This is an extension to my previous blog post about Fictional Worlds and Fictional Drugs and a partial response to Balder's blog The Wilber-Combs Lattice and the Pre/Trans Fallacy.

In my previous blog post, I mentioned Paul Shepard.  His theories are ones that I come back to every now and again even though its been quite a number of years since I've read one of his books.  It conflicts with the more optimistic vision of most Integralists.  However, I see potential truth in both of them.  Shepard sees that a misdevelopment occurred in humanity's early development.  Wilber doesn't see this early misdevelopment, but rather places the blame of misdevelopment on later stages such as his theory of Mean Green Meme.

I've heard of one theory that could bring the two together.  It was brought up in a discussion on Wilber's site.  The person was speculating that maybe Spiral Dynamics should be seen as descriptive instead of prescriptive.  It is an accurate model describing how social development has occurred so far (in Western societies and non-Western societies influenced by Western culture).  But this doesn't mean that development couldn't have happened differently nor does it mean that Spiral Dynamics represents the best possible outcome of development.  These are the types of thoughts that came to me when I first studied Wilber.  It seems an obvious possibility, but it rarely comes up in discussion and I haven't yet seen it in a book about Integralism.

This seems to bungle up the workings of Wilber's aesthetically elegant model.  If we can't be sure that the development model we have is optimal, then it undercuts other theories such as the pre/trans fallacy.  How can we be sure that we have it right?  From one perspective, the model is prescriptive, but maybe from another perspective it could be proscriptive.  So, is their a larger context in which to place this all?  Is their a perspective of perspectives that transcends and includes both idealism and pessimism? 

I must admit that I've been more interested in the potential of a Theory For Anything (TFA) and less interested in a Theory Of Everything (TOE).  But I don't know what a TFA would look like.  I reference back to Jung's archetypes and personality types because it seems to give something closer to a morally neutral perspective and less hierarchical.  I especially find personality types insightful because it clearly shows how often differences are just differences.  This fits in with my criticism of Wilber's model and those attracted to it being more Apollonian (MBTI NT?).

All of this interesting enough, but my mind has been focused on another set of ideas.  I've just started the book The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen (here is the author's blog and here is an article by the author about skepticism).  This book brings some important questions to rationality.  I can't summarize this authors views at the moment, but let me pull out some quotes and ideas to give a sense of where he is coming from.

Okay... many philosophers have considered the mind to be binary and this goes back to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander.  From this tradition, we get Aristotelian logic with its binary opposition (a or not a) and its "the law of the excluded middle".  And one end of the binary opposition is usually privileged.  We enter a different perspective with the liminal (introduced by Van Gennep and further elucidated by Victor Turner). "When a structure is subverted or deconstructed, there is a reversal of the positions of privilege or a blurring or collapse of the line dividing the pair." (p. 62)  This liminal between is the space that post-modernists see as empty, but which earlier anthropologists saw as being where the paranormal and supernatural can be properly placed. 

"Deconstruction calls attention to ambiguity and uncertainty, and at its core, it is about the problem of representationin all forms." (p. 76)  

"Like magic, the problem of meaning is banished from the consciusness of science.  Deconstructionism raises the issue overtly.  It points out that meaning is neither neutral nor transparent.  It asserts that language precedes science and thus has primacy over it." (p. 377) 

"The Issue of power again leads back to Max Weber.  Weber's discussion of authority was about power and domination.  He identified three types of authorrity: charismatic, traditional, and bureaucratic.  Pure charisma, the most fundamental, involves supernatural power.  The other types are rationalized forms of it.  One need only recall Weber's insight that the process of rationaliziaion calls for the elimination of magic form the world (in actuality, elimination of the conscious awareness  of magic by cultural elites).  With the process of disenchantment virtually complete in the academy, deconstructionists (and everyone else) display an almost complete amnesia as to the primitive foundations of their school of thought.  Neary all have forgotten the taboo areas, the liminal regions, those betwixt and between categories, the anomalous, the supernatural." (pp 377-378)

In this, we can see the questioning of dualistic models.  This is where the questioning can also be turned to Wilber's pre/trans fallacy.  I don't fully understand the implications as of yet, but it opens up some space for further discussion about experiences that may not be dualistic nor either pre or trans.  If all it does is bring up more unanswered questions, then that is fine by me.  I'm looking more for a model of questions than a model of answers.

What I'm trying to figure out is how can we step outside of Wilber's models to see them objectively.  To the extent that we commit ourselves to a model, we can't see it clearly.  This is a problem because we can't understand a model either if we look at it entirely detached.  Does the liminal provide a space where we don't get stuck too far in either direction?

I've been tagged by Joshua.  I may not have travelled as much, but my sentiments are not far off from what Debyemm blogged about in response to being likewise tagged.  I would need to look at a map and think real hard to try to remember the various places I've been to.  I'll just say that I haven't yet been out of the US.  I'm not a travelling man nor do I aspire to be.

Actually, I just hate using my memory.  Some people say they have a memory like a steel trap.  Mine is more like an aluminum sift.  If I wanted to use my memory, I wouldn't have dropped out of college twice.

As I'm being contrary by not playing along, I also won't tag anyone else. 
I'm just no fun.  :(

This blog is for Nicole.  This is a summary of a story I told to someone on the Globalchatter forum in trying to explain INFP in a different way.  The thread was titled Ne's public face.

You could think of an INFP's Ne as a loyal servant who walks the perimiter of the grounds carrying a lantern before it and with a guard dog by its side. Maybe the guard dog is Te. The Ne is the face that greets visitors at the door like a butler. Ne checks the gates and doors, and secures the windows. It ensures that its master isn't disturbed in doing his important work in the study, and it dutifully brings the dominant what it needs whenever called.

