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Why Ancient Wisdom Matters

By Gregon

Perhaps one of the most eloquent expositions ever of the beauty of ancient cultures and the debate over ‘progress’ versus so-called ‘primitive’ thought. In this recent lecture, anthropologist Wade Davis takes you on a non-stop, two hour journey, taking in the shamanic cultures of the Amazon, Voodoo rituals of Haiti, the aboriginal culture of Australia, the bodhisattvas of Tibet, and the resilient Inuit cultures of the north, amongst others. Enjoy:

Davis’s new book The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World is available from Amazon US and UK (great cover image).

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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40 Comments

  1. There’s always so much to see
    There’s always so much to see here that there is rarely time to look at 10% of it. Hopefully i’ll get around to watching this.

    I listened to a woman on the radio yesterday sprouting on about discipline and how we could all learn a thing or two from our grandparents.

    Progress is a funny thing. I don’t know how those ancient cultures looked back on older ones and expressed their own ideas of self progress.

  2. Do we know what it is?
    I just stumbled across this site and couldn’t help but respond to this, even though I haven’t watched it yet.

    A friend of mine and myself just got through with a discussion about ancient knowledge. Neither of us think we know much of anything left to us by ancient peoples of this planet. Or about them to be honest.

    This can sound a little out there, so bear with me if you will. How much do we really know about our history? Consider how fast the environment removes evidence that is left behind by …… well, anything. If we evaluate history with care, then we immediately notice that there is literally tons of evidence that man may not be at the pinnacle of his achievement. In fact, this could easily not be the first time we’ve been advanced. If you stop and think this through thoroughly, you will see that this statement does make sense.

    Yes, ancient wisdom is very important. I only wish we had a better grasp on exactly what it is.

    1. wisdom of ages past
      and history. Unfortunatly history is written by the victors of any conflict. Power and greed has played a major role in the distruction of ancient wisdom. Example is the Catholic church and their distruction of anything that challenged their views. So alot of witches were burnt with a lot of knowledge of healing past down over many generations.
      Hidden in the vaults of many places are the unexplained finds that would re write a lot of history. So here we have dogma being a culprit of surpression of ancient knowledge.

      I think it’s a human trait to ignor what where told by our forefathers and go at it alone. Re learning whats already been learnt, generation after generation. Shame really.

      I like your little bit of sycronicity there tinker.

      1. Lost Symbol
        Tonight i finished reading Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol. Say what you will about the man, but I really appreciate how he manages to pass along deep messages amid the suspense of a page-turner thriller novel.

        Without revealing any spoilers to those of you who might not had the chance to read it yet, the most interesting thing to me about the book is the notion that the ancients left us knowledge about the hidden potential of the human mind hidden in plain sight —waiting for the time we have enough wisdom to see what was in front of us all this time.

        This notion has similar undertones in the latest talks undertaken by SETI at the Royal College. I don’t remember if it was Paul davies or other who proposed the idea that, if an alien civilization visited our planet in the distant past, one of the ideal places to leave a message for us that would endure the passage of time would be inside our DNA code.

        So once again, it seems that different voices are coaxing us to search for the great truths that lie within us all: to search for at-one-ment. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

        1. personaly I think you are write
          in saying the DNA holds the code for us to unravel. Late last century I studied the “wingmakers” site and all it’s affiliated material. I found for myself a great understanding of many things through the teachings of Lyricus. The DNA that we know has 23 and the DNA of the next evolution has 24. But the 24 is already there. Just needs the trigger to activate.

          Another example is the “emerald tablets”, surpossibly written by Thoth. There is a code in them that should unlock the mysteries of the GP. But not until our understanding has reached a point to be able to safely use this new knowledge without self distruction.

          There are too many ancient things lying around that we can’t ignor forever. Like the Baalbek Stones. These are an absolute mystery. No one can explain them. So what did the ancients know.

          I think first we need to know and understand ourselves and then maybe some of this other stuff may start to fall into place. If we keep believing what a small few are telling us then we are really not going anywhere.

          Just another thought, if the message is in the DNA, then it can only be accessed at a certain point of technological evolution.

          1. 48 & 2
            In order to trigger this, I agree that people should have a natural tendency to introspection. Here’s a dilemma I see…

            Advanced civilizations tend to put so much pressure on individuals to “discover” themselves and find their niche in the fast-paced world at a very young age. People I’ve noticed jump into choosing majors in college and complain about how much their area of study annoys them; there’s hardly any passion behind their contribution to the community.

            People need to realize their talents and abilities and find their natural calling. I personally believe everyone has somewhat of a range of possibilities that could become their life (i.e. someone could be just as good of a cook as a chemist). This is what Aleister Crowley would say is “True Will”.

            It’s kind of paradoxical, and I enjoy me some paradoxes, but the result of introspection is a greater contribution to the whole of the people. The stripping of the ego, the coming of 48 & 2.

            This is very long process, though, and it still needs a “trigger” to set it in motion. Perhaps if aliens implanted coding in our DNA, our growing ability of introspection could prepare us for intergalactic community. Aliens could not contact us if we weren’t in the right mindset… we’d go insane! I like this quote that Daniel Pinchbeck used of Nietzsche:

            “Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the ‘truth’ one could still barely endure – or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.”

