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1. 1 On May 26th, 2024, RB said:

   “… guilt by association. Lie down with Eckhart Tolle, get up with spiritual fleas?”

   couldn’t have said it better myself. associating with that ilk IS a guilty act.

2. 2 On May 27th, 2024, Ronni Bennett said:

   I too hate to disagree with Rage Boy - and I rarely do. But this time I’m with you, Frank.

   I thought the TED talk was fascinating; I liked hearing about the discontinuity caused by a stroke from a neuroscientist who experienced it. How often does that happen, and like you, I didn’t think she was making metaphysical claims - only explaining, in words I could understand, what happened to her.

   I’m sorry about the juxtaposition of Taylor with Tolle and even moreso with Oprah. I suppose it was inevitable, but it chips away at the value of such observations from a scientist.

   It’s not often anyone recovers enough from a stroke to so lucidly explain the experience, and particularly from someone with the knowledge and experience to help the rest of us understand a little more what goes on in our brains.

3. 3 On May 28th, 2024, Zo said:

   Gee, I don’t mind disagreeing with RB at all!

   But she jumped my shark, and, I suspect, his, by appearing on … Oprah.

   I mean.

4. 4 On May 28th, 2024, madame l said:

   Somehow I Highly doubt it was the Oprah appearance that he’s basing his opinion on. Halley was on Oprah, after all said and done. That didn’t change his opinion of Her three quarks.

   And I DO mind disagreeing with him. It’s not fun. He’s smarter than me. And meaner. Believe it.

5. 5 On May 29th, 2024, Kenny said:

   I am so greatful to Eckhart Tolle and Oprah for turning me onto Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her beautiful book “”My Stroke of Insight”". Her story is amazing and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say.

   Dr Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist when she had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke - where language and thinking occur - but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.

   What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having”", and thanks to this wonderful book, I can! Thank you Dr. Taylor, and thank you Eckhart and Oprah.

6. 6 On May 29th, 2024, madame l said:

   Now, Kenny, what Doc Taylor explained in her TED talk was eerily akin to just a portion of what I experienced some 20 odd years ago taking mushrooms. I’ve never had the inclination to take them again, but I do know that you can’t read Moby Dick to “experience” what it’s like to be a whaler anymore than understand what it’s like to be a mailman in Gloucester Mass while trying to write a novel.

   I am highly suspicious of people who take a perfectly normal extra-ordinary experience and try to parlay it into some monetizing spiritual new age crap package for the masses. Send your e-card now. Sign up for our positive thinking manifestation e-newsletter. Heil higher consciousness. It’s like organised religion for not Christ’s sake. Meet the new baas.

   I can see you now on the home shopping network selling peace of mind and chanting for abundance, while millions are slaughtered every day. Baaaaaaaaaaaaah. 3 bags full.

   “and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say”
   “and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say”
   “and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say”

   Order tonight before you forget. Be all that you can be. Your life will never be the same. Harness the power within. WTF ever.

   I hear there’s a great WealthCamp conference going on and Paul Coelho is now on Seesmic. The world, my gentile friend, is now your bicameral oyster. For the right price. Come on down!

   Your appreciation may be great, but you express gratitude by being “grateful”.

   (And Franklin, don’t think I don’t suspect your mad baiting skillz.)

   Deep Inner Peace. Namasté motherfuckers.

   With this special code “asshat cult-think” you will receive a 10% discount on your first purchase. Come swim with the dolphins in our eco-friendly inner voyage. Experience the power of the crystal skulls.

   Firewalking and sweatlodge not included.

7. 7 On May 29th, 2024, Frank Paynter said:

   No baiting! “Kenny” is for real.

8. 8 On May 30th, 2024, Jon H. said:

   I suppose it was inevitable, but it chips away at the value of such observations from a scientist.

   I appreciated the observations she made. Coming from from someone with her training, it’s probably an unique experience.

   Yes, it’s my opinion that the subsequent road show has reduced the value of the TED talk. I don’t think it was inevitable, she could have said “no”. As for her peace, I can appreciate conceptually her enjoyment of life after such an (subjective) experience and 7 or 8 years of hard work at recovering cognitive and presumable motor capabilities.

9. 9 On May 31st, 2024, jasciu said:

   There has been an uproar on many Christian blog websites on the Oprah’s recent sponsoring of Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. She effectively used the internet to disseminate the ideas in the book. Because millions of people were exposed, certain christians feel very threatened. Ironically, this defensive behavior has been predicted by recent social psychological research. Even more ironically, this author’s motivation in writing this essay falls under the same prediction. The main thrust of Tolle’s writing is that incessant comparison between individual egos creates dysfunctional cultural institutions which emphasize competition, growth and conflict for status and natural resources. This competition provided humanities progress as long as a populations were small and cultures effectiveness at exploitation was minimal. The situation is now very different.

