UKH

https://news.sky.com/story/civil-partnerships-should-be-sexually-abstinent-...

"Civil partnerships should be "sexually abstinent friendships" - whether between a man and a woman or two people of the same sex, says the Church of England."

Nice to see such an organisation is still in touch with the modern world and issuing such wonderful advise to it's flock .

Don't want to burn in hell now do we ?

Prats .

What about the trillions of other species on the planet, fornicating outwith marriage?
After all, they're all God's creatures.
Or are they all getting secretly married, in, as yet, unobserved ceremonies?

Someone on my facebook shared this, and commented on the irony as once a couple is married they no longer have sex! Lol

I've been married 33 years and have sex regularly - usually in july,

And CoE is usually perceived as the 'liberal' church!

It seems to me that whatever the general feeling of society is, and whatever current trends are the norm the Church has a meeting and thinks to itself , damn there's still to many people attending on a regular basis. 

What can we say that will be impossible for people to live up to and further alienate our leadership from its congregation. 

It's the most anti pragmatic , impossible to follow , anti human condition, made up nonsense that spews forth .

Someday's I think live and let live but on others I just think they don't deserve to exist in this day and age .

This is the problem when your worldview is based on what you believe to be divine revelation: its very difficult to change.

Why don't the church just come out and say it loud and clear.

Your all living in sin because I've been chatting to a non corporeal transdimensional entity beyond space and time that claims to be lord of the universe.

I can't prove his existence to you at all but if you don't believe he'll put a curse on you and you will burn in hell.

You just couldn't make it up .

These are suppose to be adults.

I was a witness in the town hallat a civil partnership last week. When I asked the happy couple what the actual practical difference from getting married was the only one they came up with was one didn't have to consummate a partnership as opposed to a marriage. Mind you that that gives me a lot of admiration for the people who marry in their 90s, hope I'd still be up to it making it legally binding at their age.

The Church of England: obsessing about genitals and where you put them since 1534.

We'll see how stringent they are when happy clapper Cliff Richard dies and leaves  them a load of money, I'd imagine they'll suddenly become more tolerant. 

Lucky b*st*rd!

I’m confused.

So sausage-jockeys and muff-puddlers who get ‘married’ are allowed to ‘bang like a shite-house door, when the plagues in town’?

But heterosexual couples, who have previously been prohibited from ‘Civil Partnerships’ are not permitted to play ‘Hide the Sausage’?

It would be amusing if that was the case, but no. Wikipedia tells me that the Church of England thinks that gay people should never have sex. They don't mind gays. Unless of course they're actually being gay, in which case they're wicked and sinful. I mean, I don't mind Christians, but if they read the f*cking Bible, I'll punch them in the balls.

Gosh, it is all very confusing.

I’m still having regular sex at 48, mind you we live at no.15 so don’t tell the wife.

But surely the whole point of having things written in scripture is that it's the word of god and it can't be changed to suit the whims of modern times and go with the flow, that would be like admitting it's all made up nonsense.

I suspect that we think of the Church of England as being a bit fluffy and all jumble sales and cake stalls but as its influence diminishes in the UK it is increasingly influenced by a particularly homophobic and generally socially very conservative element of its African congregation.

What puzzles me is why civil partnerships still exist.

I don't understand why, rather than doing away with something which was only created as a work around before gay marriage was legalised they have kept it going and even expanded it to straight couples. 

The roadblock it was designed to get around (illegality of gay marriage) has been cleared so it no longer serves a purpose. 

Pre civil partnerships were there lots of gay and straight couples who wanted to be legally recognized as partners but didn't want marriage even if it were an option?

I understand not everyone wants all the religious guff or even just all the tradition baggage associated with a traditional wedding but they don't have to be that, all you need is a registery office and a few witnesses so you can make it as traditional or non traditional as you like. 

I just don't see why in today's world any couple would choose a civil partnership over marriage. Marriage predates Christianity, the whole church connection is a relatively modern change. Is a civil partnership actually different in some way to a marriage or is it just a name change to the same admin procedure to make people feel a bit rebellious?

There are couples who want the practical legal protection of a civil partnership in case of deaths or next of kin issues etc but don't want to associate themselves with the historical traditions of marriage, whether religious or patriarchal or whatever.   

Marriage is traditionally based on a father giving his daughter to her husband. A marriage certificate requires just the names of both partners’ fathers, while a civil partnership certificate requires the names of both parents.  It doesn't have the same history.  

like you I don't really understand how a civil partnership is different to a civil (ie non church) wedding & if there were minor differences, why they couldn't have been made the same.

I got married in France where only civil weddings are legally valid & the only signatures were my wife & myself, plus 2 witnesses (for us two close friends), possibly also M le maire although that might have been a seal/stamp. The French also have an alternative to marriage (Pacs) but that is clearly different with different legal status etc.  Anyone wanting a religous wedding has to have a civil wedding first if they want to be considered as legally wed.