            For the main article, I think our knowledge of ancient civilizations’ use of shamanism, something the “victorious historians” wanted nothing of, could prove very useful if there’s any chance that alien DNA are contained in some psilocybin mushrooms: the preparation.

            I’ll end with another quote by Pinchbeck (I hate to sound like a fanatic, but he had a fantastic piece in the first volume of DarkLore) when he was discussing O’ Mistro McKenna:

            “‘You as an individual and humanity as a species are on the brink of a formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations’ -thus spake the fungus.”

        2. I do find myself wondering to
          I do find myself wondering to what degree ancient cultures really made any attempt to do this, but primarily the difference between trying to pass down wisdom and trying to pass down cultural beliefs. It seems a natural part of culture to wish to do that, so evidence of previous cultures trying to do the same would come as no surprise.

          Aliens storing information in DNA is an interesting idea. I am surprised it has not been found yet though given we have sequenced our genome, plus that of many others – why hide it just in ours. Let me explain.

          Genomes accrue mutations over time and genomes that separated deeper into the past have greater differences. If we sequenced our genome and say that of a flatworm and found a sequence of information in the inactive portion that was nearly identical, but contained non-biological information, like a mathematical sequence, then that would be a good sign.

          You could just put information in our genome and try and make it stand out, but the best way to make it stand out is by making it break rules, like the rules of evolution – like finding a rabbit fossil in the precambrian, but equivalent in information across genomes.

          Maybe we will find this one day, but best i know nothing has stood out like this. If you want something to stand out just carve a giant sequence deeply into the side of a granite mountain and come back and check it every 10000 years.

          As for any previous civilisation ever reaching our level of attainment, it depends on what level i suppose. Quite easy to believe that the Egyptians were better at cat worship 😉 Are we talking a specific way of seeing the world, in which case who judges? Are we talking gay rights, slavery legislation, health and safety? Or just radio astronomy and nanotech. Bear in mind that science must be payed for so the social structure must have come up with a way of paying for the percentage of the population not doing work required for basic survival – just like full time artists. Unless you have a fluke and get a sudden crop of 100,000 geniuses in your civilisation you will need the millions of scientists all specialised in their fields. For us this has taken a global effort based on the discovers of the past several hundred years as well as the consumption of most of the worlds resources. Can anyone explain how this might have been done in the past without the economic, technological, academic, and geological scales seen today? (without using revelation.)

          1. very simple really
            a society based on goodwill with a pure understanding of each and everyones input. Respect for all living creatures and an understanding of the spiritual structure of the universe.
            Do away with EGO, GREED and POWER and you have a society that prospers in all avenues of venture.
            We are in an industrialised, materialistic circle. If ancients were in a spiritulistic circle then the out come of advance would be much different then what we see today.

            You do not need economics to move forward, you only need a set of values and rules that you are born into that make sence. People only want to be happy. There are many ways to acheive this.

          2. Very simple! We wish!
            I’ll agree with that up to a point. Firstly isn’t it untested that that is what the outcome will be? Ideas of the evolution of altruism seem to suggest otherwise. It is quite possible that any such civilisation will just get wiped out by its neighbour, or the idealism would collapse back to normality. For it to be stable i think we would need to change biological principles rather than just cultural learning.

            For example in that sort of society it is likely that policing and criminal justice would be small and poorly funded as the implication of idealism if perfect over a whole population wouldn’t seem to require it. But then it only takes one person and hidden selfishness or concealed criminality would reap large rewards. The implication is that the temptation is not there, else there are bound to be a few who could not resist. They could be banished, but this means there are other adversarial systems forming on the outside likely to undermine and perhaps eventually collapse the ‘perfect’ neighbour. Or you could use very harsh punishment to stave of the people disagreeing with your policies, but this implies that it is not the people in the first place, but a harsh legal system creating the perfection and that sort of thing tends to be abused and be unstable anyway.

            The argument almost reads the perfect civilisation will be perfect and perfect is as perfect does in all angles of perfection. That basically that if you are fantastic then you will be fantastic in all areas. Given the reality of trade-offs this is surely unlikely. Even if everyone is just doing what they want to make them happy.

            Of course the real likelyhood is that there will not be enough requirement for us all to be artists and philosophers and someone is going to have to do the nasty hard work. This is where it falls apart.

          3. first line
            of my comment would resolve your concerns I think.

            The rest of your comment, daydreamer, explains why these civilisations are no longer here, don’t you think.

            We must have a BAD gene in there somewhere that prevents us from gaining perfection……no?

          4. how to do it
            The concept of hiding things in DNA isn’t that much different from steganography in digital images, or from spread spectrum signalling.

            I spent a few hours hiding a spread spectrum signal in an image, it works pretty well – until you compress the image. Then the early part of the extra signal is still there, but as you go further into the image, it gets lost. Not altogether surprising.

            An advantage of spread spectrum signals is that they are very energy efficient. A disadvantage (or another advantage, depending on your point of view) is that unless you know how it is encoded, it is very hard to tell that the signal is even there.

