Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Spirituality and Philosophy
The Lies We Live By
I have evolved from my role as psychiatrist in part into the role of cultural critic, because I found that part of what has come to be regarded as neurosis is just that some folks take to heart the lessons they’ve been taught or picked up from the ambient culture. It began to dawn on […]
The Lowdown (?) on the Higher-Ups
I was told an anecdote by a friend, who said: “A friend of mine who started out in apocalyptic fundamentalist group, whose leader said there were the only ones who would be in heaven, and the only ones with certain privileges in heaven etc. also had a clairvoyant relationship with his wife. His wife preceded […]
The Meaning Instinct
I suggest that humans have an intrinsic need to construct meaning—something that orients them to the chaotic phenomena of the world. We pass along meanings as stories, myths; we organize religious-cultural systems based on these stories. It is universal. (When people become sufficiently disoriented through delerium (due to fever, some plants or medicines, some illnesses, […]
The Meaning of It All
My son sent me an email that mentioned a TED lecture from England, David Deutsch contemplated the meaning of sentient life in the cosmos. My own take on this history is this: Building on the work of Teilhard de Chardin, I think that what is going on is that the cosmos is moving towards greater […]
The Mind-Field
There’s everything we think is material, and then there’s the mind-field, which is inestimably vaster. It involves the (many?) dimensions of consciousness, including our own levels and probably fuzzing into hyper-consciousness. It probably fuzzes into hypo-consciousness, the qualities of mind of a leaf or a cell or a virus or maybe even a grain of […]
The Myth of Truth
Recently I wrote about the problem of truth. For many centuries the search for truth has had its own value. It seemed virtuous to be in search of truth, but villainous to question whether the goal of seeking truth was foolish. Yet I am daring to ask this, and to suggest that in light of […]
The Problem of Authority in Religion
Newsweek, February 14, 2011 , page 48, involves an article that’s sort of a book review of two recently released books that invite a re-evaluation of the common understandings of sexual mores as presented in the Bible—mainly in the Old Testament. What interested me was a statement near the end of the article. Albert Mohler, […]
The Resonance of the “Wow!”
The title of this post is a bit of paradoxical apophatic musing. Apophatic refers to the stance that we—human consciousness—cannot begin to begin to know Divine essence. A degree of surrender is needed. Yet we can in our foolish innocence speculate. So also a three-year-old can talk about “my mommy” and know deeply that of […]
The Seventeenth Assistant
In the great hierarchy of being, I figure that the vast cosmos has an unthinkable number of levels in many dimensions. Poetically speaking, then, I am blessed by the guidance of the seventeenth assistant to the seventeenth assistant to beings who shall remain yet unnamed in the celestial hierarchy. I allow that these folks sort […]
The Spectrum of Rational Coordination
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) stated (as one of my favorite quotes) near the end of his book, Modes of Thought: “…The purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism, not by explaining it away, but by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations, rationally coordinated.” This brief passage has impressed me mightily. (Many of Whitehead’s […]
The Teardrop
Or maybe it should be called wiggling through evolutionary time, over millions of years. Of course it’s multi-dimensional, very much so. But simplifying it all, in the cause of imagination: Most are in the bulbous middle, some a bit more ahead, “civilized,” some more toward the tail, “savage.” But all are needed for progress, and […]
The Truth About the Truth
We are misled by arithmetic, where, according to the rules there is one and only one “right” answer. We absorb this as ultimately true. Things we come to believe cannot have multiple explanations—there can only be one true answer. But consider that there may be multiple valid answers; there may be more than one “truth.” […]
The Truth of Truth (or Is It Delusion?)
“Aha, it all comes clear!” Such is the compelling feeling of what I heard called an “epiphanous delusion” that is a hallmark of paranoid schizophrenia. (See the Wikipedia on Apophany.) Or mystical insight. Or for that matter, any compelling insight or convergence of notions. Some of these can seem crazy to others, and some indeed […]
The Ultimate Truth (Not)
Alas, after decades of considering what’s what, it’s not so much that I don’t know—that’s true—but I am quite sure that the “everything” cannot be known. Now there’s an apophatic stance that invites dispute! I guess I agree with the postmodernist view that it’s all co-created. There are no objective standards that transcend our co-creation. […]
The Unbearable Wholeness of God
This is the title of a recent book by Ilia Delio, a Roman Catholic teacher who gained access to the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. A teacher where I used to live back in Texas—an ex-nun—wrote: Ilia Delio presents a concept of this Universal Force that we have labeled God in a broad way that […]
The Wise-Elder Role
A friend of mine is a part of a “crone” group—no, not the withered old hag of some popular children’s stories. Unfortunate word, very age-ist. (If you floss your teeth, you need not lose them and become toothless as you age! Read more about flossing on my website.) Crone is really a term for wise […]
The World is So Full
“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”—so said Robert Louis Stephenson. And some wag wrote in another sense, what I perceive to be a related poem: “Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em; and little fleas have littler […]
Theological Conflict (Book Review)
Reviewing Alvin Plantinga’s new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford University Press, 2011), I find the author takes on a straw man, i.e. orthodox belief versus pure atheism. Regarding orthodox belief, merely affirming the “personhood” of God (whatever that means) versus a position that denies many of the underlying assumptions in the traditionalist religious […]
There’s More
Yes, there is more to this existence that what we see. We discovered stars and galaxies way beyond what was visible, and a micro world and a world of atoms and sub-atomic particles below that. Centuries earlier we discovered whole worlds of people and lands that the Euro-centric world hadn’t known about. Now I’m daring […]
Thickening Philosophy with Psychology
Increasingly philosophy is coming round to appreciating the inevitability of distortions due to depth psychology. Carlin Romano’s book, America, the Philosphical (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), offers a nice review that brought me up to date about some figures about whom I had been sadly ignorant, such as Richard Rorty. Apparently a number of […]
Thinking About Believing
A friend cited a book by Julia Kristeva (a psychoanalyst / philosopher / writer): "This Incredible Need to Believe,” and noted one of her points: We cannot interact with this world, even speak one word, without believing: – that there is a real person opposite one; and – that this world is real, not some […]
Thinking About Trauma
I think it useful to consider that there is a spectrum of trauma from the mildest to the most severe. On one hand, I’m inclined to say that it does not meet the requirements for being considered “trauma” unless there is a radical break with what the psychiatrist Jules Masserman in 1953 called the “Ur” […]
Thinking About…
I discern several levels of consciousness: 1. Thinking, 2, thinking about thinking, 3,thinking about those processes, and 4. meditating on those levels. The first is straight thinking, calculating. Example: "He’s heading off that way, so I’ll cut him off." Leopards do this. The second level is more human: Thinking about thinking. Because of their developed […]
Thoughts on Dimension-ality
Although we are physically 3-Dimensional, our minds are able to think about many-dimensions. (I am aware that this is a concept that is provisional!) I think we’re at least 4 dimensions, but our minds can intuit more! Mathematicians intuit many more! (I have an acquaintance who thinks there are thirty-three di-mensions!) Some few think about […]
Through the Cosmoscope
People don’t realize that the internet is permeable to other dimensions. As this picture shows, yes, we can be seen, and we can also get a glimpse of those who see us. Electromagnetic radiation at certain wavelengths can be detected by the cosmoscope, an instrument that allows for inter-dimensional perception. The beings in other realms—some […]