   Recent research has supported the idea that, individually, within the context of our cultural customs we really don’t feel we will actually die, but deep down we do feel, without conscious awareness of the feeling, it is inevitable. Thus, we unconsciously participate in our institutionalized modes of striving for approval, status, and prestige to gain the confidence to confront life. We collectively create, support and reinforce that imaginary striving toward unlimited growth and, by extension, an imaginary eternal life. Or, at least of life with significance and respect of our peers. In particular the confusion of symbolic abstract thinking with self and consciousness is the stumbling point for all. Given the state of environmental crisis in the world, consideration of these ideas and reforms resulting from them might be worthwhile.Here is a summary with some added opinions:

   1) We are animals first, humans with imaginations second. We live in a dangerous world, in an unsure world where death is just around the corner. Try to remember your own anxiety as an infant or notice the fearful stages of growth in your children, especially when they realize how dependent they are on the adults. Humanity was also in this state of anxiety in our early history. Tigers were big and all we had were spears. Part of us feels this all time. We feel vulnerable in our animal natures and limited. We strive for growth, mastery and propagation just like every living thing that has ever existed. We crave and greed for anything that represents more abundant and secure biological life - even when it is actually taken care of in our advanced civilization. In the following essay remember we are animals. Thinking animals but animals nevertheless.

   2) However, we are social animals - like some herd or pack animals but not at all like big cats, sharks, or hawks. We need each other and the group to compete against other animals and nature. But we also compete with our fellow humans for mastery and status. Knowing our place allows us take on specific jobs in the group and to feel purpose and meaning. We test and gauge our status within the group. We especially need other love and recognition. Early in history and our physical skills were the important measure of worth but that soon turned to social skills. The function of our direct perceptual senses is to gauge our level of security, protection and worth/recognition within the group. Getting our fellow humans approval and esteem enhances this protection because somebody is literally watching your back. In a sufficiently advanced civilization, when the food supply, health care, shelter and education are taken care of the impulse to grow - to have more abundant life - does not go away. That is because the emotional part of us knows we are still limited and vulnerable without our cultural and group protections. So we unconsciously compare worth, significance and power in our society - to find our place in it and to gather as many protective affiliations around us as possible.

   3) As our brains evolved and abstraction and symbolic abilities developed we imagined we could be gods! Our situation was so perilous in the wild we tended to make false correlations in nature, thus creating “magic” to allow us to feel more in control. Eventually, our egos created complex systems of symbols representing physical skills. We created institionalized ritual to control the environment and its ceremonies to control each other. Magic turned into religion. Religion turned into divine kingdoms and states. Divine states turned into secular society and political philosophies. Thus, magical ritual, religion and its descendant institutions allowed for defined hierarchy, castes, classes and organizational efficiencies. This progressed

   We freely give up our freedoms to perceived “heroic” higher authority. Our egos do not like to hear we have weaknesses or are simply competing status seeking animals, or we are the cause our own suffering or that we are vulnerable, limited and will one day die. So we seek ways of removing our guilt and feelings of vulnerability by latching on to anything or anybody who can make us feel secure, safe and confident that all will be well, and in their care that we will prosper, grow, be significant and live a much fuller life. This is the “heroic impulse”. It is pervasive within all cultures except the most simple and egalitarian. We value and acknowledge those symbols (not reality) that which will make us feel safe or make us feel like winners. Of course, this had loads of survival value in the forest because some did have real skilled hunter gatherers - but the impulse has been distorted to an absurd point.

   Acquisition of possessions, titles, status, large families, and attachment to symbols far and long divorced from actual survival needs is what drives our culture and politics. The impulse for more, more, more drives our economic systems. In fact, it is OUR need for MORE and our unconsciousness of why we desire MORE that creates the economic system - a system that depends on 4% growth per year despite that fact that we live in a finite world with finite resources. Unbridled and un-reflective thinking in service of the fear of death is what makes the human animal so destructive to the environment in comparison to other species. The fundamental confusion is taking mere words or concepts to be reality.