Ne the servant sometimes takes his job so seriously that he wanders off the grounds following the tracks of an animal that might be dangerous and picks up scat to bring back to the master, but Ne gets easily distracted and follows another track that crossed the original track. This tracking goes on and on, and the servants backpack gets overloaded with specimens...but miraculously in what seems like aimless wandering it ends up back at its master house. Tired, Ne goes back inside satisfied at having done a good job, gives the specimens to the master and goes to the Ne's sleeping quarters.

Si is the master's personal secretary who never leaves the house, and with Ne tired out Si takes over some of the servant's duties. When someone knocks at the door, Si responds in fear and uncertainty double-bolting the door. Si runs up to tell the master that their is a horrible monster lurking outside, and they try to decide whether to sic the Te dog on the potential intruder. They both cower huddled together in the study frozen in inaction.

Ne wakes up, goes downstairs and answers the door. It turns out it was just a girl scout selling cookies. Ne politely buys some cookies and brings them up to the master's study with two glasses of milk. The Fi master says he wasn't afraid and that he was just about to take care of the problem himself.

And here is from a discussion I had with some INFJs:

Fi wants to simply clear a path through the woods, but wants the woods to remain as is. Fi wants the woods b/c the trees enclose the path. Fe sees the woods as material to build a structure w/ in which people can live. Fi wants to build also, but wants it to be unobtrusive. Also, Fi is mostly considering the individual and so it is just making its own way through the brush. Others may follow, but that is secondary. Also, I'd say Fi is making a path into the woods rather than out of the woods. Fe enjoys the woods too, but wants it as a nature preserve that can be used for human needs. Both find value in the woods.

Fe is the missionary that comes to the stone-age tribe of Fis hidden deep w/in the ancient trees. Fe invites Fi out into the open. Fi has never seen the horizon before and runs screaming back into his protective home. The Fi tells this tale of adventure to the excited tribe who listens in awe to his great feats and becomes a hero in the telling. Meanwhile, the Fe is thinking what a strange fellow.

Patterns With No Known Cause

The world is filled with patterns.  We rarely notice them and we rarely even think to try to notice them.  Even when we do notice them, we don't know what to make of them.  Are we seeing order because that is what the human mind does?  The paranoid notices patterns where none exist or at least where no one else notices them.  If we are correct in seeing an objective pattern, how can we be sure and how can we discover its cause?  Mostly, we're in the dark and our ability to test our hypotheses is extremely limited.  We end up believing in what feels true or useful and just ignoring all the rest.  But what if you're a person who feels compelled to question all beliefs and feel incapable of ignoring the data that doesn't fit?

Events That Seem To Defy Scientific Knowledge

Usually, the strange events of life are rather mundane.  They're easy to ignore and forget about.  We most often don't even give them a moment of thought.  Oddities happen all of the time.  Our perspective and information is limited, and we don't have the time to consider all of the possibilities.  We have things to do and places to be... so, curiosity and wonder get put on the backburner.  For most of us, we only remember our child-like wonder when around children.  A kid who has no adult responsibilities makes an unusual observation and the adult pauses for a moment.  They walk past that place everyday... why hadn't they noticed it?  As we go about our lives, we normally just assume or act as if everything is explainable according to known scientific laws.  Its easy to explain away or dismiss the minor odd events that pop up every now an then.

Experiences That Seem To Deny Rationality

Most of our daily experiences are non-rational.  Thoughts and emotions and perceptions flow through our consciousness, and for the most part we don't bring much self-awareness in investigating them.  However, sometimes a weird experience jolts us into a moment of wonder or at least a moment of nagging uncertainty.  Synchronicities are a good example of this.  Subjectivity and objectivity, nearness and distance, randomness and order seem to briefly collapse into an unclear middle category.  Its easy to dismiss it as a mere coincidence after the event.  You can't prove a correlation and certainly there seems to be no rational link, no common cause.  At best, all one can say is that it felt meaningful.  But even then one can't say exactly what is meaningful about it.

Synchronicities abound.  But if you're not looking for them, you're not likely to notice them.  On the other hand, if you intentionally look for them and thus notice them, it doesn't rationally prove anything.  We find what we look for; about everyone understands this factor.  Where one person sees an acausal principle another sees perceptual bias.  Coincidences happen... so what?  Objectively, a coincidence is just that, but that misses the subjective experience. 

Can Subjectivity Be Objectively Studied?

Science assumes objectivity and subjectivity are separate or if anything that the subjective mind is just a result of an objective brain.  Synchronicity brings this scientific assumpiton into question.  That the scientific method proves a scientific worldview is no surprise.  However, even traditional science based on a mechanistic paradigm is starting to be questioned by new research based on a new paradigm.  But, no matter what paradigm, science will always be limited in what it can research.  Science, by its very design, has difficulty dealing with the complex and nonlinear, the multicausal and the acausal.

Science doesn't ever prove anything.  Science just assumes through general concensus that a theory is true when repeated research hasn't yet disproven it.  The problem is that some phenomena can't be scientifically studied at all or not very easily.  According to the scientific  paradigm, such issues are never denied, but by not dealing with them they are subtly dismissed.  For instance, mainstream science has barely studied the paranormal and only because of a few mavericks within the mainstream.  But, at the same time, mainstream science excludes the paranormal as if its been disproven.  If the paranormal was untrue, it wouldn't be difficult to disprove given enough research.  So, why do most scientists avoid the matter altogether?

What Can We Discover Through Our Own Subjectivity?

So, science can't directly prove much of anything especially in the area of subjective experience.  All we do is use data to build up statistical probabilities.  If anything, science tends to dismiss the subjective factor.  Simply based on research, there is probably more reason to doubt freewill than to believe in it.  But can we prove something as fundamental as freewill in our own subjective experience?

