How can you ask what the point is of all this stuff when you know that the PCE is arrived at by reflective and fascinating contemplative thought?
@Rick I would not characterise what you/we have been doing here as reflective and fascinating contemplative thought. Although this is interesting and not pointless - it is far from that.
I think Claudiu’s writing on this topic is quite good and may well be a way of taking your musings about this subject out of abstraction, and into something pragmatically useful in regards to actual freedom.
It sounds like where we probably agree is that matter is the ultimate source of mind. But whereas you are saying mind = matter (brain), I am saying this is a false equivalence and a sleight of hand that involves swapping co-related neural activity for the experience of consciousness. In-fact the second line of the abstract you quoted was … “It opens by examining the neural correlates of bodily metaphors”. Look its an old (and new) debate with many facets and we are unlikely to resolve it here, so let’s just agree to disagree. Rather than seeking to prove me wrong - if you are interested you could read up on the critiques of your position (and those of mine as well)
For more of an elaboration of what I have been saying, you could look up non-reductive materialism, emergentism, strong emergence and the hard problem of consciousness.
[quote=“rick, post:65, topic:131”]
This …
Richard (1997): The third alternative – actual freedom – is not an Ineffable State. Unlike The Altered State, it can be easily and adequately described in unambiguous terms.[/quote]
Okay, understand that I am not saying anything different from Richard. A PCE or an actual freedom is not the same as e.g. shunyatha a nullity, a void, a rent in matrix of symbolic logic where all categories break down, finger pointing at the moon etc. It is a lived experience that I could describe in the way I could a trip to the Amazon. But how do I communicate to someone say who has never left New York City, the experience of being in this almost unbelievably large rain forest, winding my way down in a boat on a river, the air buzzing with the sounds and smells of thousand of species of flora and fauna? Even having had numerous PCE’s, as a feeling being I was not able to ‘bottle’ it the way I could with usual memories. The essential quality of it would evade me until I had another PCE or made a strong connection with pure intent that allowed me to rememorate it.