   4) Biologically, abstracting egos arise from the left hemisphere of the brain. The symbolic processors of the left brain take fear arising from the amygdala and rationalizes an insulating symbolic defense - many of which are words or concepts. The left hemisphere also tends to mask perceptual realities of the right hemisphere since this holistic part does not harbor linguistic processors. The right hemisphere cannot argue for itself even though it harbors many intelligences! This effectively removes feelings of vulnerability and fear from our thinking selves but it also veils broader realities and perceptions that could have survival value. This is a necessary condition for mental health and negotiation in a highly symbolic environments which most people live in. Cultures are systems of symbols that reinforce a consensual strategy against this fear of death. Or, at least, a “social symbolic death” with insignificance or loss of approval among our fellows. Cultural values change as the demands of survival from the environment change. We create complex symbolic absolutist views and cultural sanctioned rituals, rules and behaviors that institutionalize the strategy against death because total faith brings the most confidence. That is why suicide bombers say they love death as much as we love life - they are assured at place in paradise. These emotional displacements provide order and sense of meaning to our world and provide confidence. The value of the concept of immortality, gods and single great hero, God, has provided the greatest sense of relief for many cultures.

   5) Furthermore, we create conflict and suffering through mutual exclusive competing symbols within and between our arbitrary rule-bound cultures. Thus, individuals will constantly compare who’s up and who’s down, one street gang will fight another over graffiti, how clothing is worn, territorial encroachment; soccer games will erupt in violence over a game, republicans and democrats will demean and “symbolically” fight each to other’s social death (the inability to influence others). Our egos constantly strive to strengthen its stature compared to others. Our egos are willing to defend, belittle or even fight to the death any symbol or person who threatens our unconscious immortality symbols because our ego’s imaginary life is at stake. The impulse to prove oneself right and the other wrong is simply the defense of the ego against imaginary death.

   6) Whether it be God, Nirvana or our imagined legacies on earth, or our political philosophies our egos find something to latch on to, no matter where we live. Cultures, religions and all absolutist philosophies exist to provide approval-seeking humans ways of organizing, encouraging, coping, prospering, staving off fear of death and moving civilization forward. We are social beings that create our own environments whose need for a sense of belonging and self esteem is universal so conveniently adopt the prevailing notions that imply worth. The need for human connection and approval is primary and real, cultural values are secondary and imaginary.

   7) Our egos can be exploited, controlled and abused by those who use our needs, hopes and dreams to suit their own agendas or by those that insist to withdraw their respect unless we tow the cultural line. We all, quite naturally, give our loyalty and our lives to those who best can communicate to our emotions the symbols that promise security and strength but most importantly - a sense of belonging. The success of leadership is proportional to the level of alignment of culturally adopted values to the real demands of the environment. Blind following often leads to disaster. Following, a worldview, hero or personal expression is only useful to the extent that it actually harmonizes with the reality of others, other cultures and the physical environment.

   So, we only contribute more suffering in the world when we allow the ego unbridled comparison, identification and power-seeking or when we let our egos get competitive, defensive huffy and violent over whose coping mechanisms, behaviors, opinions are best. Judgment and negativity is the primary diagnostic of absolutism - whether it is unbridled praise or criticism. Acceptance (tolerance), enjoyment and enthusiasm is the primary diagnostic for awareness of the extreme comparative activity of the ego.

   9) We could spend our time much more profitably by recognizing more when our ego’s comparative and defensive functions operate and instead look to our fundamental common needs - food, health, education, need for belonging and personal expression. We could look to our common problems and working together to make a difference, rather than defending our egoic coping belief systems or sense of status and worth or defending out-dated cultural systems and pet ideologies.

   10) Ultimately, all human activity is “religious” or “political” in that any activity that provides a sense of mastery of life over death tends to held on to. We must be vigilant in the tendency for our human psyche to attach to absolutist concepts or world-views. The unconscious denial of death is the primary motivation for humanity. This irrational motive lies behind science, art, technology, politics, philosophy and culture. The only solution is to accept tolerance as a fundamental moral, to treat intolerance with intolerance, expose ourselves to other cultures, come to empathize with them, communicate with them, catch ourselves holding onto absolutist worldviews or ways-of-life and be willing to mutually compromise and adapt. We could also ensure that everyone can participate in a sustainable economic system rather than a growth model, have health care and safety, shelter, modes of self expression and encourage a sense of belonging in local communities. At the very least, we can avoid situations that harbor extreme absolutist mind-sets or practices - even create disincentives if a real danger to broader tolerant cultural values is imminent. Or, we could all just move to Canada or Denmark.

   So, what do we do with this information? How does it relate to A New Earth? Of course, we step back and put it in perspective.

   There seems to some of confusion on the healthy development of consciousness on this blog. It would help to realize there is place for religion in the world. . Mostly, it is ignorance of the process.