"Marriage is traditionally based on a father giving his daughter to her husband. A marriage certificate requires just the names of both partners’ fathers"

is that also for civil weddings ?

This is precisely how it is in Germany: Church ceremony only relevant for internal church purposes. Guess the reason is that there is a clear separation between church and state, largely courtesy of the French. Some bits of the Code Napoleon are still unchanged, current law in Germany, and large sections are derived from it.

CB

And there are plenty of vicars, priests and Anglican ministers who'd pay you handsomely for the privilege.

You don't have to be "given away" my wife wasn't keen on that either so we just didn't have that in the wedding. Like I say it can be as traditional or not as you like. 

I can accept the father's only names on the certificate but if anything why not just tweak the marriage rules rather than create a whole new, separate thing. Seems like pretty minor differences really.

This is more sensible than our rules, which are a quirk of the history. We couldn't stomach giving gays equal status back in 2004, so to get round all the "destroying the scared institution of marriage" bollocks, civil partnerships were introduced, for gays only. Then Cameron, for cynical political reasons, brought in gay marriage, in order to detoxify the homophobic Tory party while appeasing the social conservatives by "promoting the traditional values of marriage", including that dumb tax break.

I think the case is fair that if you want a civil partnership, you should be able to have one, gay or straight, and this is what the courts found, so now we've got parallel marriage and civil partnerships for anyone, which is pointless, since in practice they're the same thing.

I wonder if anyone will have the guts to take the religion out of marriage and make all marriages exactly the same under the law - that is, a secular legal contract - and leave people to dabble in whatever supernatural rituals they want to, in private or in a church or whatever, but giving those elements no legal status. That would be consistent and sensible.

For someone extolling the virtues of non-duality you appear very keen on your fixed views

What do you mean? WS has said that the CofE position will alienate people, and demonstrates that they are out of touch with modernity.

No one has presented any reason to think this is incorrect (it's blatantly obvious) - why would you expect him to have to have changed his view?

Have you got reasons to think he's wrong? Can you make a compelling case that anyone, gay or straight, who's in a relationship sufficiently committed to instantiate with a civil partnership, shouldn't have sex? Surely you can see that that's a unreasonable, stupid position. 

Moralising about when people should have sex and with whom is a bad place to start. Helping people to make good decisions about sex and relationships would be a much better starting point. But telling people in committed relationships that  they shouldn't have sex is a step beyond. It's bizarre, it's bonkers, it's bollocks.

Perfectly put Jon

Was wondering if I should even attempt to answer them .  

It's a bit of a wired one

Mrs Weasel and I got married in 2010 and it's true that our sex life went into a major decline, however about a year ago it took a turn for the better and when conditions are right we've had some right steamy all nighters to the point where she's worn me out!

Anyone know if the over the counter viagra connect is any good?.. Make hay while the sun shines and all that. 

I'm not in favour of the double system I was just answering the "what's the difference".  

I'd like to see that too.  

At present only the church or the registrar can marry people.  So for religions other than Christianity you have to have 2 ceremonies anyway, one religious and one legal.  

Its unethical but some people use this to avoid any legal scrutiny when they get married by having a religious ceremony and delaying and putting off the civil wedding.  

Hopefully we'll reach a time when it's considered non of your f*cking business to interfere with what 2 (or more?) consenting adults of whatever gender do behind closed doors. I personally wish the best to everyone who has a receptive and pleasurable place to rub their genitals and to those who haven't I hope your luck changes... And if the church thinks otherwise then get off on the taboo. 

Completely illogical. So the church accepts sex in secular marriage but not secular civil partnership. The latter has minimal differences from marriage, as is apparent from other replies in this thread. In fact there is probably more difference between marriage itself between the UK and many other countries. Obviously most foreigners are having immoral sex.

Incidentally I assume the CofE is still against sex between any unmarried people; ridiculously out of touch.

Coming from a church that literally came into existence because some bloke got bored of his wife and wanted to bang other women...

I was thanking old Henry the other day for binning the Catholic church in England, thereby significantly reducing the chances of me being a guilt ridden, mumbojumbo believing sheep.

Based on logic and reason as opposed to dogma pronounced by men in funny hats . 

Utter nonsense.

I've not discussed none duality. 

I can't think of any topic I've started on none duality . Are you thinking of someone else ? 

I agree with your entire argument WS until these comments above which appear to use the historically backward position on LGBT that was/is held by Christian religious institutions in this instance in this country- but equally by science to historically - as evidence that there is no such thing as spiritual reality. I'll explain what I mean. 

Spiritual practice takes you to your essence to find what is there/remove that which keeps us from our essence and once you do that it brings complete realization of the truth. Now when you realize this and slowly try to bring this back into the ordinary seemingly dual life,with lots of never ending continuous work and application it is completely transformative of old unconscious ways.

When you dwell as your essence and the more you dwell as your essence this is what Christian mystics call God and others ultimate reality or infinite consciousness, the insights/realizations you gain from being this shared essence come directly from it and this is what Christian mystics call God's word. 