            This last point is also one of the problems that SETI has. I have no idea if the SETI people know that or not, haven’t asked them.

          5. Yeah. I guess the debate
            Yeah.

            I guess the debate falls around an idea of scales of obviousness. Just how obvious can you make a message of this type? If we set our standard as the maximum 100% obviousness (whatever that is) then have the aliens embedded a message to that standard, or have they opted for something more subtle – a test perhaps?

            Would having sequenced the whole genome already place us at the 100% obvious mark? Therefore have they felt some need to hide the message?

            I seem to remember an episode of Star Trek TNG played with this – having a bit of code embeded in each of the species DNA for when the species (their children) were mature enough to meet and co-operate.

            Perhaps we need to go at it with a supercomputer for a decade or two assuming there is a hidden code in there, but i am a bit nervous of the idea of pulling codes out of strings of letters. There are bound to be many many little fragments or more buried in there, but rather than the code revealing information the person reading changes to suit the possible code. Information becomes imparted on the code by the reader – and off we go again.

            I wonder if there are sections of Shakespeare buried in their? Given the DNA string is fixed, but that the number of ways of reading it are not. We should be able to find many things in it.

            Of course any advanced alien species would know all this, so this is why i head down the path of obviousness.

          6. Consider this possibility
            This is 100% speculation (as always) on my part, but consider this possibility:

            Some dormant aspect of our potential could be buried deep within the genome of mankind; it could have been left scattered all over different racial groups, meaning no single genotype had the complete ‘code’.

            So maybe the message was left there, scattered, until the time came when humanity would unite, all national and geographic differences disappear, and every inhabitant of the globe would show a blend of different racial traits. If we accept the fact that all of humanity are direct descendans of a black woman that lived in Africa 150 thousand years old, then what I’m suggesting would be like a reversion of that process.

            So, the moment we become one people, the buried potential begins to manifest —Et Pluribus Unum— An elegant and clever genetic fire-wall 🙂

            I don’t know I believe my own ‘theory’, but it would be kind of fun to promote it among the xenophobic crowds obsessed with illegal immigration and the dillution of their racial purity —behold! the Mongrel Mutants will inherit the Earth 😛

          7. Some may call you a dreamer
            This is a really cool idea, I like it lots.

            I wouldn’t believe in it either, or at least I don’t see the possibility of it happening. It’s like Socialism, once we actually live up to our ideals, everyone’s happy! Until then…

            …proud to be a Mongrel Mutant. 8o

          8. much harder
            The engineer in me thinks your proposal is much harder than superimposing a message on top of the DNA. With the unrelated,
            non-chemical message, it can sit there for millions of years.

            With something functional, you have to predict much of the outcome of DNA evolution, over a long time. That’s hard.

            It could make a good science fiction story though, perhaps a bit on the preachy side, sort of Clarkian.

          9. Prediction
            I don’t know. I see this world and think that whatever it is behind it, wasn’t trying to attain a perfectly predictable outcome. That somehow a setting of rules were left so that we humans had the chance to make a choice. So yeah, maybe someone came here and tweaked a few crucial things here and there, just to increase the odds a bit; but in the end whether we make it or not has always been up to us.

            During our long history, we’ve never had the certainty that we would make it this far. And in 100 years we could very well be nothing but a fleeting memory in the ages of the Earth. Another lost opportunity in the infinity of Creation.

            I think the hardest the chance, the biggest the reward. Cockroaches have more chances to survive the next million years than men; but if we manage to persist a century or more, the prospect of what we can achieve might be beyond our wildest dreams.

        3. Deenay
          [quote=red pill junkie]This notion has similar undertones in the latest talks undertaken by SETI at the Royal College. I don’t remember if it was Paul davies or other who proposed the idea that, if an alien civilization visited our planet in the distant past, one of the ideal places to leave a message for us that would endure the passage of time would be inside our DNA code.[/quote]

          You mean something like this?

          Is bacteriophage φX174 DNA a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence?
          Hiromitsu Yokooa and Tairo Oshima

          David Grinspoon talks about how Carl Sagan got him to try and decode any possible messages in the above, in his book Lonely Planets – he found the sequence odd, but couldn’t come up with anything valid. There’s also some discussion of the idea at Centauri Dreams.

          2. I wish i could get hold of
            I wish i could get hold of the article.

            The Centauri Dreams page was interesting, as was the link on it.

            Good to see someone trying to put a figure on the earliest point star systems could start to produce life and complex life. Its a very hard job though and no doubt he is missing alot out.

            If aliens are already here then it answers many questions. If not though then there are some problems to solve.

            The articles seemed to take quite a positive stance on the evolution of human type capabilities in the natural world. This might be right, but while some features, such as eyes, commonly evolve multiple times, our level of intelligence seems more like a runaway train.

            Without knowing more about human evolution we can’t really know why we got the brains we did. So we cant really say how likely it is to have happened on other planets.