   As Tolle has discussed in Power of Now and A New earth, the sublimation of the fear of death into the unconscious is what drives people to attach and identify with forms (symbols representing protection worth, and meaning). Or, more accurately, the development of symbolic strategies of protection keeps the conscious anxiety of our vulnerability at bay. We also get our self esteem, worth and security through group approval by adopting prevailing values. It is difficult for people to understand and feel because most people HAVE successfully adopted cultural symbols that stave’s off the feelings of anxiety. Some people just will not let go of cherished beliefs. But, the dangerous and evil result is that unconscious acts of aggression are acted out when the symbols are threatened by other mutually exclusive symbols or just taken away from us (Suicide at loss of a job, or when very compelling world view mentions “your religion”, even the impulse to prove another wrong because you become the winner or just giving up on the common good for self-interested belief)

   Lets get real here. You can help another by affirming Christ’s love, and his promise of paradise. You can also lead a healthy and happy life within a Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, etc. subculture. You can even die with sense of salvation. The point is there are many cultural world views that assist people to live healthy happy confident life. Its the teaching of absolutism that is destroying the world.

   In an increasingly “globalized” world whose cultural boundaries are blurring, there is last stand of intolerant teachers the continue to set up invariant believers to judge, distrust or even hate others.

   The insistence that belief in a divine Jesus is the only way to peace, self esteem and confidence is ultimately evil and damning of others just as the belief in a unlimited American dream is our birthright. Greed for prestige and forms above and beyond what is required for a healthy, happy and educated social life is destroying our world.

   Jesus had many insights. He taught to look beyond institutionalized ritual and look inward toward the individuals relationship to the to God. In that way, he shared the same self-reflective insights of Buddha, Mohammad, and Lao Tsu, et. al. Since his teaching emphasis was the relationship between old Judaic ritual and a fresh view of self-reflective salvation he found no need to teach tolerance. Thus, the tragedy is: we have been handed down intolerance i.e. “I am the way, the truth the life. Only through me will you go to heaven (paraphrase). All ideologies or activities with which we identify harbors intolerance, but many of worlds religion’s explicitly teach intolerance.

   The paradox is, that we absolutely need to develop some “healthy” anxiety displacements to develop self esteem and confidence in growing up. Sometimes children need to know their is a “guardian angel” protecting them from the “boogey man” in the closet just as adults need to believe in something for direction. Religion has its place. In fact, a lack of magical thinking destroys creativity - we lose the ability to fluidly associate and marshal genius. However, when the displacements become rigidly absolute, people will become very aggressive in defending them and eventually, environmental changes out-pace the cultural values that helped in survival. Faith must develop a self corrective function. Interestingly, the catholic church does do this at agonizing slow pace with its Vatican councils. Of course, science is a master of self correction based on empirical evidence.

   There seems to be a healthy arc of development that involves a increasingly generalized world-view.

   1) Identification with parental heroes and development of self esteem by their early unconditional love and then getting their approval from successful negotiation of the social rules they present.

   2) Differentiation from the parents by successfully identifying with and negotiating cultural rules or societal expectations - Tolle’s “world of form”

   3) Getting a sense of approval and belonginess from subcultures that are relatively more aligned to broader accepted cultural values. Choosing heroes, beliefs, activities and groups that allow some sense of security, direction, personal expression and sense of worth and significance within the culture.

   4) Realization that there is way beyond form (Presence) in which can get a sense of security and that your way or anyone else’s is not absolute. We finally separate imaginary status symbols from the actual biological requirements of healthy and happy social life.

   To clarify and review, the mechanism of denial the death drives our cultural institutions and economic systems. If you remember, individually, on an emotional level, and collectively through institutional conventions, we deny the bodily
   perception (or true awareness) that we will actually die. Perceptions are bodily feelings and senses that can be more attuned to reality than mere IDEAS or concepts. This is real physiological reason for our gross acculturated behaviors. Surprisingly, this includes scientific and secular humanist culture.

   Rationality itself is a system of logical thought that is powerful tool in controlling the environment and by default, our security and safety. Thus the irrational will to live and/or be significant/have meaning drives most everything. Our culture and economy is based on the assumption of infinite growth and dominance of the natural environment. Science and technology is part of the madness that assisted us. We are finally beginning to see the limits of being unaware of our inner motivation.

   Our logical and symbolic abilities IMAGINES that the status and subsequent approval, respect, love and recognition that we receive from others when we acquire possessions, titles, the power to influence will forestall the inevitability of death. We must somehow provide this need for belonging as much as we need food, water, shelter and self-expression.

