4 of the way through it and gave up.  The author won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, but this book is solidly within the field of Psychology, not Economics.

The author goes on and on and on and on and on and on with an exposition on the subject of two cognitive systems within the human mind, which he refers to as System 1 and System 2.  The first system is our more reactive self, given to acting on emotion and instinct.  The second system is our more intellectual self, given to the slower processes of analysis and reflection.

I think good benchmarks for a book like this are:

1) Was it enlightening?  Did it help me understand something?
2) Was it interesting?  Did it answer question(s) that were important to me?
3) Was it useful?  Did I use the knowledge gained within this book in my daily life?

And with such benchmarks in mind, this book seems flimsy and overwritten, full of examples that lead nowhere.  I failed to see how the author's System 1 and System 2 were any improvement over previous psychological models of the human consciousness.  This book was also deeply repetitive, and thus boring.  This book gave me nothing at all to use in my daily life, even though I am a teacher, and always looking for some insight into how people learn and think.

But maybe this book got really interesting towards the end.  Maybe it grew more insightful.  Maybe it offered ideas that would have revolutionized my understanding of the human mind.

I will never know, because I failed to read it all the way through.  I turned instead to other books, perhaps more frivolous in nature, but infinitely more entertaining.