            I personally think life is probably quite common in the galaxy. Definitely simple single celled life, and probably complex multicellular/multiorgan life. Natural selection is the primary driver of evolution, but sexual selection and perhaps memetic selection are hugely important in explaining features of some species. The Earth has produced countless millions (billions?) of species. If there were others with brains like ours then we might be able to say that our brains were like eyes – a common line in evolution. There do not seem to be though. There is a high cost to big brains and in general evolution tries to minimise that cost. Somehow we broke out of that mold, but it is wrong to think that that will be common on other worlds. A very very very rare evolutionary occurance seems to have happened with us. Perhaps this is the reason why the sky is not full of diamonds?

            The author of that article seems to miss this a little when he assumes that it has taken several hundred million years to get to us and that this is a reasonable average to use for other worlds. It is reasonable to use it for the evolution of eye’s or ears, wings or feet. Like the peacocks tail though, we are not natural selection acting freely.

  3. Oh Synchronicity!
    It just so happens that I’m re-reading a book I first read 10 years ago called “Triad: the physicists, the analysts, the kabbalists.” by Tom Keve. The book (in historical novel format) covers a fascinating period around the turn of the 19th-20th century. This was one of those Golden Ages wheen great minds come together. But also it traces the influence of Ancient Wisdom (in the form of Kabbalah) upon those minds.

    You can still find it on via sellers on Amazon (UK and US):

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Triad-physicists-kabbalists-Tom-Keve/dp/0953621901

    Customer review:
    [quote]Would recommend anyone interested in the influences of modern thought, modern science or indeed human nature to read this book. Uniquely it tracks the inspirations and empirical links between the birth of psychoanalysis, the emergence of quantum physics and Kabbalah. [/quote]

      1. Triad: The Gist …
        From a review :

        [quote]
        Review by: Joseph Schwartz, Ph.D.

        This unusual book will have a hard time finding the audience it deserves. The intersection of the set of potential readers with an interest in all three categories—physicists, psychoanalysts and kabbalists—must be vanishingly small while those readers interested in each group separately would no doubt be put off by the proximity of the others. But Keve has written a non-trivial book that uses extensive source material to explore his interest in the interrelationships between knowledge of the natural world as revealed by physics, knowledge of the psyche as revealed by psychoanalysis and knowledge of the soul as revealed by the Kabbalah.

        A Hungarian who came to Britain in 1956, Keve has access to Hungarian sources that are unknown to most of us and also uses the German language archive materials as well as selected materials in Danish.[/quote]

        …and another …

        [quote]
        David Tresan

        A triad suggests a simple structure. Not so this book whose aspirations are great and complex and whose both strength and problems lie in its ambition. Regarding strength, Triad is an intelligent history of the analogous advances in both analysis and physics inthe 20th century with concepts of kabbalah as supporting proleptic commentary. At a deeper level it is also a thoughtful search in three modes for the truth of reality. Asto problems, Triad takes on the onus of presenting and collating in 341 pages an enormous amount of assiduously researched historical data about specific analysts, physicists, and kabbalists. Fortunately, the effort is felicitous. The book works. It is a good read and a substantive although popularized apologia for the serious matters it takes up. Moreover, it truly entertains as it simultaneously advocates through a handful of subtexts. [/quote]

        Well, Mr. Tresan writes like he’s keen for us all to admire his intelligence rather than the content of the book he is reviewing but, if you can get over the use of words like “proleptic”, he eventually makes a point.

        From my point of view, it is one of the few books that shows equal respect for both scientific progress and ancient mysticism and is also a very good reference despite the fictional format. I have not yet reached the part, on second reading, that deals with the Jung/Pauli relationship but I remember it impressed me first time round.

        Dave.

  5. Russian Dolls?
    My internet system is so slow I can’t download the video. However, I have believed for many years that ancient wisdom is there to teach us what was known in the past.

    Russian Dolls, and the Chinese Boxes, which work in the same way, are a case in point. Each doll is finite, but the number of dolls which are placed inside or outside another is infinite, dependent only on how capable someone is of making a doll large enough or small enough to fit the earlier dolls. The infinite in this case is unknowable, hence the term infinite.

    This is a children’s toy in this day and age, but in the past it was a good method of teaching someone how nature tries to fill empty space with something, possibly of a precise proportion.

    The toy which is a square base, with lots of little square blocks on it with parts of a picture on them, but one space missing in the block. This allows the small blocks to be moved until they all make up the full picture. To allow movement there has to be a space for something else to move into. This is how nature and life work.

    I would add that I have believed for some years that there is a universe outside us, and that our own bodies are individual universes. Our bodies have holes which allow things to go in and out, helping our bodies to move and live.

    Recently I saw a programme about the Big Bang Theory, and a new idea that is testing the scientific fraternity. There are some calculations which don’t fit the official story, and so a new idea has come about, Dark Flow. I had to laugh when I heard that the conclusion drawn suggests that there is somnething outside our universe, that we are inside another universe, and that things flow in and out of our universe from that one.

    That is very akin to my own idea. I know I couldn’t have proven it, but I believed it to be the only explanation. This fits well with the Russian Doll idea.

