Author: Matthew David Segall
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Phenomenology and Science
Science (empirical observation coupled with logical deduction), as a way of thinking, has undoubtedly made more out of mankind than any other mode of thought in his historical arsenal. In both the material and mental spheres, man has used the knowledge and technology that he has gained from science to make many great practical advances.…
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A Fable of Time and Eternity
Writing is weaving, and weaving is telling a story. This evening’s readings began with pen and paper, but alas, the well ran dry and my lines became blank. So back inside I went —leaving my medieval manuscript face open on the porch chair with the sterile hollowness of a quill that it was laying flat…
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The Essence of Religion
Preface It has been suggested that all modern philosophy begins with doubt (JC, p. 80). When one philosophizes, they agree to take nothing for granted, and even to question themselves backward into a corner if need be. Cornering oneself in such a way becomes the goal of philosophical inquiry, as once trapped by one’s own…
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Myth and Mentation
Belief is creation. Human beings cannot escape the relationship between the formative powers of their imagination and the world itself. Thought is reality. Yes, we have science; we have response to thought. We can test our thoughts and gauge their efficacy. We can produce statistics and build models. But these responses are still thoughts, still…
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YouTube
Video doesn’t afford us the same intensity of individuality that the printed word provides. Speaking aloud into the internet is emersion in the Other. Writing affords an author time for reflection and debate. One can “catch their breath” before they pronounce the world, gather supplies before setting off to sea. Marshall Mcluhan said that “every…
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Inside and Outside
Why does my mind matter more than my body? Why is it that it’s what’s inside that counts? Isn’t the shape and character of my face as much “me” as the trends and moods of my personality? Aren’t they each a symptom of the other? My personality is my reaction to the other faces I’ve…
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Impersonal text for no one in particular
Talking out loud is tiring, it is inevitably personalizing. If I want to stick to impersonality,it pays to write. Remaining faceless avoids the glare. Spontaneously talking into a camera to post your face on the Internet is pornographic. It is pop-thought, public nudity, mass consciousness. It is confronting the superego and shouting spells at him…
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To TheModernMystic (YouTube)
TheModernMystic @ YouTube.com Nick, the gap has been leaped. 1st person and 3rd person are equally illusory. No “I” and no “it”. There is no single observer just like there is no single observed. In fact, there is no observer or observed at all, they are not two. Thou art That. I am It. No,…
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Ego trying to transcend Ego
Oh, I am dizzy from the never ending torment of chasing my own tail around and around and around. I feel deflated, not for any particular reason, but more so because I need a reason not to be. Why spirituality? Why demand that existence be meaningful? Because it just feels so much better that way!…
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Wittgenstein and Language
What is language? Wittgenstein’s early project was to define language in the terms most familiar to the Western tradition, running through Augustine up until Russell. His aim was to show that all philosophy consisted in defining the logical form of sentences. A certain proposition was thought to be isomorphic to a certain event in the…
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Wonder
I wonder what it is that turns the world round, That hides the far side of the Moon from the Earth, That sees with my eyes but cannot be seen. Why is it that I have a perspective? How is it that I exist as an individual, As a piece of space wrapped up in…
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The Spiritual Animal
Some have suggested that the human being can (and therefore ought to) live without God. I reject this claim. I propose that the human being is the spiritual animal, the organism that knows that it is. God is the “thatness” of existence, that transcendent quality of all that is but whose name cannot be spoken.…
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The Zeitgeist
The zeitgeist gives our individual lives their substance. Without this cultural matrix to create and sustain our sense of ourselves as subjects; as persons with responsibilities; as bodies with a rational will required by outer law to be in control (but by inner law to be spontaneous), we would be free to release our experience…
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The Wise and the Foolish
The bones between this body are burdensome but fair. They hold this flesh together while it breathes air, but balance the bargain with a fateful despair. The bones remain after the soul has gone home–a reminder for those who still seek, who still inhale and must eat. Death is the great equalizer, and a master…
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What does liberation require?
What does liberation require? Krishnamurti would stop us before we even ask the question, as to suppose enlightenment could have a cause in time is to mistake the temporal for the eternal. But supposing we are then merely trying to describe the experience of awakening metaphorically, rather than trying to scientifically break it down into…
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The End of the Word (preliminary remarks)
To engage in philosophy is to attempt to wake up from a dream. I had one once where I dreamt of these men’s thoughts: I believe one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.) It says that…
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I cannot stick a thought (a stream of consciousness)
Conceptualization has become impossible. I have thoughts, but the thinking doesn’t stick. It always slides off, becomes obsolete, without reason. One moment an idea seems to fit the real; in the next, it has been replaced by a blank stare into a broken mirror. I am lost in experience, so far outside myself that I…
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Spellbound: Magic Words and Minds Without Self
Introduction There was a time when physics, still high on the spirit of the Enlightenment, took seriously the idea that its measurements of the fundamental stuff composing the universe could explain just about everything worth knowing about. Granted, it didn’t have all the necessary measurements compiled just yet, but it assured everyone that it was…
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Reality is a Reel
All my life, I’ve been drawn to the big questions, But I cannot even begin my story Without revealing my bias in the first line. Why “big” questions? Are the answers especially “full” of goodness? Does it take a “long” time to find them?Are there really “more” than one? Questions and answers… A captain seeking…
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The Limits of Language
The Limits of Language It seems ironic, at least in light of the premise of this paper, that the thoughts of a man such as Socrates could have given birth to the last twenty-four hundred years of Western philosophical discourse. Was it not he who said “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”?…
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Integral Spirituality
“When we ponder on [realization], we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive violence and how confusing in their misleading distinctness are the words that we use. We begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind that concentrates itself on…
Footnotes2Plato 