So this-

" I've been chatting to a non corporeal transdimensional entity beyond space and time that claims to be lord of the universe." 

And this

" I can't prove his existence" 

Are both true. 

If you are experienced in spiritual inquiry and non-dualism this is demonstrably shown but for some perhaps in a metaphor as God, but this cannot be proved (but can be experienced) as the mind needs dualism so to go beyond dualism is to go beyond the limits of the mind. 

Which is why some of the people in history who spoke directly from this essence stated the most experienced people on the path get to a stage where a teacher's best instruction is silence, which says it all. But that is for those that are very advanced apparently. Not me, I'm still working on it. 

Do you get what I mean? 

Yes.

I have no problem with people chatting to non corporeal transdimensional entities , ufo occupants , elves and fairies , or spirits from a grimoire . I can't say either way if they objectively exist . Even after my own experiences.

As long as they don't start telling the rest of the world that they have to live by the information they receive .

You have to be extremely careful with regard to channeling information from such sources.  Remain objective as possible and check the information received via various methods.  

Eastern mystical teachings and the western hermetic tradition teach methods of validating information and personal self enquiry , steps to enlightenment that all can be taught and methods and results discussed sensibly.

Not just praying blindly as is often the case with the church. 

The church rely on dogma and prayer.  They teach little else in the way of personal development but instead subservience to a voice that they assume is god.  

I have a few sayings that I think are pertinent.

The soul is sovereign .  The method of science the aim of religion.

I hope this sheds a little light on my outlook on such a subject.

Really this is a tangent to my complaint on the church and it's detachment to the modern world .

I think I must have been unclear in my first explanation so I will try and do better here sorry. Firstly I wouldn't know anything about all that myself to be honest other than during some unusual and cryptic encounters on psychedelics. Incidentally some people mistake these particular experiences for the main message from these substances and miss the big one but that is another subject. What I am referring to isn't a chat or in fact any application of objectivity, as to do that would be dualistic.And you cannot be objective about that which is not an object. Objectivity can only take you so far which can't reach your essence. 

Whilst experiencing that which is your essence profound insights come from it that match up with the insights passed down from innumerable others who speak from that place that is unchanging in us all - hence the God, Brahmin, ultimate reality etc

The direct spiritual (if you want to call it that) experience delivers the same messages from each person who speaks from there :that we are all one, infinite, eternal, unstainable, we are peace, love and happiness. It is what you know, not what you are told, that is why Buddhists call it ultimate reality as it is the source, the essence, the truth, beyond duality = mind.

I agree with you that religions are removed from that in many respects which makes them look hypocritical so they deserve what they get. It's just sad that their original founders all spread more or less the same noble loving words but they have been twisted and used by the ego to further the ego and ruin some of the original teachings. Although this is not true of all practitioners as many do get the original message and live by it but as you say most just give themselves to mechanically reciting a prayer although proper prayer is a form of surrender to our eternal essence and is useful for some and not to be dismissed. 

Sorry got the wrong ukcer! Sadly can’t go back and delete the post. No idea why some people have liked it. Personally I’m getting a straight civil partnership this year so clearly don’t have any sympathy with the churches position however I fail so see any point in getting annoyed by it. I also think it’s funny that I got a long angry response for a post that basically made no sense. 

I am quite fascinated with this idea of the "complete mystical experience" which reveals this "ultimate reality" which is understood by those who've seen it to be "more real" than the apparent objective reality we experience through our senses every day. The way people report the experiences, and the conclusions they reach, are very consistent so I'm very convinced that there is something there to talk about. I just can't really understand what it is.

This view of reality seems to offer up a radically different metaphysics - what I can't work out is whether or not it can be consistent with the scientific world view that we are collections of atoms organised into organisms that evolved through natural selection. Now I can get on board with the kind of philosophical idealism that says if you were to understand the nature of what matter *is* (rather than just describing how different bits relate to each other), you'd see that it was made of out some kind of 'mental'/'consciousness' stuff, rather than lifeless lumps. That kind of idealism is a metaphysics consistent with the scientific worldview.

I'm not as convinced that the "we are all one, infinite, eternal, unstainable, we are peace, love and happiness" worldview is consistent with belief in evolution and atoms and so on. Perhaps this view could be the same thing as the kind of idealism (or Russelian monism) I described but just approached a different way. I'm not sure I can get behind this though, because concepts like "love" and "happiness" are just so human, and sound so much to me like products of human brains, which are made of neurons which are made of atoms, which aren't infinite: they were made at a specific point in time in a specific place by the process of nuclear fusion in a star somewhere. And then a load of stuff happened in space and time to form the atoms into a brain, which understands the world using language like "love" and "happiness". 

I'm not closed minded, I just like things to make sense. And the appeal to experience just doesn't do it for me: people experience all kinds of things and then it turns out later they were wrong about what just happened. This happens to me all the time.

It's more real as it is what our consciousness is made of when we experience it without external or internal objects. It is what all experiences of objects are experienced in. 