    It doesn’t surprise me that the scientific fraternity are not accepting this idea, although they don’t know how to explain the anomolies. They will continue with the limited theory they have.

    Watch the scientific news to see if anyone is prepared to denounce the big bang theory.

    Perhaps the ancients who devised these children’s toys knew more than modern science?

    1. I still don’t know how i
      I still don’t know how i square with ancient wisdom. Sure they knew things that have been lost. That will go for our civilisation as well if it falls. I’m just not sure what they knew. We indulge in cultural superiorism when we think we are better than others, but the reverse is also true. It is a far more difficult subject than that.

      It doesnt surprise me either that the scientific fraternity are not accepting the idea of dark flow. We need to remember that it is still something hotly contested. I personally think it is cool, but not as cool as some observations.

      The idea of the big bang stands (against others and as the best at explaining the most data accurately) rock steady at the moment. No doubt in the future it will be like Newton to Einstein, but again Newton was not wrong. He just had part of the puzzle.

      The ‘offical’ story would have galaxies moving randomly across the sky, whereas dark flow places some moving to a central area. The idea though is that an abundance of matter lies beyond the visible horizon and that its gravity is pulling the galaxies towards a central area. The key thing though is that when physicists say ‘our universe’ they mean ‘our visible universe’. When they say dark flow implies another universe beyond ours they mean beyond what we can see. The space and time of our universe would be extending into that region continuously, not discontinuously. It is a visible limit, not a physical one – like how far your headlights can reach.

      To me we can refer to it as another universe, but it isnt really. It is the same volume of space and time, we just can’t see it.

      It doesn’t really blow the big bang theory out of the water, since that volume of spacetime still formed in the same big bang. What it does is require a second look because the big bang says it shouldn’t be happening. Just like gravity predicts things to roll downhill – if something is not doing it is reasonable to look to see if a pebble has stopped its progress, not just laugh at physicists for not dropping the theory of gravity and move on.

      In effect it is the big bang theory highlighting the area as anomalous and requiring closer attention. It is because of the big bang theory that you need an idea like dark flow and an energy density beyond the visible horizon of our Hubble Volume (the name given to our visible region of spacetime). Throw away the big bang theory and you don’t need Dark Flow anyway. Anything could be happening and a whole new explanation is required before we would know if that region was anomalous or not.

      1. Superiority

        We indulge in cultural superiorism when we think we are better than others, but the reverse is also true. It is a far more difficult subject than that.

        To me, the most beautiful idea extracted from Wades’ lecture was that Culture is the way in which we try to answer the question “what does it mean to be human?”; and that there are many valid ways in which to respond.

        So I think the trick is to see these other cultures not as failed attempts to be us, and viceversa. We can be both students and teachers.

        Maybe there will come a time when the petty differences between Science, Philosophy and Religion will be settled. I suspect there will have to be serious compromises taken by these three disciplines before this happens.

        1. Thats a nice way of summing
          Thats a nice way of summing up culture perhaps.

          I tend to think of cultures as simply mass complex’s of different peoples actions and behaviors. So the culture is much larger than the quest for an answer, though that fits a subset of the activity and behavior.

          One of the clever things in life is to try and determine which questions don’t exist. All questions can be asked of course, but the existence of an answer correlates to the existence of the question. So i can ask which hippo started the universe, but there is no answer. I can ask what the wavelength of love is, but there is no answer. However, there is freedom in that type of question. There may be no physical answer, but the artistic freedom to play with words in way that still alter us is often beneficial, but sometimes confusing as to what type of question you are dealing with in the first place. As they say, words have power. They have power within us, irrespective of the ‘out of us’. I am suspicious that the question ‘what does it mean to be human’ is of this type. I will call it an exotic question.

          There may well be a time when differences between science, philosophy and religion disappear, but i do not think they are petty. Just like saying that 2+2=4 and 2+2=567, there are real differences in the working, practice and application, as well as the meaning. If anything i think that science will continue to progress. It will go as far as it can and we will be left to fill in the blanks how we choose. But things will fit in around an altered science, rather than a meeting in the middle. This will no doubt continue to cause cultural issues.

          1. Valid questions

            One of the clever things in life is to try and determine which questions don’t exist. All questions can be asked of course, but the existence of an answer correlates to the existence of the question. So i can ask which hippo started the universe, but there is no answer. I can ask what the wavelength of love is, but there is no answer.[…]I am suspicious that the question ‘what does it mean to be human’ is of this type. I will call it an exotic question.

            It may be exotic; however, I suspect that it’s a question that differs from the other examples you gave, in the sense that it has been shared by many different individuals throughout the history of mankind. In that sense, I’m willing to accept the possibility that such a question resonates within a commonality of the human condition, whereas there might be other kind of queries that are of a more personal inclination.

            There may well be a time when differences between science, philosophy and religion disappear, but i do not think they are petty. Just like saying that 2+2=4 and 2+2=567, there are real differences in the working, practice and application, as well as the meaning.

            Again, this is pure speculation on my part, but maybe those differences will be overcome the moment that something inside each and every one of us helps us discern between the falsehood of statements like 2+2=567, and the truthfulness behind 2+2=4. It may require some effort on our part; however, the way you teach a child the fundamentals of mathematics is not through abstract concepts, but implementing concrete experimentation —i.e. playing with wooden blocks to create group of integers.