Some would say yes because they feel they're free.  However, everyone has plenty of experiences where what they felt to be true was wrong.  Of course, the naturally optimistic human mind tends to ignore data that doesn't fit into their reality tunnel.  Yes, people who believe in freewill feel they have freewill, and vice versa.  But what if we step outside of this self-contained thought system, this self-reinforcing loop?

With synchronicities, subjectivity and objectivity seem to collapse into a middle category.  When we look at the dilemma of freewill vs determinism a similar collapse seems to happen.  Synchronicities are just one category of paranormal experience.  The paranormal undermines our whole sense of reality.  Not only is objectivy as we understand it questioned but subjectivity as we experience it is also questioned.  If neither objectivity nor subjectivity can give us a clear answer, where can we turn?  Is there even a clear answer to be found?

Conclusion

Life is strange.

Integral Conspiracy Theory?

Integral UFOlogy?

Integral Occultism?

Integral Gnosticism?

Integral Science Fiction?

Integral Suicide?

In Unity, Jesus isn't superior to us.  We don't need to give the right answer or win his approval in order to be saved.  This is because our salvation isn't in his hands.  He just shows the way.
 
In Unity, access to Heaven isn't limited to those who follow Christ (ie Universalism).  But it depends on what is meant by "Christ" and "follow".  Christ has two meanings in New Thought: (1) Jesus Christ the Wayshowher, and (2) Christ Consciousness.  New Thought Christianity is non-exclusive.  Most New Thought practitioners probably see Christ Consciousness in all religions.  The language used isn't important.  It doesn't matter if you call this Wayshower principle Jesus or Buddha or whatever, and there is no reason why there can't be multiple Wayshowers.  In New Thought, to "follow" Christ simply means to live your life according to his example.  This doesn't necessitate believing in the one true dogma or accepting Jesus as the one true savior.  It simply means that you follow him and so all that it implies is that you trust his guidance, that you trust he knows the way.  Also, New Thought practitioners tend to believe that there are many paths to "Heaven".
 
In Unity, Heaven and Hell don't exist as separate realms.  They're states of mind and they're part and parcel with how we live our lives, our words and our deeds.  We don't have to wait until we're dead to be close to God.  Sin is our separation or rather perceived separation from God, but there is no Original Sin.  Sin like salvation is in the present.  Each moment gives us an opportunity to accept or deny God.
  
In Unity, we co-create reality with God.  It is difficult to trace this idea.  One of the earliest source would be Gnosticism.  There is an idea that began in Gnosticism and was adapted in later Kabbalah.  The idea is that we don't merely passively receive salvation but rather participate in the salvation process. 
 
New Thought types like to quote passages such as Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34.  New Thought interprets as literal truth the statement of Jesus that "You are gods."  And in John 14:12, Jesus says "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."
 
Also, Mesmer had the idea that we have the power to influence our reality.  Phineas Quimby is considered the Father of New Thought and he studied Mesmerism.
 
I've read that Unity began within the Evangelical movement.  It doesn't seem all that Evangelical in comparison to some more vocal Evangelists today, but it still has an Evangelical core.  I suppose it was Robert Schuller who first popularized New Thought (he is my mom's favorite minister).  I've seen many Evangelical tv ministries where New Thought ideas are preached.  What is known as prosperity thinking in New Thought and positive thinking in New Age is called by a different name in the Evangelical movement.  Its called prosperity gospel or abundance theology.  The newest popular proponent of New Thought in Evangelism is Joel Osteen.
 
The wiki article says...

Universalism is a religion and theology that generally holds all persons and creatures are related to God or the divine and will be reconciled to God. A church that calls itself Universalist may emphasize the universal principles of most religions and accept other religions in an inclusive manner, believing in a universal reconciliation between humanity and the divine. Other religions may have Universalist theology as one of their tenets and principles, including Christianity, Hinduism, and some of the New Age religions. Universalist beliefs exist within many faiths, and many Universalists practice in a variety of traditions, drawing upon the same universal principles.

The most common principle drawn upon is love. (Sai Baba/Baba Speech): "The spirit present in all of the beings is varily seen as that of mind. They are all full of the essential love. Without love, it is all just a pun, without love you can not be happy !"

Truth is also an important principle to be drawn upon. The living truth is more far-reaching than national, cultural, even faith boundaries. ^[1]

That generally lines up with my understanding of Unity's Universalism.  The Random House definition says that "the doctrine that emphasizes the universal fatherhood of God and the final salvation of all souls."  Within the Unity church, fatherhood isn't a term that I remember hearing much in reference to God, but the general idea of God's universal nature as Creator has a similar meaning.  The major difference here is that Unity wouldn't agree with a view that final salvation is a collective future event.  This goes along with heaven and hell not being places that we go to.  Ultimately, Unity teaches that everyone is already saved.  Sin is an error in perception and that is all.  We aren't really separate from God because everything is eternally in and of God.

There are all kinds of weaknesses some inherent to New Thought theology and some with how New Thought has manifested in contemporary culture.  Most importantly is the question of whether New Thought aligns with what psychological research has discovered.  Some of the strongest criticism of New Thought in its relationship with New Age comes from the Integral theorists.  A book that looks interesting is The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford.  I haven't read the book, but it seems to be about how some New Agers could learn a thing or two from Jungian shadow work.

In highschool, I was heavily influenced by both Unity and A Course In Miracles (ACIM).  This means that the two are pretty mixed in my mind.  The ACIM was popular in Unity.  Because of this, Unity decided to stop carrying it in their bookstores.  They were worried that people would start thinking of Unity theology only in ACIM terms.  The ACIM has much more of an intellectual theology than New Thought does in general, and so ACIM adds a bit of meat to the bones.  Check out Kenneth Wapnick if you're interested in the theology pertaining to the ACIM.  Basically, the ACIM is most similar to Valentinian Gnosticism. 
 
