Mind Stuff-The Source

[JR]

The Principles of Psychology
CHAPTER VI, The Mind-Stuff Theory
William James (1890)

provided by:
Classics in the History of Psychology

An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green, York University, Toronto, Ontario

In my opinion, this section of three paragraphs in William James work accounts for the current conflict in the Vatican synod.

"EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY DEMANDS A MIND-DUST.

In a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first, then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time with matter and its aggregations and separations; and although our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being continuous. The point which as evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their appearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution of the original and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of the brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. In this story no new natures, no factors not present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage.

But with the dawn of consciousness an entirely new nature seems to slip in, something whereof the potency was not given in the mere outward atoms of the original chaos.

The enemies of evolution have been quick to pounce upon this undeniable discontinuity in the data of the world, and many of them, from the failure of evolutionary explanations at this point, have inferred their general incapacity all along the line. Every one admits the entire incommensurability of feeling as such with material motion as such. "A motion became a feeling!" - no phrase that our lips can frame is so devoid of apprehensible meaning. Accordingly, even the vaguest of evolutionary enthusiasts, when deliberately comparing material with mental facts, have been as forward as any one else to emphasize the 'chasm' between the inner and the outer worlds."

Synod sows confusion among Pope's faithful
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34585100

(imho) Permit the mind-dust of wrong thinking to sift and creep into your perceptions and you will turn into a malcontent too, looking for an out-of-date religion to justify your mind-stuff just as today's pseudo-religions try to cover everyone around themselves with mental-soot . Getting to the truth of consciousness begins with separating religion from empire and aristocracy from politics.

[Henosis Sage]

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"... just as today's pseudo-religions try to cover everyone around themselves with mental-soot"

Which is exactly what the pseudo-religion Eckankar and their members and sycophantic apologists do. :-)

IT's now 2015 the advances in cognitive sciences and psychology the last 20 years alone are a million fold greater than anyone could have described in 1890.

IT's as wise to quote such misguided flawed musings from 1890 as it would be to conclude that God gave Moses two tablets of commandments on Mt Sinai.

When the truth is that three very classy stone masons were secretly seconded up the mountain by a read track before Moses went up there himself with all the grandiose fanfare by the gullible sycophants he dragged from Egypt.

Every "religion" is amateur psychology put out by amateurs most of whom in fact needed a psychologist to deal with their mental distortions and degrees of lunacy.

Now, not all, for I have no problem with The Buddha, nor Jesus, and many others. But Mohammed and Moses were clearly mentally disturbed egotistical psychopaths of a high order. Twitchell and Klemp are no better and should have been sectioned under the metal health act for the term of their natural lives.

And Twitchell should have been jailed for Tax Evasion, massive Copyright Infringement (yes it is a jailable offense not merely a civil case - I know go check), and Fraud including false pretenses regarding his intentionally deceitful Eckankar mythology.

And I say all of this knowing true well that "spirit", whatever one wishes to call it, is real and one can be in conscious contact with it.

That human beings are very much 'schizophrenic' by nature (to various degrees), in that we have an animal nature and a spiritual nature inbuilt within the very same life experience.

But liars and frauds are still liars and frauds nevertheless.

An amateurs and incompetents are still lying incompetent amateurs where most are delusional fools in need of professional psychotherapy.

Where the likes of Hubbard, Twitchell, Gross, Klemp, Marman, Skelsky, Simpson-Rivinus, et al would be at the top of my list due to the intentional & "Without Conscience" material harm, mental distress, and unnecessary deaths they have all caused and/or contributed to over the years.

They should be grateful I'm not the current Dictator of the US, for they and their kind would all be in jail pronto.