Yes that's this pan psychism theory if I'm not mistaken that wants consciousness to come from a material world rather than a material world coming from consciousness. Which is a scientific concession made by materialists who can't explain consciousness, so to try and get round this they then claim that innate objects like a fork have some consciousness. But that is a mistake a fork isn't conscious. Its in consciousness but it isn't conscious. 

That doesn't explain though how an inanimate bunch of dead stuff becomes consciousness though. 

Animals experience happiness so who is to say that happiness is a human only quality ? Swans and I think penguins have the same partner for life so who is to say they don't experience love just like any protective mother/father in vastly most species do? Look at how elephants care for each other and grieve. They are all conscious beings, perhaps without the same capacity for introspection that we have but all manifestations of infinite consciousness. 

It's the ghost in the machine that's infinite, inherently peaceful, happy and the state of complete love not the fired neurotransmitters or dendrites of the neurons, excitatory or inhibitory ye know they are just dead stuff. 

Thinking rationally, every scientific theory has to start from primary sources I'm sure you will agree or all subsequent matters won't follow from that initial basis if it is wrong. So surely the fact that experiencing is the primary basis for anything when dealing with consciousness means that to remove this from the equation is to start from a faulty or missing primary source. 

Thanks for such an interesting reply! I'll respond tomorrow, but this should probably be its own thread. 

That's ok.  

I hope you have a wonderful civil partnership. 

Very best wishes for the future .

Peace

TWS

That's fair enough .

I always find your posts interesting on the subject.   

> I'm not as convinced that the "we are all one, infinite, eternal, unstainable, we are peace, love and happiness" worldview is consistent with belief in evolution and atoms and so on. Perhaps this view could be the same thing as the kind of idealism (or Russelian monism) I described but just approached a different way. I'm not sure I can get behind this though, because concepts like "love" and "happiness" are just so human, and sound so much to me like products of human brains, which are made of neurons which are made of atoms, which aren't infinite: they were made at a specific point in time in a specific place by the process of nuclear fusion in a star somewhere. And then a load of stuff happened in space and time to form the atoms into a brain, which understands the world using language like "love" and "happiness". 

I think the solution to this could lie in exploring the idea of our conciousness arising out of a universal conciousness field, perhaps the same field that matter and energy arises out of at the quantum level.

This is an interesting perspective that I personally think could be the case and have often mused about.

Mind at large as Huxley put it .   The brain could be like a radio,  a receiver.   Depending on genetic makeup and training we all channel some elements of the one mind and perceive reality from seemingly different directions.

Probably needs it's own thread but could be a brain popper .

:-D

TWS

Three possibilities exist as I see it, probably all true simultaneously to some extent.

There's no real point in abolishing them, our government has been utterly sidetracked and will remain so for some years yet.

People like them. They offer the legal benefits and symbolic commitment of marriage without some of the historical baggage. While this may not matter or make sense to you it does to others.

Not everyone intends for gay marriage to remain legal. Keeping an option open for gay couples would make the roll back of recent liberalisations easier to sell.

jk

As I understand it that has been changed relatively recently in principal at least. In practice the government has its head up its arse with brexit so the changes are yet to be implemented.

jk

A couple of corrections to my previous post:

Omit the "made of" in my first paragraph and it should have read metaphysic concession in my second paragraph rather than "scientific concession". 

Thanks, it was late and I rushed it to get to sleep. 

Now that  Dame Barbara Cartland is no longer with us have you considered a career in writing romantic fiction?

Ethics? You can add these later, according to Eddie Izzard:

....Then Henry VIII came along, a big hairy king. Erm… And, er… He said to the Pope, “Mr Pope, I’m going to marry my first wife, then divorce her. “I know what you’re gonna say but stick with me, it gets better. “I’m gonna marry my second wife and cut her head off! “Not expecting that, are you? “Third wife, shoot her. Fourth wife, put her in a bag. “Fifth into space. Sixth on a Rotissomat. “Seventh made out of jam. Eighth wife…” And the Pope’s going, (Italian accent) “You crazy bugger! “What are you, a Mormon? You can’t marry all these people! “That’s illegal. “You can’t do this. I’m head of the Church… “Ciao. “I have to keep up standards. “What have you been reading, the Gospel according to St Bastard?” So Henry VIII, who was Sean Connery for this film… (imitates Connery) “Then I will set up a new religion in this country. “I will set up a religion, the Psychotic Bastard religion.” And an advisor said, “Why not call it Church of England?” “Church of England, actually. Much better. “Even though I am Scottish myself.” That’s the birth of Church of England, the Anglican church. Disgusting. That’s no basis to start a religion on. Nothing to do with the Protestant church. Henry just shagged and killed a lot of women and stole all the money off the monasteries. Rape and pillage.....

