Method |
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Our purpose is to explore consciousness, to map it, draw it, give it words, analyze it, feel it, and to accept whatever we find. Each person will bring knowledge to and accept knowledge using methods that center on a fundamental respect for rationality and scientific evidence. Our method is to engage people in discussion and to take what measures we can to verify in the group the experiences some have had alone. Our premise is that each person experiences consciousness somewhat differently, but that the differences are based on expectation rather than substantial differences in minds and brains.
Our method is in a tension between the willingness to easily believe and the need to establish facts and perspectives. We know that consciousness is a mental state, an emergent property of the functioning brain, we just want to understand better the extent and capabilities of the human mind. We want to know more about spirituality, among many other mental states, as normal phenomena. We do not want to make a religion or cult of our knowledge, we want knowledge for its own sake. We are curious and we know that in a certain group dynamic intelligent and willing people can share experience almost without reservation. As we proceed our discussion may become uncomfortable for some members of the group. Alerted to this in advance, we will be alert to discomfort and try to find the reasons for it. One hypothesis for discomfort is that the words in use are loaded with emotional associations from some other experience or some other personal hypothesis. We will always respect privacy and go around issues that bring sustained discomfort. We know we will be breaking new ground for everyone and that new ideas and new perspectives are not always immediately pleasant. Our meetings are designed as calm discussions in which personal and group inquiry takes place. There are no mantras, songs, hymns, incense, gongs, or other trappings of cults or communes. There are no brow beatings, no punishments, no lessons to be memorized, no formulas for success on Wall Street, no magic, no reification, no unverifiable assertions about brains, mental functioning, and the experience of consciousness. Our meetings are for intelligent open-minded, gentle, and honest people. We expect that some people occasionally will misunderstand some part of the experience and believe it to be tending toward a preconceptions of mental life. We have to start somewhere, and that somewhere includes hypotheses and hidden premises. One of our tasks is to unearth these ideas and to examine them for what they are and what directions they impart to our subsequent thoughts. Yes, we all bring into the meetings factual information and will recount mental experiences for others to consider, but there is no belief system involved, except that we are rationalists and value evidence. The nature of "belief" is one of our discussion topics. An analysis of the human facility for "suspension of disbelief" is part of our path toward understanding consciousness. We will explore the role of emotion in rational thought. Finally, if it is not already obvious and tacit in everything you see here, our intelligence tells us that there is more to consciousness than just being awake. We have worlds of literature to assure us that since very ancient days human beings have been aware of different aspects of their consciousness for which they had no words, no way to express the full experience of those mental states. We mean to elucidate those aspects of our mental lives and share this knowledge freely. At the end of our meeting we will have a different appreciation of mind and consciousness than we had when be opened the meeting, but each one of us will have just begun our journey of discovery. Members of the group will communicate through this website or privately or in groups for as long as they need the connections we hope will establish themselves. We become a family, a group of people bonded in respect and love for one another.— JB |