I've studied the ACIM more thoroughly than I have ever studied Unity theology.  As I was raised in Unity, I never gave it much thought growing up.  And as I haven't attended a Unity since highschool, I've never studied of its theology to any great extent.  I'm not an expert on Unity, but its essential philosophy is easy enough to grasp... easier to grasp than the historical comlexities of Catholic theology.  The funny thing about Unity is its lack of motivation to push a particular theology beyond a few basic beliefs.  I was never taught what the beliefs of Unity were.  I never even read the Bible growing up nor do I remember anyone reading Bible stories to me.  It didn't even occur to me to think about any of this.

This blog is posted in the God Pod.

Unity and New Thought denies evil any reality because God is all and all is in God.  There is no Satan and what appears as darkness is nothing more than a lack of light.  Just a false belief and a misperception.  As for sin (original or otherwise), evil, satan, and hell... its all the same in New Thought theology.  Good vs evil isn't a dichontomy that is used in New Thought.  For instance, A Course In Miracles uses the terms of love and fear: "The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."  There really isn't any more that can be said of it from a New Thought perspective. 
 
I was raised with no concept of evil and so I never thought about it growing up.  Even though I now understand it in the abstract, it doesn't have much meaning to me.  As my grandmother (who was a Unity minister, a Science of Mind practitioner, and a student of the ACIM) used to say, "Everyone is doing the best that they can for where they're at."
 
In New Thought, God has no gender because God isn't an anthropomorphic deity.  Rather, God is a spiritual principle something akin to monism or panentheism.  New Thought is the natural result of the evolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition taken to its extreme.  The Catholic God is more abstract than the Jewish God.  The Protestant God is more abstract than the Catholic God.  The New Thought God is more abstract than the Protestant God.  As rationality increased with socio-histoical development, God became ever more rationalized.
 
Unity uses the term "God" to refer to the divine, but the use of the term "Goddess" in reference to the divine is extremely common in New Age.  Even in Unity, nobody would care if you felt like referring to the divine as Goddess. 
 
Goddess combines the whole feel of embodied spirituality that is in line with the New Age's desire to bridge spirituality and science.  The Gaia hypothesis is a case in point.  It was originated by a scientist, but was quickly spiritualized and has become one of the main tenets of New Age.  Nature and environmentalism are very important in the New Age. 
 
Plus, Goddess fits in with the whole female empowerment.  New Age groups have a high percentage of female membership and women often have leadership positions.  If I remember correctly, all of the ministers of Unity churches that I've belonged to have been women.  A major influence of the Goddess strain within New Age goes back to Gimbutas' theory of ancient peaceful matriarchies.  Also, the rise of virgin mary worship has contributed to this.  New Age is the common person's spirituality and virgin mary worship has a similar position within Catholicism.  There are many theories why the feminine principle is becoming more central.  I simply see it as the return of the repressed.
 
So, what is a Unity service like?  There is nothing particularly special about a Unity service.  Its very simple and bare bones.  Unity isn't big into symbolism and ritual.
 
There is singing non-traditonal songs such as "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."  Come to think of it, God was referred to as Father in this song.  I just looked it up and I see that some versions have of course changed "Father" to "Creator".  During the singing of this song, I remember that everyone held hands in a circle that connected the whole congregation together and everyone would sway back and forth.
 
Unity people are a smily and friendly group for the most part, but I have been to a Unity church nearby where the people weren't as open as the Unity churches I grew up in.  One thing I remember is that people liked to hug and there was a specific point in the service that was for this purpose.  However, someone told me that Unity churches were much more huggy in the past than they are now.   I don't know what would cause such a change.
 
Of course, there is a sermon.  But its quite different from most Christian sermons.  God is talked about in a less direct way.  There is much more neutral language.  Bible stories aren't usually told.  Nonetheless, the whole service has a general Christian feel to it.

This blog is posted in the God Pod.

The New Age has some of its origins in organizations such as the Theosophical Society.  Besant and Leadbeater wrote the book Occult Chemistry where they claimed to have used psychic vision to discover the structure of the atom.  Also, it was the Theosophical Society that raised J. Krishnamurti as the coming messiah even though he chose not to take up this role and went his own way instead.  Theosophy was a part of the whole spiritualism movement which related to various occult groups and practitioners.  This side has been a bit lost in the lightness and fluff of the New Age, but the New Age tradition of channelled writings comes from spiritualism. 
 
All of the spirituality and religion of that time was largely in response to the industrial revolution and the rising of scientific materialism.  Mesmerism was one of those attempts to bridge the gap between spirituality and science.  This is partly why New Agers are so focused on material manifestations of spirituality such as healing and wealth, and why they're interested in quasi-scientific theories about quantum physics and such.  New Thought ideas are getting some actual scientific backing from books written by people such as Lynne McTaggart who is a reporter on consciousness studies.
 
There is also an intriguing connection between the New Age and phenomena such as UFOs and conspiracies.  They're two sides of the same thing.  UFOs and conspiracies, like much of New Age, is seeking rational explanations for the non-rational.

The basic connection is that there is much crossover between those interested in New Age and those interested in UFOs, conspiracy theories, and whatever else.  New Age types tend to be open-minded and curious about life in general (and some more extreme New Agers have a naive gullibility that allows them to believe in almost anything).  I mentioned that the early origins of New Age include spiritualism and Theosophy.  The occult in general is sort of the shadow of mainstream New Age, and the occult is mixed up with UFOs and conspiracy theories.  
 