            Maybe there will come a time when humanity will be educated and mature enough to discern the diamonds from the trinkets. Just like a child learns enough about logic and life to understand that 100 is a bigger number than 2.

      2. Bigger picture
        [quote=daydreamer]
        … but again Newton was not wrong. He just had part of the puzzle.[/quote]

        Perhaps I could say the same of what scientists are saying today … it is not wrong, they just don’t look at the whole picture?

        Maybe we shouldn’t (only) be looking for an extended universe beyond our own – maybe we might think of dimensions beyond those we recognise now. Is there any interplay between them and, if so, how does it happen? I have a strong feeling that the ancients had access to these dimensions by means all but lost on modern society. How much more effective could we be at discovering these unknown worlds if scientists would take their possible existence seriously instead of sneering with jibes of fairytales and magic?

        Somewhat depressingly, I fear we will – for a long time to come – be locked in a circular argument involving empirical evidence versus subjectivity. Nice to see that some formally trained scientists are willing to accept that there are other ways of looking at reality, however. But then, it was ever thus: Newton himself was an alchemist, wasn’t he?

        Dave.

        1. Quote:
          Perhaps I could say
          [quote]Perhaps I could say the same of what scientists are saying today … it is not wrong, they just don’t look at the whole picture?[/quote]

          For sure. This is an important point. Empirical data of high quality will always be smaller than the number of possible hypothesis. So the body of accepted science will always be smaller than the number of possiblities. In fact it is important that is kept as small as its dataset allows. Anything else will be overreaching.

          We spend alot of time talking about questions that are quite possibly the hardest our species has had to face. It is easy to forget that much of what we are talking about is so cutting edge that of course it is going to change. Most of science is much more down to earth, and the theoretical nature of questions about the start of the universe, its cause, possible ending, and meaning, are not really good lenses through which to judge science as a whole.

          I find myself looking at wisdom at the moment. Definitions of wisdom vary, and often just to support those defining them. I will be no different here. I find myself wondering whether the definition of wisdom as acceptance that you know nothing is now a little outdated and might better be replaced by the idea that some things we actually know very well, while others we do not. The state of understanding several thousand years ago was much more fitting to the realisation that they knew virtually nothing of the world and sensible philosophers pointed that out. I do not think it is the same today and perhaps the notion of wisdom needs updating accordingly.

          I agree that we will probably be locked in an argument about the role of empirical evidence vs subjectivity. I’ve progressed my thoughts on this alot over the last year, but it still seems to me that understanding needs some kind of benchmark. We cannot just claim to know something and everyone be happy with the claim. If i claim that X is true because i dreamt it and the dream was more real than normal, and X may well be true, the only way to see will be empirical. Otherwise what has been shown or proven? So it seems the debate is more to do with the rights to claim understanding without showing it in some way.

          I am mulling this over, but it seems to me that the best way of demonstrating understanding is through application of knowledge and predictability of phenomena. Not everything fits into this i guess and i am interested in how this holds. Whether we are talking about different avenues of understanding, but understanding ultimately being the same things independent of how the understanding is achieved. Or whether there are actually different types of understanding with completely different standards and expressions of that understanding, and whether that is true, or more of a cultural expression like Christianity or Islam. If i claim to understand something, but cannot show that the understanding i think i have gives me any ability or power to do anything then do i have any knowledge or understanding or am i just telling myself i do?

          1. Predictability
            [quote=daydreamer]

            I am mulling this over, but it seems to me that the best way of demonstrating understanding is through application of knowledge and predictability of phenomena.[/quote]

            Predictability of phenomena. How do we determine predictability? By repeating the experiment and getting the same result every time? That is the scientific method, right?

            But, as you say, not everything lends itself to that kind of experimentation. Proof by repeatability isn’t always possible. If Jack or Jill says they have had an out of body experience – perhaps only once – there are two conclusions you can come to: a) that they have had the experience as described but that it can’t be repeated at will hence it is valid but not understood. Or b) that Jack or Jill is a liar or deluded or is misinterpreting a real experience that is already explained by some known and tested phenomenon. The scientific method, at present, discounts a) on the grounds that it is not repeatable. Therefore only b) remains. Knowledge has not advanced, move along please, nothing to see here.

            The fact that there are thousands of Jacks and Jills all over the world and many more thousands throughout history counts for nothing – or so it seems. There are accounts in the Bible of similar experiences. Also in Egyptian texts. But surely, you might argue, these are just stories and myths made up by unscrupulous or over-imaginative proto-religious types with a vested interest? You could go on to argue that these very myths have come down through the ages to influence an equally gullible section of the modern populace into believing in such nonsense, right?

            Sorry, that is just too pat for my liking. I don’t believe that everyone who has such an experience is a gullible fool. Nor do I believe that there are convenient explanations within the current paradigm to effectively explain away all such phenomena. But here we are in that circular argument: will we ever resolve anything? I don’t know but I do enjoy trying 🙂

            Dave.

