Amos...I am startled at your reply about James Randi's motives. You seem to accuse him of engaging in charlatanism hardly better than that which he seeks to expose! It is almost as if you are saying he really knows better, but doesn't care, or won't look at the truth. I sure would like to get HIS response to such an assertion.

"he must be aware that this impulse to convince people they are non-spiritual in nature is harmful, not to say despicable." At WHAT level? From the syntax of the statement, I gather that this is what you believe. Do I, in my ramblings above, fall into the same class of willful deceivers as Randi? Or am I exempt because I don't have a website and foundation? Should *I* know better?

Bill:

This is a complex question, but it deserves the best answer I can offer in brief. What we know and do not know is from the physical system perspective pretty much a function of serial exposure to information through experience and communications. But if you start examing whether there is any way that any knowing can be invested in a physical system you run out of answers very quickly. Information can be recorded, stored, forwarded, switched on and off, but there is a leap in quality, not just speed, complexity or quantity, when you look at "understanding" or "knowing", which are phenomena that machines can't. This raises the question of non-material aspects to the human being. THere is alot of chatter about this in NEw Age circles, of course -- you're not a human being having a spiritual experience, you're a spiritual being having a human experience, and so on. But for sure, one of the capabilities that a spiritual being has in plentiful measure is the ability to paint out wide areas of knowing, in order to enjoy the experience of working through the ignorance and discovering the knowing behind it. Or, another sort of explanation for the same thing, in order to avoid having to face areas of confusion or too much stress or pain. The shorthand for this in human terms is denial. But it is a lot more complex, because it tends to be self-fulfilling. Randi, for example, is going to be hard-put to ever experience any spiritual phenomenon. When his body dies, he may just stay black indefinitely, just because he has tried so hard to refuse acknowledgement of that side of things. Which is his privelege, I am sure.

But at some level, there is always a quiet whisper that a being could listen to, if he chose, at which he knows what he knows, without the coloration of selective blackness or painting out of things. At some level the deserter knows how his abandoned wife feels, but heaps layers of ignoral on top, because he obviously prefers not to look at that side of it.

What drives people in to rampant materialism? I don't mean just healthy intellectual interest in physical things, but in the kind of foaming refusal of any other order of event or entitiy?

My opinion is that it is a long cumulative record of pain: cognitive, emotional, or physical pain, including things like losing love, being beaten by authoritarian teachers, having your certainties overwhelmed by others, being forced to learn thigns you do not understand, and other sorts.

That's the short version.

Regards,

A