I was reading a book by Vallee who is a UFO investigator and was one of the first people to make a connection between alien abductions and traditional folklore.  In the intro to one of his books, he mentioned that he had studied Teilhard de Chardin and appreciated his view.  Teilhard de Chardin is a name that comes up in both New Age and Integral discussions.  BTW there is much crossover between New Age and Integral in general to the chagrin of Ken Wilber. 
 
If you go to the alternative section of a bookstore, you'll find books on New Age, books on such things UFOs and conspiracy theories, and books on Integralism.  Also, you'll find books on New Thought Christianity and all other aspects of Christianity that aren't deemed suitable for a normal Christian viewing public. 

There is another common element to all of these besides the type of person who is open-minded and curious.  Nearly all of these subjects have some connection to Jung and depth psychology.  Jung proposed the theory of archetypes that has become popular in the New Age, in certain sectors of Christianity, and in subjects such as tarot and kabbalah.  The idea of archetypes does come up in books about UFOs and the occult and Jung comes up a lot in Integral circles.  Jung was influenced by some writers of the occult, Jung wrote a book about UFOs, and Jung was a direct inspiration of Alcoholics Anonymous which was one of the earliest self-help groups.  Jung had wide interests and many New Agers share this trait.  Also, shadow work is becoming an increasingly popular topic in the New Age.  Of course, the belief in synchronicity has been a mainstay of the New Age for quite a while now.  Plus, the MBTI was based on Jung's theory of personality, and the MBTI has become a big player in the self-help field.
  
There is another even more interesting side to all of this.  Intentional communities and Gurus are very popular amongst New Agers, but there is a dark side to this with Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and Heaven's Gate.  Heaven's Gate is an especially good example.  They were a UFO cult that was very New Agey in their interest in pop culture utopianism and their beliefs in alien/angels that would come to save them.  Many people who have alien abduction experiences are given messages by their captors.  They are made to feel special and that they have a mission to accomplish.  They are often told that the world is ailing or even dying, and that the aliens have come to save the planet or the aliens have come to save an elect few.  You can find similar messages in New Age channeled writings.
 
Basically, there is a very diverse connection between the New Age and various subjects that don't seem very New Agey.  Even so, these connections go back to the beginning of the New Age.  Part of the problem here is that its nearly impossible to define what the New Age is.  It includes so much.  And if you follow the trail of connections, it can lead you in many different directions.  Its good to keep in mind that the New Age has slowly been co-opted by the mainstream (eg Oprah and Tolle, and The Secret), but the New Age originated in the unrespectable fringes of society.  Just as its useful to distinguish between New Thought and New Age, its also useful to distinguish between the early beginnnings of New Age and the contempory popularization thereof.  The New Age that is becoming popularized right now is in some ways a whole new phenomena.

This blog is posted in the God Pod.

I'm reading a very interesting book right now: The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen.  Its not directly about the New Age, but covers similar territory and mentions the New Age in a couple of places.  The author explains the socio-cultural dynamics of the paranormal within non-mainstream groups, scientific research, debunker organizations, and our society in general.  He uses concepts such as communitas, liminal, anti-structure, reflexivity, and totemism.  Here are some quotes that are relevant:
 
p. 171
In our culture, psychic phenomena are hospitably received in Spiritualism, the New Age movement, and modern-day witchcraft.  The three movements share common elements, and in a variety of fashions, they are at odds with the establishment.  None of them have institutionalized in the manner of government, industry, academe, or mainline religion.  few of the groups within these movements have buildings or permanent paid staffs, and if they do manage to instituiionalize, it is usually only briefly.  None of the movements acknowledge any central authority; control is local.  The movements are marginal and anti-structural in many ways, but it is within them that one can find discussion of, training in, and use of psychic abilities.
 
p. 174
Marilyn Ferguson, one of the most articulate persons expressing the ideas of the New Age, noted that there is no central authority defining the movement.  In her book The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), she emphasized its informal, fluid networks, decentralization of power, and lack of structured hierarchies.  New Age concerns typically include feminism, the environment, and alternative healing, and women play major roles.  In addition, it is open to astrology and other forms of divination.  All of this is a bit subersive to the establishment.  Overall, its properties define it as anti-structural.
 
pp. 176-177
All three of these movements have loose boundaries.  It is often difficult to tell if someone is part of them or not.  Many who attend Spiritualist services are also members of established religions; New Age followers are drawn from all faiths.  Witchcraft and neo-pagan groups are perhaps more distinct, but ambiguity reigns there as well with vast differences among them.  Within covens, beliefs and rituals can change with the whim of the high priestess or priest.  There is no higher ecclesiastical authority or common text that solidifies dogma or mandates what, how, or when rituals must be performed.
 
These three movements have striking similarities.  In all alltered (i.e., estructured) states of consciousness play a major role.  Women are prominent, as are the issues of feminism, the environment and healing.  None recognize a central authority for their movement, and they engage in virtually no instituion bulding.  All of the movements are considered subversive by the establishment; they court direct involvement with paranormal and supernatural phenomena, and all display elements of the trickster constellation.
 
The most vocal opposition to these movements come from two sources: establishment scientists (exemplified by CSICOP) and conservative and fundamentalist religious groups.  Both of these antagonists are typified by large, male-dominated, status conscious, hierarchical institutions---the antithesis of the targets of their scorn.  Both have produced massive amounts of literature denouncing the New Age proponents and modern pagans and similar attacks were directed at the Spiritualists of the nineteenth century.  While some of the political and social goals advocated by the"deviants" have been partially incoporated into science and mainstream churches (e.g., feminism, ecology, alternative healing), the establishments' most vehement attacks remain directed at paranormal and supernatural practices.
 