It's definitely the case that all objects are, as far as I'm concerned, modifications of my consciousness. There is, objectively, no such thing as a blue chair: colours are just different types of conscious experience and a chair is just a concept I understand in my consciousness. But I maintain that there is an objective physical world out there which causes these things in my consciousness; and they act in the same way on other people, giving rise to similar conscious experiences for them, which we can then talk about. By finding these consistencies in our conscious experiences, we come to a consensus about the objective physical world out there. If I dream something, it exists in my consciousness, but no one else agrees it exists. If it's part of the objective physical world we'll agree about it - and the fact that we can be precise in our agreement shows that it is not just in our consciousnesses, it's independent.

Yes, this "we don't know the intrinsic nature of matter" business can be a justification for panpsychism: you can say that the nature of matter is "physical with a bit of consciousness mixed in" at the most foundational level.

No it doesn't. A materialist has got the "hard problem of consciousness" to contend with. And we don't have an answer. We can postulate that consciousness emerges in systems that have certain properties - people like Giulio Tononi and Max Tegmark would say that consciousness emerges when information is processed or "integrated" in certain complex ways (not just computation by the way - that's a crap theory!). Or we go down the panpsychist road and say that consciousness is "built in" to matter at the most fundamental level: each subatomic particle has a tiny bit of "proto-consciousness" - but this gives us the "combination problem" of why I experience a single unified conscious experience. 

I was suggesting though that you can take the "we don't know the intrinsic nature of matter" business and use it to justify idealism, if you're into that kind of thing. Rather than proposing that the nature of matter is physical with a bit of consciousness mixed in, you can go the whole nine yards and say that the intrinsic nature of what appears to be material is actually consciousness. This to me has all the same problems as panpsychism: why do I have a single unified conscious experience, while you have yours, and a giraffe has its?

I'm agnostic on animal emotions. I think it's pretty obvious they're conscious, at least the ones with proper brains. Giulio Tononi and Max Tegmark would say that's because they're processing or integrating information in certain complex ways. It's a sliding scale: a fly is a bit conscious, a mouse rather more and a monkey a lot more like us. 

But I don't see the justification for the sudden inclusion of "infinite". A dog's consciousness, like my own, seems distinctly un-infinite. Stop the brain of any conscious creature working (doing its information integrating jazz) and the consciousness seems to go away. It seems very clear to me that consciousness is generated by the brain. I know this, because if I change what is happening in the physical processes of the brain (with drugs, a magnetic field, a hammer, etc), then my consciousness changes in a predictable way, with absolute correspondence. Consciousness is a result of brain processes.

This is where we diverge. I think the ghost in the machine is a hangover from a pre-scientific era. I see absolutely no reason to believe in souls. The neurons and action potentials and neurotransmitters somehow give rise to my conscious experience. We don't know how it works, but we know it does!

Yes I absolutely agree. Materialists who don't think that there is a hard problem of consciousness are making this mistake. They'll say things like "the conscious experience just *is* the action potentials and neurotransmitters". There are people out there who'll just deny flat out that consciousness exists, which is obviously wrong. You can't actually get any more wrong than that, because, as Descartes pointed out a couple of centuries ago, the only thing you can be sure exists is your consciousness.

So, I'm not one of these materialists who thinks there isn't a problem - there definitely is. But I don't see any solution. I don't see how believing in a more Eastern style metaphysics where everything physical is secondary to "infinite consciousness" is any help. How do we account for everything we know about nature, evolution, biology within this framework? I can't make it work.

I am a little bit seduced by wanting two separate mysteries to have a single solution: the hard problem of consciousness, and people reporting seeing "ultimate reality" through altered states of consciousness in meditation or on psychedelics. I'm falling into the same trap as those wanting to see the hard problem of consciousness solved by quantum mechanics: here's two things we don't understand, let's say they're the same thing.

I don't think any of us are right, but I think the questions are absolutely fascinating.

I like The Wild Scallion's idea of the mind as a radio receiver for the universal consciousness field and using this idea I think some of these objections to the concept can be overcome.

You don't have to consider objects such as forks or rocks as having some sort of consciousness, it could be that only objects with the correct components assembled in the right way (a brain) are able to interact with the consciousness field.

A radio receiver doesn't have to have any interaction with other radio receivers in order to receive the electromagnetic field and a receiver of the universal consciousness field wouldn't have to have any awareness of the other receivers of the field either which could be why we all have our own individual conscious experiences.

You can change the physical processes going on in the radio receiver and its ability to make sense of the electromagnetic field would change in a predictable way as well but we would be incorrect to conclude from this that the electromagnetic field had been generated by the radio receiver.

This analogy could be well off the mark but I think the answer lies somewhere in this direction.

These objects you sense and perceive to be "out there", are sensed and perceived in your consciousness which as you point out from Descarte if the only thing we can be sure of that exists is consciousness then that should be our starting point, and since the objects you sense and perceive are sensed and perceived in this consciousness how can they be outside it? 

Is that not just akin to an act of religious faith rather than scientific fact though? 