          2. predictability
            Predictability in experiments is nice, but not very interesting. More interesting is being able to predict what happens tomorrow.

            The current theory of gravity is incomplete, but it is not wrong in the sense that it makes very good predictions. We know exactly when the sun will rise tomorrow, and we know exactly which way to point Hubble next month to take interesting pictures.

            Another way that predictability is nice is to apply our theories to make machines that actually work. Our theories of physics are incomplete at very small scales. Nobody really understands quantum physics, they just calculate. But these theories are correct in the sense that we have machines that use them. GPS would not work if the theory of relativity were actually wrong, in the sense of producing bad predictions. Computers would not would not work if physics was wrong in the same sense.

            As for the NDE examples – that is indeed a difficult case. No predictability is in sight. Because we have no clue what these experiences are, we can’t predict who will have one, and what it will be like for them.

            Are they dreams? I’m sure that a few of them are. If enough people read detailed accounts of NDEs, a few will dream about them convincingly. And a few of those will believe they had a real NDE.

            But that is because of the nature of dreaming, is has nothing to do with the nature of NDEs. If you show enough people good movies of life on a lunar colony, some will dream about it, and the odd person will believe he was there.

            Life is made more complicated when we observe
            [quote]
            I don’t believe that everyone who has such an experience is a gullible fool.
            [/quote]
            which I agree with. But on the other hand, I’m sure that some of them are gullible fools.

          3. Big picture, again.
            [quote=earthling] We know exactly when the sun will rise tomorrow…[/quote]

            Ah but the sun will not rise tomorrow. The sun will just sit there while the earth turns to face it. However, for thousands of years the best minds on the planet were convinced that the sun did indeed rise every morning. Were they the gullible fools? Or was it just that they had a limited world view?

            As I said earlier, I’m not saying the scientists are wrong; perhaps they just don’t see the big picture. Perhaps in order to understand NDE’s we need to expand our scientific horizons.

            Dave.

          4. twisting words
            The important part is the tomorrow, rather than twisting words as you have just done. Any worthwhile theory will predict where the sun is relative to a point on earth, tomorrow.

            A theory that puts the earth at the center can be just as good as one with the sun at the center. In fact an earth-centered model works quite well for navigation too. These people were not wrong to the extent that anyone could tell.

            I can do the same poinless word twisting thing – the sun doesn’t just sit there, in fact it rotates quite rapidly around the center of the galaxy. Or if your measurements are over a short period of time, the sun moves along in a straight line. It does not just sit there.

            But again for purposes of the apparent sunrise at any particular point on earth, this doesn’t matter unless you want to be accurate to very small fractions of a second.

            For those cases when you do want to be that accurate, you need to take into account not just all the movements and rotations of planets, stars, galaxies and so forth, but also the weather.

            But the point of the whole thing is to be able to predict this for the future. If our description works only for the past, and we are completely clueless about tomorrow, we have not understood anything. Even worse, if we make predictions for tomorrow, and they are consistently wrong, then our theory is worthless.

            For the NDEs, certainly nobody has a good understanding of them. And I mean nobody, including the spiritually educated. Do I therefore conclude that NDEs have no spritual connection? Personally, I do not.

            On the other hand, many spiritually oriented people conclude that since biology doesn’t have a good understanding, the explanation is not only non-biological, but entirely non-scientific. Instead it must be an equally non-proven “alternative” explanation.

            I would be very surprised if all NDEs happen for the same reason.

          5. Oh Dear!
            [quote=earthling]

            I can do the same poinless word twisting thing – the sun doesn’t just sit there, in fact it rotates quite rapidly around the center of the galaxy. [/quote]

            My God, I do seem to upset people who have strong opinions, don’t I? I have noticed that you and some others often state your opinions as matters of fact. Well, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t twisting anyone’s words, I was using your argument to highlight the point I’d been trying to make all along. I wouldn’t think for a moment that you actually meant what you said about the sun literally, it was just a good opportunity to emphasise a point.

          6. accidents
            alot of discoveries are from accidents. After the discovery has happened, it is then either reversed or tried again as an experiment to see why and how this happened. Through this process even more understanding is gained.
            Predictability in science is when a lot of understanding is there about many things which gives us the tools to predict a certain outcome.
            Ancient wisdom is no myth, you only have to look at the monoliths and stone work that is left behind after thousands of years. Galileo predicted that the earth revolved around the sun because of his understanding about the movement of the stars. He was right in his prediction.
            But ancients knew this already but their knowledge had been lost. Why?

            I totally agree with you kamarling, in that science will have to exspand its views if it wishes to understand any paranormal experience.
            We should never be so arrogant as to believe we know all and can predict all. We are still mere babies in this universe.

          7. Wrong explanations can yield results too.
            I think you & Earthling are exploring interesting ideas; the concept that a scientific or non-scientific explanation of a particular phenomenon can be wrong or incomplete, yet for all practical purposes it’s accepted because it yields controlled results —that is, until eventually you stretch the explanation to the breaking point.