Hansen has a section about psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann who wrote the book Boundaries in the Mind:

pp. 48-49
Thick-boundary people strike one as solid, well organized, well defended, and even rigid and armored.  Thin-boundary types tend to be open, unguarded, and undefended in several psychological senses.  Women tend to have thinner boundaries than men, and children thinner than adults.  People with thin boundaries tend to have higher hypnotic ability, greater dream recall, and are more lkely to have lucid dreams.  People with thick boundaries stay with one thought until its completion; whereas those with thin boundaries show greater fluidity, and their thoughts branch from one to another.  People with very thin boundaries report more symptoms of illness; however, compared with thick-boundary types, they are able to exert more control over the autonomic nervous system and can produe greater changes in skin temperature when thinking of hot or cold situations.  Thin-boundary persons are more prone to synesthesia, blending of the senses (e.g., seeing colors when certain sounds are heard).  Differences are found in occupations as well.  Middle managers in large corporations tend to have thick boundaries, and artists, writers and musicians tend to have thinner ones.  People with thick boundaries tend to be in stable , long-term marriages; whereas thin types are more likely to be, or have been, divorced or separated.

The author goes on to say that thin-boundary types tend to report more unusual experiences including psychic experiences.  He then lists the correlations between thin-boundary types and the traits of the Trickster archetype (as described in Jean Shinoda Bolen's book Gods in Everyman).

Obviously, many New Agers are thin-boundary types.  The beliefs of the New Ager make no sense to the more skeptically-minded because skeptics are probably most often thick-boundary types.  Skeptics don't realize that its not just an issue of belief vs rationality but an issue of experience.  Both the skeptic and the new ager trust their experience, but they simply have different kinds of experience.

This blog is posted in the God Pod.

 
This past Sunday, a man entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee and opened fire.  Here is the Associated Press article.  The gunman made the attack probably because UU Churches are very socially progressive.  This is a sad situation, but that isn't the reason I wanted to blog about it. 

I've been a member of a UU Church and I'm proud of how this congregation responded.  Because of their quick response in tackling the gunman, only two people died.  Witnesses say that the first person died in blocking the shotgun blast from hitting other congregants.  The gunman had many shotgun casings on him and there were around 200 people in the church.  He obviously intended a mass killing.  Many people could have died if they hadn't stopped him after only a few shots.

So often people respond to violence with fear or passivity, but not these people.  UU attracts people who are very pro-active in trying to make the world a better place.  The actions of the congregants seems very representative of the UU attitude towards injustice. 

Over the years, I've heard of many shootings described in the news, but it seems rare that the people being attacked respond so quickly.  I'm proud of these people because they refused to act as victims.

This is a response to Julian in his blog The Transformative Power of Development: A Three-Part Distinction.

if the ganzfield experiment is the leading edge we are still very far from any kind of satisfying evidence for psi, right?

As I see it, parapsychology research in general brings up more questions than answers.  Still, the questions it brings up are quite intriguing.  I must admit that I don't feel confident in my understanding of any of this.  I've never been involved in any kind of scientific research, I've never studied scientific methodology, and I'm entirely clueless about statistical analysis.  Basically, I really don't know what to make of much of it, but I am curious. 

I'm sure that much of the criticisms are valid, but I appreciate the context that Hansen provides in his book.  Hansen thinks that the paranormal by its very nature can't be scientifically proven and will always be marginal, and he is critical of scientists such as Dean Radin.  He isn't saying that research can't or shouldn't be done, but rather it will never be accepted by mainstream sceintists.  The budget for paranormal research and the numbers of profesionals involved is miniscule, and its amazing that any research at all is done.  Paranormal research could only make any headway (whether in proving or disproving) if it actually had some funding which Hansen says will never happen. 

So, Hansen's criticism simultaneously points out the limits of the paranormal and the limits of mainstream science.  To answer your question, yes, the limited evidence of paranormal research is disatsfying.  But the limits of science in general are disatisfying to someone who wishes to find conclusive meaning about life.

There are reasons why paranormal research is still important.  Relative to other scientific fields, very little research has been done on the paranormal, and very little of it done on a largescale.  So, its not fair to judge a field that is still in its infancy.  Even though there isn't any scientific consensus about the paranormal, much has been learned from the research.  Parapsychology reearchers have refined their methodologies over time.  Its hard to control for something which has many unknown factors.  They have to be more careful about their controls (partly because of potential deceipt and self-deception) than is necessary for most scientists.  So, the refinements of methodology are helpful for all researchers in all fields.  There is a history of inadequate methodology in parapsychology research, but to its credit these inadequacies are continuously being resolved.  Its a slow process, though, since there is very little funding or institutionalized support.  In some ways, research has shown more about what the paranormal isn't than what it is.

One of the subjects I find the most interesting (in Hansen's book) is the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK).  Scientists in this field study other scientists.  Two interesting aspects are the problems with the replication of scientific experiments and experimenter effect (the corollary to the placebo effect which complicates the situation further).  The research into the experimenter effect was pioneered by Rosenthal (who so happened to have some interest in parapsychology) who demonstrated that the bias of a researcher alters the results.  He also studied teachers and how their expectations influence the success or failure of students.  Interestingly, he also helped to develop the use of meta-analysis... maybe because of the problems he discovered with individual experiments.  Experimenter effect can be controlled by double-blinds, and yet according to this paper double-blinds aren't as commonly used as one would hope.  Parapsychologists take double-blinds more seriously because of the increased complexity of experimenter effects.  The problem with studying the paranormal is that it by definition challenges the very basis of the scientific paradigm, and that is why Hansen is so pessimistic about the future of parapsychology research.