The panpsychist theory I find a bit embarrassing tbh as it looks like a desperate attempt by true believers in materialism (not you as you are very open) to fit consciousness into materialism under materialist rules and it just looks very naff and desperate. To paraphrase Kastrup-Tononi himself states that the correlation between the firing of cortical neurons and consciousness happens some times but not others. And how can we have incredible experiences when there is no detectable brain activity in a near-death experience when to dream of a mere clenched hand produces measurable brain activity? 

But it is our direct experience that objects appear in awareness or consciousness. 

I'll give that a miss as I don't know. 

My use of the word infinite is to try and convey a quality of ultimate reality which can be experienced when we work on our meditation practice. 

Brain states do indeed correlate with subjective experience but to presume that means they cause subjective experience is a cum hoc ergo prompter fallacy. As Bergson proposed in 1912 our brains can be filters that localize consciousness but don't generate it and as Kastrup goes on to show the brain is like a radio receiver selecting from among the variety of stations and picking one to listen to but 'filtering out', the rest.The internal circuitry of a radio doesn't create the voices and music it receives and transmits so why should consciousness be created by the workings of the brain? 

Sorry I wasn't clear there as I don't mean a soul as such I just meant consciousness as the ghost. You also make a huge jump there by saying we don't know but we know. I would say how do you know? 

I know you are not like them as you give clear reasons for any conclusions you reach but you must admit to being quite categorical when you stated emphatically that " Consciousness is a result of brain processes." and " We don't know how it works, but we know it does!". 

I was unaware of that quote which is a useful one indeed from an idealist perspective. Descarte rightly points out- and you knew intuitively - that consciousness is all we can be sure of. Materialism wants to reduce conscious experience to particles ie. The fundamental ' Standard model' in particle physics and as Kastrup points out " It assumes consciousness to be derivative, not fundamental". Consciousness is though an ontological primative as our direct experience and Descarte show and as such removes the hard problem of consciousness. 

I completely agree with you as I am still trying to get my head around it to although I am coming at it from this direct experience of the spiritual which is the soul reason I find myself in all of this debate and if someone told me 2 years ago I would be writing this stuff I would have told them they were crazy. There are many so called spiritual matters that I to am very sceptical of btw. Getting back to your point on nature etc if you put consciousness as your primary concrete starting point then all of the above takes place in consciousness so is a part of it, which then means everything is in consciousness not consciousness in everything (panpsychism) or matter creates consciousness (materialism) 

I think you are correct in wanting a single explanation as two solutions to me is not a solution at all. 

I think we are doing quite well and tbh I'm very glad some else is so enthusiastic about this mind blowing stuff as everyone I know unfathomably don't want to engage in this subject at all. 

Ps. Forgive my lateness to respond as I had to go and do a bit of reading up on the science side for some support before I could engage with you on this. The spiritual stuff comes easy to me but this particular science/philosophy field can be quite heavy going at times although very fruitful. 

If consciousness isn't a product of the brain, what is it? If it's floating around in the ether waiting for us to tune in to it, where did it come from? And if you have to be conscious in order to tune in to the "radio", how do you get that consciousness before you've tuned the radio in?

In the metaphor the tuning to another radio station is the localisation of consciousness into one being ( ie. Being born) from the infinite consciousness which is the entire radio network. It is to show that there are other ways for consciousness to manifest in each of us or rather us to manifest in consciousness.

As those ancient sages who devoted their entire lives to seeking the answers to those questions testify, consciousness is what we are, our essence, which is beyond the grasp of the mind that requires dualism for its understanding. It is therefore usually spoke of in metaphors like God or brahmin etc. As to where it comes from I am informed by some sages that it is dimensionless but I can't really grasp that myself tbh as to me it is a vast infinite loving peaceful and unchanging space of knowing. 

only true of certain types of receiver - many, perhaps most, receivers are detectable by other receivers

It is certainly the case that it is only fathers names and professions that go on the marriage certificates, not mothers.

We experience a representation of objects in the world out there in our consciousness. So a blue chair exists as a blue chair in our consciousness, but out there it's just a load of stuff.

I don't think you'll find many panpsychists who believe in it as strongly as someone who holds a religious faith. No one really thinks it's *true* in any scientific sense - but some people would say things like "I'm attracted to the idea". Personally, I think it's radical and imaginative, rather than naff and desperate

I'm not convinced Kastrup has his facts straight here. I don't know of any compelling examples of cases where brain activity and consciousness aren't correlated. Research (on rats) suggests a surge of brain activity, not a reduction, correlates with the near death experience. In humans, the similarity between near death experiences and tripping on DMT is being studied.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/could_a_final_surge_in/

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/near-death-experiences-psychedelic-religiou...

Not quite. The brain activity and the conscious experience are definitely causally connected, because they correlate so perfectly in each moment (it's not one thing happening after another and then assuming that the first caused the second). So it could be:

 - brain activity causes consciousness experience

 - consciousness experience causes brain activity

 - a third thing causes both

This is taking the idea that a third thing - the universal conscious field - is responsible for both the brain activity and the experience. I'd like to see how Kastrup explains how his ideas are consistent with all our scientific knowledge of physics and evolution before getting excited that he's solved the hard problem of consciousness. The "radio receiver" idea has been around for a long time, but never found any success in neuroscience, which is precisely where, if it was true, we'd see how this idea could work.