   Getting away from the denial of death and the denial of physical limits and our addiction to the behavior of comparative behaviors - that constant newsreel assessment of each other in terms of who’s up and who’s down - must change. This behavior
   drives the collective madness and consumes the limited resource base of the planet. This madness that eventually that will lead to global warming and a total environmental breakdown.

   Experiments on the economic decision making seems to point to the force of feeling of “what is in for me” - either logically, in terms of real financial gain or by the social advantage and social consequence of the decision. Since our culture determines that arbitrary heroic values can bring social advantages as well as financial we leverage the latter to effect the former. We create governmental institutions that promote cooperation, respect, tolerance, a sense of belonging, taking only whats needed, more conscious egalitarian ethics. Look to Denmark as a model. They have been consistently measured as the happiest most contented country on the earth

   So, the surprising conclusion is one which the Beatles sung about! All We Need is Love. We need social policy that engenders our community involvement, nurturing of self expression, research into economic models that provide for the care, love, belongingness and respect of everyone despite the presence or lack of talents, special powers or prestige. We must minimize status seeking based on infinite growth and immortality.

   We need to minimize competition and increase cooperative and sustainability principles in our economic models, religions and governments.

   Only then can we come to the realization that our economy can based on sustainable and mass balance principles. Of course realigning an economy based on cooperative principles rather than competitive principles is going to take the adoption of the this new kind of consciousness.

   I have been told that the current situation is thus:

   - Easy to extract crude oil is mostly used up now. What remains will be harder and more expensive to extract. All the oil in Alaska, ANWAR included, and offshore for the U.S. won’t make much difference. ANWAR, best case, would provide 5% of the U.S. daily oil needs..best case. Not enough to make up for the declines in output we’re seeing elsewhere.

   - For about 500 years we’ve been able to base our society on continuous growth, because there were new continents to fill in. Those days are over. We can’t realistically plan on growth elsewhere, since it would take more energy to move 100 million people to Mars than there is energy from all sources in the Earth’s crust (oil, gas, uranium, thorium, etc). We gotta make it work right here, on a planet about 8000 miles in diameter and it’s not going to grow anymore.

   - There *is* a blueprint of sorts for what comes next; there’s a school of economic and scientific study around the “Steady State Economy” (Google it, one leader is World Bank economist Herman E. Daly). Interestingly, the platform for social change cuts across traditional liberal and conservative lines. In a nutshell, SSE features no *physical* growth, but the *qualitative* growth continues. i.e., every 10 years your refrigerator is recycled and your new refrigerator is more amazing than ever.

   The free market would work in the context to these limiters on growth and would force qualitative (not quantitative) improvement in our lives.

   (1) Maximum and minimum limits on personal income, and a ceiling on personal wealth

   (2) Transferable birth licenses

   (3) Depletion quotas for natural resources including pollution costs

   Read http://www.npg.org/forum_series/steadystate.html for more information

10. 10 On June 1st, 2024, madame l said:

    I fucking hope you’re getting paid by “the word”.

11. 11 On June 14th, 2024, Jon H. said:

    No shit .. that’s a comment and a half, innit ?

    This I ran across on the Neuroanthropology blog today:

    Susan Blackmore: an irony-free blogger

    One irony in all this is that Susan Blackmore, a veritable fountain of fuzzy-headed ideas, goes after Jill Bolte Taylor for some bits in her account of surviving a stroke and paralysis on Blackmore’s own blog account of TED. (Daniel liked to some material on Jill Bolte Taylor by Leslie Kaufman in Wednesday Round Up #13.) Blackmore thinks Jill Bolte Taylor’s ideas… errrr, memes, are not good ones, but she’s worried that they’ve escaped into the congenial environment of the internet, where they’ll have an undeserved additional lease on life. She writes:

    The disquiet I feel about this is, I think, that scientific ideas must compete to be accepted. Within science, and at scientific conferences, the valid ones win by experiment and peer review, and the false ones are weeded out. In the great wide word of the web, and with easy access to podcasts, false ideas may thrive because of fine presentation or moving emotional manipulation. Taylor’s was precisely that.

    Obviously, Blackmore’s irony meter is on the blink; the Journal of Memetics declared its own demise in 2024, including a number of obituaries for the whole concept (note: the JoMemetics site currently has all of its links broken). As Blackmore herself says, sometimes even the critique of experiment and peer review isn’t enough to put to rest a lousy idea.

    Jill Bolte Taylor’s account is a personal reflection on an experience, in contrast; we can be forgiven if we cut her some semiotic slack, especially talking about such an intensely personal experience. In contrast, Blackmore calls for the scientific review which has repeatedly found the meme concept wanting. I’d say it’s sort of like the pot calling the fruit bowl, ‘black.’

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