            Mesmer had a very odd way to explain the trances he could put people under; nowadays we have other ways of explaining that which we now called Mesmerism or hypnotism, and yet it’s obvious we barely understand why the human mind is so malleable under such conditions.

            Likewise, we know that some ancient cultures knew enough about electricity to produce batteries; there are stories that the Muslim city of Cordoba in Spain had electric lighting, back when the Europeans hadn’t even invented the printing press. No doubt the Arabs’ understanding of how electric current actually worked was probably inaccurate, though.

            I think what I’m trying to say is that different cultures may have discovered practical methods which they explained in a different manner than we do. Maybe our explanations are more accurate, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the methods worked for them.

            Accupuncture may have nothing to do with energetic points in the body, but that doesn’t discount the fact that the human body does respond to such treatments; that’s what we have to keep in mind, I think.

          8. I’ve only had time to scan
            I’ve only had time to scan these, but i’ll get more time to go over it properly in a couple of days.

            This is definitely along the lines of what i was thinking when i questioned this.

            There seems some division in the definition between knowledge and understanding.

            For example we can know that the sun will rise tomorrow, but not understand why, or know how to build a battery from a potato, but not understand why.

            I guess lacking an understanding our species has been very good at just making one up, or at least that is what it looks like historically. No bad thing often, our ability to fictionalise and storytell is one of our assets, though the diverse opinions of reality show that it is still mingled with understanding of reality.

            The difference between knowledge and understanding is what i am trying to pick at here (pick at as in pull apart).

            The two should have some sort of application, can only be judged by their application perhaps.

            So i would argue that i both know and understand geology, but only by the standard that i can go into the field and describe relationships and show you how things form and why, what affect they have had, and how. The knowledge and understanding i have gives me the power to describe both the past if we go into an area and look at the fine details of the rocks and also explain what the features will be in the future.

            It is this power to describe that i think is a sort of yardstick of knowledge and understanding. But it must be applicable.

            We have knowledge of UFO experience, for example. We can say there are many sightings and testimonies, but to extend the knowledge claim further to claim that we understand the phenomena is different.

            With NDE’s it is a fact that we have knowledge of experiences happening, but do we have any understanding of them?

            Do we know gravity, as well as understand it? It gets difficult for us as we are hardly the experts. In a broad sense perhaps we know enough to say that the power of relativity to describe gravity on a large scale means we do understand it on a large scale, though its failure on a quantum scales means we do not understand it there, just in the same way as we understand the process of building bridges, without worrying about the quantum. Knowledge and understanding appear scalable to me. As if it is perfectly possible to understand how something behaves in one circumstance and one scale and not in others, just so long as one understanding does not conflict with the other in ways that make them incompatible. So geology is not ‘wrong’ because we do not know if string theory is ‘right’. Scales in our knowledge and understanding exist. (perhaps with the one exception of the goal of attaining a complete theory of everything – though arguably that is a goal for future generations, even if physics achieves its fundamental goals)

            However this is made trickier because some ideas touch each other while others do not. String theory or quantum loop gravity do not affect geology because of the scales, but they will affect gravity and that might change how we know or understand gravity at our scale. Though whether it changes how we know or understand it is yet to be seen i guess. Either way though, that change in our understanding of the universe will not change how we view most other things, such as how the heart works, or how a species evolved etc.

            I am going to spend the next couple of days mulling this over.

          9. But that’s actually a good thing

            However this is made trickier because some ideas touch each other while others do not.

            Yes, but I think this is actually beneficial, because the more interconnected the idea is to others, the easier it is to spot whether there are elements that need to be corrected in it. It goes along your considerations about the scaling of understanding, I guess; the more isolated an idea, the more difficult it is to prove its ‘falseness’.

            Getting back to NDEs, I guess that’s exactly the problem: we’re struggling with trying to find points of connectedness of this phenomenon with other ones, in order to understand it more.

            Unfortunately, the skeptic neurologists are only focusing on finding apparent connections with other neurological aberrations; while the mystics are only looking at it from a strictly ‘spiritual’ POV.

            What we need is a middle point, I think.

  6. spirit of wisdom
    Manly Hall would be happy to see that certain individuals are still following his path. I believe we are on the verge of a new age of Enlightenment, and as was true of the first movement, it will come from a want of a deeper connection to the lost wisdom of the ancients. As humanity wades deeper into the pool of disillusion and maddening anti-diversity, we will almost certainly force ourselves to be guided back into our ancient thoughts.

    On a another note, I knew a Anthropology professor who had witnessed other anthropologists of her generation wrongfully identify the heritages of many a culture and people. She works mainly with native tribes in the northern Yukon regions of Canada (I forget the tribe name, sorry).

    The philosophies of the ancients that we are brother and sister were meant to guide us away from our current direction. In a world with prejudices and judges than ever before, we need to be guided by the the ones within us and re-learn our dead instincts. An instinct of brotherhood, something more animal than human, but something we should not have forgotten. We would have no need for philosophy and “wisdom” if we didn’t judge, if we had our animal minds. For we are all a “pack” and we should be learning from each other. So look to the stars my brothers and sisters, look up and remember what you forgot.

    Okay I’m done 🙂

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