If you have a stroke that takes out the left side of your primary visual cortex, the right side of your vision disappears. When those neurons are working, they create that part of your consciousness (right visual field), but when they're dead, that part of consciousness disappears. Same with other aspects of consciousness - you can take away memory, understanding language, all kinds of things by killing the neurons that produce them. And all these things that different brain regions do all have evolutionary purposes. The neurons are organised in ways that create conscious experiences relevant to life. For me, there is absolutely no doubt that the brain generates consciousness. The evidence is everywhere, and it's the by far the best explanation for the things we know are true.

We have the hard problem of consciousness.  There are different approaches to  solution: you can take consciousness as primary (as in Kastrup's idealism), as fundamental (as in panpsychism) or you could take a materialist view and say that consciousness emerges from the physical when physical systems do certain things. There's no proof that any of these approaches is right, but I think the materialist view is the most plausible. In the past it was a deep mystery how some matter could be dead, and other matter could be alive. Life seemed to be something magical that couldn't just be made out of ordinary "dead" matter, it needed something extra - but now we understand what life is thanks to scientific enquiry. I see no reason the same can't be true of consciousness. 

I can take *my* consciousness as a starting point; and then say that I've good reasons to believe in a world out there (because of the precise agreement of my experience with others); and then to say that our scientific knowledge gives us a compelling picture of why the world out there is the way it is (big bang - atoms - fusion - planet earth - evolution - consciousness). The fact that I start with *my* consciousness as the only thing I know for sure exits doesn't mean I have to accept that *only* consciousness exists, or that another form of cosmic/infinite/primary consciousness that isn't a result of brain processes exists. It might do, but I don't see any reasons to think it does. As a theory, it doesn't seem to me to solve any mysteries - it doesn't explain why the world appears the way it does.

I'm going on a trip for a week and a bit, so I won't be contributing any more. But I've enjoyed it, so thanks for your replies!

And if I can stick to the radio receiver metaphor and the " filter hypothesis", since consciousness is primary and irreducible then it cannot be the case that the brain generates it.

So why is there a correlation between mind states and brain states? Kastrup says - 'The function of the brain is to localise consciousness, pinning it to the space-time reference point implied by the physical body. In doing so the brain modulates conscious perception in accordance with the perspective of the body. When not subject to this localization and modulation mechanism, mind is unbound : it entails consciousness of all there is across space, time, and perhaps beyond. Therefore, by localizing mind, the brain also 'filters out' of consciousness anything that is not correlated with the body's perspective.'

Which makes a great deal of sense when you look at the experiences people get on high doses of psychedelics from leaving the body and hovering above it or shooting off into space to time standing still or hours passing in a flash or seeing yourself over there to meeting strange beings and falling through kaleidoscopic tunnels to strange geometric lands where anything is possible as well as the roller coaster distortions of normal vision morphing into complex hallucinations. The main all pervading experience that is there if you can get above all that, is directly experiencing a powerful knowing of the truth, directly experiencing this knowing which is at the forefront of everything is the key to psychedelic experiencing and in this knowing or awareness is absolute love and peace. The 60s movement was not one of love, peace and unity for no reason as it was a direct result of millions of people having psychedelic trips where they would experience this loving infinite consciousness to some degree. 

I think psychedelic experiences provide a link to this filter theory as they remove the filter to a certain extent enabling us to literally expand our limited consciousness into infinite consciousness to varying degrees mind you, but of course they are not the way to go about it as they are not very good for the body but probably no worse than alcohol I suppose although I don't know exactly . Meditation is the safe healthy method. 

No worries, I won't bother you with a reply when you are on your holiday. 

Almost certainly.  But what *experiences* that consciousness?

So we’re back to consciousness floating around externally and the brain picking it up like a radio receives waves? If the brain doesn’t generate consciousness, or if consciousness doesn’t develop in the brain, then consciousness must come from somewhere else. That certainly seems to be what your quoting of Kastrup suggests, otherwise there is no point referring to localising consciousness in the body, where else could we localise it? Are we somehow reaching out and grabbing consciousness outwith our bodies? Do we do that sub-consciously? We obviously couldn't consciously do it because we wouldn't have consciousness before we had sought it.

Perhaps there’s a “correlation” between mind and brain states because the mind and brain are indivisible, no brain, no mind?

Psychedelics are fascinating (and great fun), but you’re making claims that are merely notions. You state “The main all pervading experience that is there if you can get above all that, is directly experiencing a powerful knowing of the truth”, but you don’t know that, it may be your experience but it hasn’t been mine. And what truth? And how do you know it’s the truth?

If there is infinite consciousness what is it? And where is it? Clearly we can never have it, it being infinite after all. Have you checked down the back of the sofa?

The organism whose brain it is. 