 BTW Hansen is especially critical of skpetics especially on the debunking end of the scale.  In his book, he focuses on the enmeshed relationship between parapsychologists and skeptics, and brings up some important insights.  His analysis of Martin Gardner is very detailed.  At his site he has several online articles about skeptics:  

CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview.  Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 86, No. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63.

The Elusive Agenda: Dissuading as Debunking in Ray Hyman's The Elusive Quarry.  Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 85, No. 2, April 1991, pp. 193-203.

Review of Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction by Charles M. Wynn and Arthur W. Wiggins. Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 66, No. 3, September 2002, Pp. 321-324.

Review of The Encyclopedia of the Paranomal edited by Gordon Stein.  Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 90, Nos. 3-4,  July-October, 2000,  pp. 181-189.

In case you're interested, here is Hansen's Website, and some Book Reviews: here, here, here (starting on p. 60), and here.

now even if we do decide to go along with the possibility that as radin says " people sometimes get small amounts of specific information from a distance without the use of the ordinary senses. Psi effects do occur in the ganzfeld" - then the question becomes what do we think that means?

Good question.  The meaning is where the rubber hits the road for us simply trying to make sense of it all.  Whether its true or not, why should we care?  And if true, what is its practical value?  I don't know what sense we can make of it.  The possibility of it being true brings doubt to our normal sense of reality and the standard procedures of science.  It very well might mean an entire paradigm shift within our society.  But what do we think it means?  I can't speak for anyone else, but for me I think it means the world is a strange place.  :)

what do you think this "evidence" would mean viz the above blogpost were it verifiable beyond doubt?    

Basically, I don't think that most of what you said is directly related to whether or not the paranormal exists, but you seem to think its directly related.  Even if the evidence was irrefutable, it wouldn't change the basic facts of growth and development, suffering and death.  Also, there is no reason to assume that parnormal research would support idealistic metaphysics. 

Its true that the paranormal can be interpreted in terms of the pre-rational, but it also can be interpreted in terms of the trans-ratioal.  The trans-rational isn't a clear category.  In some ways, its beyond both rationality and pre-rationality.  Its beyond in terms of development, but its also beyond in that it can temporarily suspend these previous modes.  Yet, in other ways, it might be thought of as that which bridges the gap between the pre-rational and the rational as it transcends and includes both.  However we look at it, I think it brings to question some fundamental divisions that rationality helped to create... such as internal and external.  These divisions are still real to some degree, but the trans-rational complexifies the relationship between them.

I'm still figuring out how this all fits together.  Hansen doesn't speak about integral theory, and integral theory doesn't speak much about parapsychology research.  I'm trying to connect ideas here, but I don't know how successful my attempt is.  I genuinely have no clear conclusions at this point.  I'm hoping that further discussion of enactivism will help me to integrate my thoughts.

A response of mine from a thread I started based on my New Age blog series:

HI Andrew,

no matter what otherworldly things i have experienced i can safely say they they were upper left quadrant happenings. in saying this i mean that these experiences of mine happened in my interior space. no angels physically manifested in any way in these 3 dimensions. no one walked thru my walls, no one defied the laws of physics etc. now whether it's 3 kids in portugal having visions, or someone being abducted in downtown manhatten, i contend now that all these experiences are interior and have no right quadrant existence.

Have you been following the discussion going on in one of Julian's blogs (here)?  The relationship of internal and external has been brought up.  I mentioned paranormal research there and the difficulties of the field.  Specificially, I discussed Hansen's view and linked to some detailed reviews of his books.

but nowhere have i come across objective, verifiable, repeatable accounts of any type in any of these phenomenal cases.

Hansen speaks to these issues.  Objectivity, verifiability, and repeatability aren't easily applied to the paranormal, but researchers have attempted to do so.  Some are satisfied with the evidence and some aren't.  I talked about the research angle in Julian's blog comments, but you're experience was outside of a research situation.  How are lived experiences proven?  Well, very little of even our "normal" subjective experience is provable.  As for the paranormal, it all depends on what kind of evidence you consider acceptable. 

People have seen lights and when they investigated discovered crop circles.  Crop circles are just more complex forms of fairly circles that have been observed for centuries in corollation with fairy lights.  My brother visited with friends a place where orbs (ie fairy lights) were known to be common.  They saw the orbs and the orbs approached the car and hovered around it.  Even scientists have observed orbs, but no one agrees on what explains them. 

Pilots have seen ufos and they were observed simultaneously on radar.  There are a fair number of radar cases.  Why is there not more evidence?  For one, I've heard that pilots are discouraged from reporting ufos.  Also, some evidence gets destroyed because people fear ridicule.  Vallee started out as an astronomer but later became a ufo researcher because he personally observed astronomers he worked with destroying video evidence (here is an interview with him where he speaks about this).

Rupert Sheldrake was describing a dialogue he had with Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Sheldrake: "This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?"

(Sheldrake describes how he tried to bring up his own rearch about telepathy, but Dawkins refused to discuss it.)

but a ufo landing on the white house lawn and broadcast to the world would probably cure me of my skepticism. i feel the same way about religion. please all you theists, part the red sea today and have the decency to bring cnn along for verification

Well, that is some pretty extreme skepticism.  If being "shown billions of light beings singing the most amazing song onto god" doesn't convince you, then I doubt anything could.  Plus, I'd consider your statements to be based on a less-than-useful view of the paranormal.  You seem to be responding to a literalist interpretation of paranormal which isn't the view I hold (nor that which Harpur holds).  It would take some explanation to describe what I mean by literalist, but here is an interesting discussion about Harpur from the Lightmind forum:

Jim wrote:

