[MD] New Model Army, Mystic(DQ) Experience, and Religion (SQ) as Power

[Case]

Case said:
I agree with the part about no separate intelligences and no "supernatural" 
but rationality and logic are what take us out of the gooey emotional, 
feeling talk that spirituality ultimately leads to. rationality
should not surplant emotion but when the two work in Harmony... ah, there is

that word again.

dmb says:
And yes, something like harmony is the goal. I think the idea in Wilber's 
work and in the MOQ is that we need to integrate these various levels so 
that they aren't in conflict with one another. Or, when they are in 
conflict, we can at least have some reasonable way to distinquish which 
level of values is to take precedence.


[Case]
There is a body of evidence from the neurosciences suggesting that our
brains have multiple ways of processing sensory input. There is a rational
component and an emotional component. It makes sense to talk about a culture
having a preferred mode as Benedict does. But I find the idea of pre and
post misleading. As if we were mentally ill, then got rational for a while
and now we are over it. We are now not sure where we are going but it's up.

Jung points out that rational thoughtful people can be fools in love.
Romantics can't program their VCRs. Still, extremes are always outliers on
the bell curve. Most traits get mixed up pretty well.

But when reason and emotional are in conflict? Now that's chaotic. If you
think you can reason your way out of a situation like that... wait until you
have been married longer.

Reason is a tool for hedging your bets. You use it to check your work. I
want things to be like this: (Whatever) and this is what I will say to
anyone who says it's not: (blah, blah, blah).

The best example of this comes from the split brain experiments. These
studies where done on epileptic patients, whose brains were literally cut in
two. When subjects were asked to respond verbally to something they knew
about only through the non-verbal half of their brains, they did not
respond, "I don't know." They instead spun out rationalization that
expressed an emotional need to explain but made no sense.

Religion tends to take emotions seriously. Science takes rationalization
seriously. One may be preferred over the other; but things work out best
when the left brain knows what the right brain is doing.


[dmb]
And I have to say that this is basically the difference between traditional 
theism on the one hand and philosophical mysticism on the other. One is 
pre-rational while the other is post-rational. And since both are NOT 
rational, people get confused and think they are the same. This confusion is

pretty much the definition of tragedy.

[Case]
Perhaps, I am confused. How do they differ; in the Quality of their
emotional content or in the Quality of their rationalizations?