You are repeating the same questions you asked me before and I already answered a couple or replies ago apart from the point about psychedelics.

That is a unusual statement because the massive interest in Eastern mysticism and meditation in the west was completely kick started by the use of LSD and other psychedelics in the 60s. Which is a no brainer (if you pardon the pun) as to the affects these substances had on most people. If you never experienced any of these affects then i don't know, perhaps the stuff you had was weak. I don't know anyone who has not had a profound experience on them that doesn't experience a widening of their consciousness and or spiritual experience, this stuff so obvious I can't believe I'm saying it. 

You didn't answer them. Where does consciousness reside and where do we get it from?

All I'm saying is I've never experienced a powerful knowing of the truth (or did I? How could I tell?). And if you want to claim you have that's fine, but all it means is you took some drugs and thought about things, and that's fine too.

I can definitely believe you're saying this stuff.

I did answer your questions the first time but OK you want more. So if everything you experience is experienced in consciousness and you are a localisation or whirlpool in a sea of infinite consciousness then why say where is it?

Where is it not is more relevant and even that is not helpful. Basically you are infinite consciousness you just don't know it that is why it is beyond mind as I wrote to you before since mind requires objects for its understanding whereas infinite consciousness is beyond the objective world.

I acknowledge that plenty of people especially if you're young and with your mates etc and trying psychedelics once, will be preoccupied with having a laugh, being macho, not letting the mask slip, keeping tight control over emotions and feelings etc until the trip has subsided but if you do the right amounts with the right conditions and people like old hippies did in the 60s onwards then how can you fail to to get your mind blown man! Like they did and realize that yes love, peace, compassion and unity are reality since they have experienced the infinite which is basically themselves and reality devoid of ignorance.

Which prompted huge movements of love and peace, exploration of Eastern mysticism and Christian mysticism to. As well as branching into so much more in the student movement and civil rights movement. 

You didn't, but thank you for having another stab at it. I accept you can't answer where consciousness is, that's fine (although it either resides in the brain, elsewhere, or both). Are you using mind and brain interchangeably? What objects do you think the mind needs to try to understand concepts? There's no object when you're considering a concept, but the mind can still try and understand a concept.

Yeah, yeah, you did the wrong drugs, or not enough drugs, you weren't there, man, you don't know. You think nobody pondered consciousness before the 60's? You really need to lay off the drugs.

What prompted the "Eastern mysticism"? How could they possibly be mystic without lsd? Or is consciousness harder to find the further west you go?

Exactly. So the idea of a fundamental universal consciousness that our day to day brains "tune into" (which gives us our experience of individual consciousness) is an experience shared by many and is credible enough to warrant further scientific and philosphical enquiry.

From Jon's article above about a study comparing Near Death Experience with controlled use of lsd -

"The data indicated the strongest overlap resulted from occurrences of ‘ego-dissolution’ and mystical experiences of ‘unity’ – both involving the feeling of being ‘at one’, unified with surroundings and those within it. Previous research advocates that such experiences may have long-term benefits involving a greater satisfaction with life, social relationships and nature."

These ideas also seem to be the fundamental basis of all religious teaching and, to me, this comes through very strongly in the words of Jesus.

I don't think anyone is trying to stop enquiring. But perhaps there are only an awful lot of individual, unique, consciousnesses and some people desperately want there to be more than that. 

I've no idea what you're trying to say here.

Oh, christ.

It can't reside in the brain as the brain resides in consciousness. Everything is in consciousness. 

I'm using mind as in the brain and its functions. 

A concept is a thought though and all thoughts are objects so a concept is just another object but one of the mind. 

lol, no, no one ever pondered anything about consciousness or spirituality before LSD, God and mushies were invented in 1964 by The Beatles. 

That's a very interesting question. 

I think most westerners who were not freaked out or just running around having a laugh etc who took psychedelics experienced a mysticism which they automatically associated with God and many would associate that as the Christian church, Jesus and so on. In fact I think Leary did LSD experiments on volunteers by taking them into churches whilst tripping. Others though in the initial vanguard of LSD users before it went mainstream,started digging and found parallels with those little known obscure transcendental states from those unknown Eastern practices of meditation or yoga and yet many others went down the tribal shamanic routes with their psychedelic ceremonies and lifestyles, see Carlos Casteneda etc. 

But there was an explosion of interest then and since in all things spiritual and it was caused by the widespread use of psychedelics in America and then Europe of that there is absolutely no doubt. 

This is an element of a transcendental or profound spiritual experience on these substances as you need to be open and if not alone be with good people and surrender yourself to the flow which does result in this illusory ego or illusory separate self being left behind. This can be very alarming to some with very strong ego attachment as they think they are dying so they cling on to control and don't surrender which then gives them a difficult time of fighting to maintain control until it wears off hours later and hence they get no spiritual experience from it. 

http://news.sky.com/story/church-of-england-sorry-for-saying-sex-is-only-fo...

Oh dear numbers have perhaps dropped to low , there's nothing in the collection box this week Vicar.