ZMM
The formulation of hypotheses in the scientific method. "Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world. he then tries to some extent to overcome it - he makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.""Einstein had said, "Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest," and let it go at that. But to P that was an incredibly weak answer. The phrase "at any given moment" really shook him. Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time? To state that would annihilate the most basic presumption of all science!But there it was, the whole history of science, a clear story of continuously new and changing explanations of old facts. The time spans of permanence seemed completely random he could see no order in them.The more you look, the more you see. Instead of selecting one truth from a multitude, you are increasing the multitude. What this means logically is that as you try to move toward unchanging truth through the application of scientific method, you actually do not move toward it at all. You move away from it! It is your application of scientific method that is causing it to change!What P observed on a personal level was a phenomenon, profoundly characteristic of the history of science, which has been swept under the carpet for years. The predicted results of scientific enquiry and the actual results of scientific enquiry are diametrically opposed here, and no one seems to pay too much attention to the fact....The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance, these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is... emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be at for a long time to come.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs... i was looking this up and there's something beyond self-actualization! Self-transcendence."For Maslow, the level of self-actualization reflects the fact that human beings are not simply biological machines. As we mature and become more aware of ourselves, we are increasingly driven by a sense of personal meaning and purpose.Many people are under the impression that the hierarchy of needs stops there. Not so.For while studying people who operate at the level of self-actualization, Maslow noticed that many of them frequently have, and deliberately seek, some other kind of experience. Something extraordinary.Maslow termed these peak experiences. They are profound, life-altering moments of love, understanding, happiness, bliss. They are moments in which one feels radically more whole, more completely alive, more aware of truth, beauty, goodness, and so on.Self-actualizing people have many such peak experiences and eventually feel inspired to actively seek them, extend them and stabilize them. Hence, Maslow added the goal of self-transcendence as the final level, the capstone of the pyramid. The desire is to go beyond our ordinary human level of consciousness and experience oneness with the greater whole, the higher truth, whatever that may be.---"Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."[5]"Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."[5]
William JamesJames has many insights concerning happiness, chief among them the idea that happiness consists in orienting yourself to a higher purpose, even if that purpose cannot be rationally proved to exist. Those who suffer from a “crisis of meaning” emerge stronger with more enthusiasm for life than those who just go through the motions and take the easy path.
Reality of the unseen
James criticized scientists for ignoring unseen aspects of the universe. Science studies some of reality, but not all of it:
Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in the rationalistic system.... Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists ..., we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account of is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words.... Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.[9]
Mysticism
James identified two main features to a mystical experience:
Ineffability.—" no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. […] its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. […] mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists."Noetic quality.—"Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time."
He also identified two subsidiary features that are often, but not always, found with mystical experiences:
Transiency.—"Mystical states cannot be sustained for long."Passivity.—"the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power."