Kela has mentioned Patrick Harpur here a couple of times in the past, and Susan and Heru mentioned him just recently. Harpur, like Carl Jung, Richard Tarnas, James Hillman, Arnold Mindell, et al, understands the psyche. Many people don't. Here is Harpur from his book Daimonic Reality: St. Paul mentions an ecstatic experience in which he was "caught up even to the third heaven", but, as he says, "whether in the body, I know not, or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth." And this is the dilemma confronting many otherworld journeyers. It is, I think, too easy to dismiss the conviction of many of them that they were physically lifted into another realm, such as an alien spacecraft. This, after all, is what it felt like; and it is a conviction shared by all members of traditional cultures - although, as we shall see, with an important difference in viewpoint. Thus, although I do not share the conviction, I want to stress that it is ancient and respectable and, I think, nearer to the truth of the matter than not to believe in any kind of otherworld journey at all. However, using the model of daimonic reality ... it is possible to make otherworld journeys intelligible, without recourse to a belief in an actual, physical experience. Here is Ken Wilber from One Taste: When people have a memory or an experience of being "abducted," I don't doubt the experience seems absolutely real to them (most would pass a lie detector test). And it is real, as an experience, as phenomenology, but not as ontology, not as an objective reality. So there's the phenomenology (or the experience itself), and there is how you interpret the experience. And for that interpretation - as will all interpretation - you need to draw on the total web of available evidence, which is exactly what the believers in these experiences are not doing. Do any UFO experiences represent higher realities? It's theoretically possible that some of these experiences are stemming from the psychic or subtle levels of consciousness, and that, precisely because these people do not grow and evolve into these levels, they experience them as an ‘other.' Instead of their own higher and deeper luminous nature, they project it outwardly as an alien form. Even if that is the case, these people are still in the grips of a dissociative pathology. ... The giveaway, as usual, is the narcissism. What do people really want when they think of UFOs? What are they yearning for at the thought of something extraterrestrial? Why, they want something bigger than themselves. They want to know that, in the entire, wild, extraordinary Kosmos, there is something other than their meager egos. What Harpur honors, Wilber tends to pathologize. It seems to me that the rational, Freudian-flavored pathologizing approach that Wilber takes here doesn't honor the way the psyche or soul actually works, plays, unfolds, grows, flows, meanders, soars, swims, lives, breathes, and develops. When Wilber asks what people really want when they think of UFOs, he is talking about what the "meager ego" wants, but he neglects to note that the experiences in question (i.e., UFO abduction experiences) don't stem from the ego but from the deeper psyche (there is no other place they can stem from, unless they are just willful fantasies, e.g., as if someone were to fantasize about winning the lottery, and reports of UFO abduction experiences indicate that they are not mere fantasies). So it's not a matter of what the "meager ego" wants but of what the deeper psyche wants. Speaking about the appearance of symbols of wholeness in the psyche, such as UFOs and mandalas, Jung says, "they do not invariably indicate a subliminal readiness on the part of the patient to realize that wholeness more consciously, at a later stage; often they mean no more than a temporary compensation of chaotic confusion." This is not something that someone who elevates pre" to "trans" would say. Trungpa says: ...anything that happens in our state of mind, including emotions, is manure. Whatever comes up is a workable situation... ...we begin to realize that all kinds of chaotic situations that might occur in life are opportune situations. They are workable situations that we mustn't reject, and mustn't regard as purely a regression or going back to confusion at all. Instead, we must develop some kind of respect for those situations that happen in our state of mind. This is why it simply isn't skillful or useful to pathologize intrapsychic phenomena, such as UFO abduction experiences or those who have and interpret them. Such experiences are "workable situations that we mustn't reject, and mustn't regard as purely a regression or going back to confusion," or as "dissociative pathology" and "narcissism." "Instead, we must develop some kind of respect for those situations that happen in our state of mind." Which is what Harpur, Jung, Hillman, Mindell, Tarnas, et al do. The issue here isn't what is right or wrong or "politically correct" or incorrect. The issue is, what is most useful? What is most likely to benefit the individual who has and interprets the experience? If someone has a UFO abduction experience and they interpret it to mean that "they were physically lifted into another realm, such as an alien spacecraft," as Harpur puts it, that's the manure we have to work with. Calling it shit isn't going to help anyone, is it? Saying that such people are in the grips of a dissociative pathology and are narcissistic isn't going to help anyone, is it? There is psychic energy and psychic potential to work with here. Dismissing it by pathologizing it is like throwing manure away instead of working it into the garden and then tending and nurturing the garden and waiting to see what grows. Suzuki Roshi speaks of a similar process in terms of "mind weeds." He says, "We must have the actual experience of how our weeds change into nourishment." Or of how our lead changes into gold. Jung and Trungpa compare the process of intrapsychic transmutation to alchemy. Trungpa says this is "like the alchemical practice of changing lead into gold." Mindell says: And what is this gold? The alchemist's beginning goals will be like yours or mine: freedom from trouble, hope for nirvana, enlightenment, love, immortality or spontaneity. But what you actually receive may be something you were not even aware of missing, something so precious and vital that you might even forget your original goals.

Jim wrote:

Exactly, that's my point: It's not wrong to psychopathologize, but it's kind of like calling something shit. When we call something shit, we naturally think in terms of flushing it away, whereas when we call the same thing manure, we acknowledge that we are dealing with something that, used skillfully, can fertilize and enrich the soil of the soul. To try to flush away aspects of the psyche that we don't like doesn't work, and as Harpur and Jung agree, when the daimonic is repressed, it often returns in the form of the demonic.

but surely if supernaturalism exists, it's on unemployment insurance at this time unless these angelic beings are just being really subtle and sneaky for some reason! 

You really should read Hansen's book if you're genuinely interested in this.  He writes about how the Trickster archetype plays out with paranormal experience.

Blessings,
Marmalade